JEWS AND HARVARD

To the Editors of The Crimson:

A university is a complex community. Its young people and its faculty are involved, in common, in the pursuit of learning. Yet in other aspects, in religions, cultures, values or life-styles there are diversities. A principle of universalism holds in the realm of scholarship. It says that the criterion for the selection of a faculty, and even of students, should be specific to that aim, regardless of other attributes. But the principle of pluralism is a respect for the differences in religion, culture and the like.

The freshman registration day is a symbolic initiation into that complex community. A considerable number of freshmen are Jewish. Yet the University, apparently without scrutiny, picked the day of Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish faith, for freshman registration. One would have expected, on the principle of civility, the necessary sense of tact an-sensibility and the avoidance of such conflict.

This was the theme of the Yom Kippur sermon by Rabbi Ben-Zion Gold on September 14. For Mr. Kilson, in his letter to The Crimson of October 1, to call this attitude "totalistic" and "miltant confrontationalism," is a reflection not on Rabbi Gold, but Mr. Kilson himself. Daniel Bell   Professor of Sociology