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בס"ד

Religious Education.

To The Editor Of The Occident.

Reverend Sir,

I feel assured that you will be rejoiced on being informed that a plan is now in embryo, for establishing an Institute, having for its basis the religious, moral, and commercial instruction of a limited number of young gentlemen of our nation. The aim of the institution will be to prepare its pupils for the pulpit, the senate, or the bar; in fine, a scholastic establishment, intended to be a nucleus for the achievement of the greatest possible good to those who shall be destined to become its inmates. The originator of this contemplated nursery for religious training is John I. Hart, Esq., of Bath, Long Island; and his name is a sufficient guarantee that orthodox principles will be instilled into the docile mind. Associated with that gentleman are many names well known for their patriotic efforts to exalt Judaism. I need not mention  Morland Micholl, John M. Davis, Lawrence Myers, I. N. Samuels, the Messrs. Morrison, John D. Phillips, George Levi, D. Davis, and many other names, to assure you that the proposed scheme is not likely to prove abortive. At the present moment I am unable to furnish you with a prospectus of the establishment; as our time is now fully occupied in the various preparations for the approaching consecration of our magnificent Synagogue, in training the choir, in devising the best means how to accommodate our many friends, and in superintending the building; but in a short time I will furnish you with all the details. I am, however, even now prepared to say that the proposed undertaking will be a great boon to our co-religionists in the southern and western states, who will be enabled to send their sons to a boarding-school in New York, to receive a finished, and, what is more important than all, thorough religious education; and when I assert that I have been honoured in being selected to become the principal, I feel that I shall be pardoned in not writing in more laudatory terms of those gentlemen who have commenced the undertaking.

94 Elm Street,
Shebat 22d, 5607.

Yours,
S. M. Isaacs.