R’ Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz told his students in America, “I cannot understand how it is possible for an American yeshiva student to be Jewish without ‘The Nineteen Letters’”

 Excerpted From Rav Shraga Feivel  Mendlowitz's Memoriam by his grandson:

...."A person of deep complexity and contemplation, he pursued Jewish philosophy and mussar privately, and at a young age had completed the entire works of the Maharal, Kuzari, Mesilas Yeshorim, and works of chassidus. He avidly studied the works of Rav Samson Rafael Hirsch in the original German. He saw Rav Hirsch as his ideal because Hirsch had successfully devised a religious Jewish weltanschauung that could stand up to the challenges of modernity."

by Daniel Adler:

"The best way to reintroduce Torah im Derech Eretz is to restore R’ Hirsch’s ideals, both in theory and in practice, at the high school level. Specifically, this includes teaching R’ Hirsch’s classic sefer, “The Nineteen Letters,” which contains the core of R’ Hirsch’s views on the world and Torah. R’ Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz told his students in America, “I cannot understand how it is possible for an American yeshiva student to be Jewish without ‘The Nineteen Letters’” (Klugman, 1998). Study of this seminal work will form the basis for a strong Hashkafic underpinning for all yeshiva/Bais Yaakov students."

Read more:
http://www.cross-currents.com/archives/2012/02/13/return-to-basics-a-call-to-revitalize-r-hirschs-torah-im-derech-eretz/#ixzz1mHvXdael

RAV SHRAGA FEIVEL MENDLOWITZ IN MEMORIAM:
http://theunorthodoxjew.blogspot.com/2007/08/rav-shraga-feivel-mendlowitz-ztl-in.html