America elvish Periodical Cotter
Friday, March 30, 1945
CLIFTON AVENUE - CINCINNATI 20, 01110
DETROIT JEWISH CHRONICLE and The Le el Chronicle
SCHOLAR
JEWISH WOMEN OF THE PATS
RECEIVE GAS MASK TRAINING
(Continued from Page 1 0)
and Shahar, or Sunset and Dawn.
The texts contained the lines
, ilF rn alien by the reciter."
was told that you we re an
't on early Hebrew writ-
-
"You probably refer to my
decipherment of inscriptions, dis-
covered on potsherds at Tell-el
Duweir, the site of city of Lach-
, !ish, in ancient Palestine. Hav-
I. wig been shown the blueprint
in London, I realized that these
!characters belonged to the same
{t y p e a s those found on the Sinai
■ ieninsula. My initial decipher-
4 ' ;Snent was published in the Lon-
don Times, and some of the
foremost scholars in the field
agreed that I had elucidated the
earliest known Hebrew script, the
'mother of our modern alphabet,
rdating about 1300 B.C. Of
'course, the first attempt needed
subsequent elaboration and im-
!provement which others supplied,
,'but the key was found."
"Assuming that you have fa-
miliarized yourself with the place
i twhere you will be working soon,
inlay I ask you what you think
*the function of the Semitic Divi-
ion should be in the cultural re-
construction of the world later
the war?"
"Your question is justified,"
Dr. Gaster admitted. "I hope
I shall be instrumental in mak-
ing the users of the library un-
derstand that Hebrew literature
is not necessarily rather esoteric
and specialistic, as is commonly
believed. It is an integral part
About 4,000 Palestinian Jewish women are serving in the
PATS (Palestinian Auxiliary Territorial Service.) Like our own
WACS they relieve men for active service.
of world literature and world
science, and the least, not the
most important thing about it is
that it i happens to be writen in
Hebrew. We should stress the
fact that the more than 40,000
volumes of the Division contain
a great deal of material of gen-
eral, non-theological interest, such
as contributions to philosophy,
geography, medicine, and so
forth. For instance, a student of
Greek philosophy ought to know
Don Hasdai Crescas' critique of
Aristotle, an astronomer some of
the works by Ibn Ezra—and so
forth. Needless to say, some out-
standing contributions to modern
science are being publishgd in
modern Hebrew. We shall serve,
of course, in the first place Con-
gressmen and government agen-
cies, but our resources are open
also to all cultural agencies and
private scholars, both here and
abroad."
Hebrew Division
"I understand that the official
criterion for including books in
that section is that they are
printed in Hebrew characters.
For that reason, wouldn't it be
more correct to talk of a Heb-
rew rather than of a Semitic
Diivision?"
"I would have mentioned that
point Dr. Werner. Although the
section actually contains only
books and manuscripts in Hebrew
and Yiddish, save for a few Sa-
maritan manuscripts, the ground
for calling it, somewhat mislead-
ingly, Semitic Division, can be
traced to the fact that, original-
ly, the library as a whole did
not go in very much for works
in other Semitic languages, such
as Arabic. With the development
of interest in the Near East,
however, it has been necessary
to cultivate this neglected field
and accordingly to reorganize the
entire department of Orientalia
to make provisions for Arabic
studies in a separate section.
"Therefore, what was previous-
Passover Greetings
To All Jewry!
1
I
P.
SCALLEN
Judge of Recorde r's
Court of the Ci t y
of Detroit
JOHN
Ir
ly called the Semitic Division
will, henceforth, be known more
strictly as Hebrew Division. On
the other hand, in connection with
what I said before, I might state
that the great development of
modern Hebrew literature on the
one hand, and , the discovery of
pre-Biblical Canaanite Hebrew lit-
erature on the other hand, has
extended the scope and coverage
of the Division so that it will
now no longer be confined so
rigidly to purely rabbinical ma-
terial. By the way, Jewish books
in other languages and books
relating to Hebrew literature are
contained in the general library.
But the card index of such works
is filed in the Hebrew Division,
so that any reader can have ac-
cess to these works at the same
time as he studies the Hebrew
books."
"Do you think that the scope
and importance of the Division
will increase after the war?"
Page Fifteen
Center of Jewry Here
"Definitely. In the first place,
the Near East will be of greater
significance in world affairs than
it was ever before. But there
is another reason why we shall
be kept busy. Most of the Jew-
ish book collections in continen-
tal Europe will be' lost, including
the precious libraries of War-
saw, Vilna, Berlin, Vienna, and
so forth. Even in England, many
rare Hebrew books were destroy-
ed in the air raids.
"The center of Jewish life will
probably shift to this country,
which will contain almost half
of world Jewry. It is, therefore,
necessary that this country should
contain a repository of literature
respesenting so increasingly im-
l5ortant an element of its cul-
tural complex. At the same time,
this country is going to develop
a policy of international cultural
exchange, as is evidenced by the
appointment of Mr. MacLeish to
his present post, making him a
kind of cultural Foreign Secre-
tary. The Hebrew Division, as
we shall call it henceforth, will
play its assigned role in the task
of rebuilding the world in the
interests of mutual national re-
spect and cultural reconciliation
of the peoples."
The man who gave me the in-
terview is the recipient of an
M.A. degree, bestowed upon him
by London University for his
thesis on the Ras Shama in-
scriptions. Subsequently he re-
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....
ceived the Ph.D. degree from
Columbia University. He was in
charge of Semitic antiquities at
the Wellcome Museum in Lon-
don, and was a lecturer on Old
Testament Archaeology and on
the Ancient East at , New College
in London, respectively, before
he came to America, in 1930. A
contributor to all of the leading
English and foreign scholarly
magazines, like the Journal of
the Royal Asiatic Society, of
which he is a fellow, he is also
professor of comparative religion
at Dropsie College, Philadelphia.
For the last 10 years he has
been writing a book on ancient
Near Eastern Drama in which
he will present the original texts
and translations of all religious
documents in the Near East which
may be construed as of dramatic
content, that is to say, as lib-
retti of sacred pantomimes.
They will include Canaanite, Hit-
tite and Babylonian material and
point out the relation of these
materials to the history of the
drama in general, especially its
influence upon the Greek drama
and its survival in the shape of
pantomimes and mummers' plays
of modern Europe. We hope that
his new, difficult task will not
prevent Dr. Gaster from con-
tinuing to make contributions to
elucidate the literature and life
of our forbears.
ti
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