Ivy Leagues

Q: I recently covered my school children’s books with a book cover that had the emblem from Yale University. I was surprised to see that Yale’s crest is written in Hebrew.  What does it mean?

A: Hebrew was an important language to the founding fathers of this nation. Ezra Stiles, the first president of Yale University, studied Hebrew from his Jewish acquaintances. Under Stiles’ leadership the seal of Yale bore the words “Urim v’Tumim” as it does to this day.

“Urim v’Tumim” were the names of the stones on the breastplate of the Kohen Gadol in Jerusalem during Temple days. The stones were an oracle of sorts, which deciphered the word of God for the people. The “Urim v’Tumim” therefore signifies the predominance of God’s power and the ability of humanity to grasp a fragment of the Eternal One. 

Dartmouth College has a seal which bears in the words El Shaddai, God Almighty. Columbia University prints the Tetragrammaton or full Hebrew name of God on its crests.

All these institutions recognized the critical importance of the Hebrew language when they were founded. No scholar of the 17th century could be ignorant of the holy tongue in which the Bible was written. Even the plain folk were admonished to attempt to read the engine text in the original. Roger Williams, Cotton Mather and the rest were all fluent in Hebrew.