A yeshivish joke at R, Joseph H. Hertz's expense from the 1930s

An illustration of the disdain the Eastern European Yeshiva had towards the Anglo-ecclesiastical leadership can be found in an oft repeated comment by one of Jacobs’s teachers in reference to Chief Rabbi J.H. Hertz: “If a reverend is a goy. It must follow that a “Very Reverend” [Hertz’s title] is a ‘great goy’ (a grosser goy).” Hyperbole aside, the sharp remark is illustrative of the degree to which Jacobs’s Yeshiva environment understood itself vis-à-vis the pre-autochthonous institutions of Anglo-Jewry.

Pg. 18, Teyku: The Insoluble Contradictions in the Life and Thought of Louis Jacobs, Phd. dissertation by Elliot Cosgrove (download here).