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THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS — Friday, 'February 15, 1963 —

Borman, Near East Lecture Series
Resumes Feb. 28; Gordon to Speak

Dr. Abram Spiro, chairman
of the Wayne State University
Department of Near Eastern
Languages and Literatures, an-
nounced this week that the
Borman Near Eastern Lecture
Series will be resumed on Feb.
28.
The initial lecture in the
1963 series will be given by
Dr. Cyrus H. Gordon, profes-
sor of Near Eastern studies
and chairman of the department
of Mediterranean • studies at
Brandeis University.
Dr. Gordon will speak here
twice. In the afternoon his topic
will be "Canaan and the Ori-
gins of Western Culture." The
topic of his evening lecture, to
be delivered at the McGregor
Memorial Conference Center,
Room L, will be "The Common
Background of Hebrew and
Greek Civilization." He will be
introduced at the evening lec-
ture by Avern Cohen. The pub-
lic is invited.

Before coming to Brandeis,
Dr. Gordon was Professor of
NEW YORK, (JTA)—"There
Assyriology and Egyptology is no gap" between President
at Dropsie College in Phila- Kennedy's publicly expressed
delphia, and was previously attitude toward Israel and his
on the faculties of the Uni- "earnest and dedicated perform-
versity of Pennsylvania, Johns ance," as proved by his decision
Hopkins University, and to permit Israel to purchase
Smith College.
the Hawk anti-aircraft missile,

An authority on the Ugari-
tic tablets that have revolu-
tionized the study of Hebrew
civilization, Dr. Gordon has
earned worldwide recognition
for deciphering both Minoan
Linear A and Eteocretan in-
scriptions from Crete.

In the fall of 1957, he attract-
ed international attention for
the solution he proposed for a
50-year-old mystery . that had
baffled linguists and archaeolo-
gists on ever y continent. He
identified the language of fhe
Minoan Linear A tablets from
Crete as Semitic. But it was
only in the opening months of
1962 that he refined his de-
cipherment of Minoan and
proved that the Minoan lan-
guage was Northwest Semitic
through recognizing that the
same language persisted until
300 B.C. in the "Eto cretan"
writings inscribed in Greek let-
ters. This discovery explains
many of the links betWeen
early Greece and the Near East.
In fact, for several years Dr.
Gordon had been pointing out
a relationship in detail between
early Hebrew and Greek litera-
tures. -

Klutznick Says Sale of Hawk Missiles
Is High Point in U.S.-Israel Relations

•

He served with the U.S.A.F.
from 1942-46, and was promoted
to colonel in the U.S.A.F. Re-
serve in 1961. Prior to his army
career, he was a member of
the Institute for Advanced
Study in Princeton, N.J., _dur-
ing 1939-40, and again during
1941-42. During 1931-35 he was
a field archaeologist for the
American Schools of Oriental
Research in Jerusalem and
Baghdad.
Dr. Gordon's books and ar-
ticles, numbering more than
250, have been published in the
United States, Canada, England,
Israel, Iran, Turkey, Italy, Ger-
many, Spain, Czechoslovakia,
France, Belgium and Switzer-
land.
Born in Philadelphia, June
29, 1908, Dr. Gordon is the son
of Benjamin and Dorothy (Co-
hen) Gordon. He received his
B. A. degree in 1927, his M.A.
degree in 1928, and his Ph.D.
degree in 1930 from the Univer-
sity of Pennsylvania.

Philip M. Klutznick, former
U.S. Ambassador to the United
Nations Economic and Social
Council, declared here.
"The independence and secu-
rity of Israel," he affirmed,
"are an element in the U.S.
foreign policy."
Klutznick, who retired from
his ambassadorship at the con-
clusion of the last UN General
Assembly, was the guest of hon-
or here at the annual Order
Day dinner of Bnai Zion, Amer-
ican fraternal Zionist organ-
ization. The 1,200 guests at the
dinner devoted also toward rais-
ing funds for two additional
Bnai Zion Foundation projects
in Israel and to highlighting
the work of the Jewish National
Fund, heard many tributes to
Klutznick in messages from
Pr e s i d e n t Kennedy, Israel's
Prime Minister David Ben-
Gurion, Israel's Foreign Minis-
ter Golda Meir and many other
American and Israeli notables.

In his message, President
Kennedy noted that

Klutznick has occupied vari-
ous high government posts
during 10 years under the
Administrations of Presidents
Roosevelt, Tr um a n, Eisen-
hower and the present Wash-
ington Administration. "In all
of these positions of respori-
sibility," said Mr. Kennedy,
"his talent and ability won
him the respect of his col-
leagues and the appreciation
and thanks of his country. I
am happy to join in the trib-
utes to Phil Klutznick on this
occasion."

Taking note of the function's
interest in the Jewish National
Fund, Pr e s i d e n t Kennedy
added: "I should like to wish
you success in your efforts,
through the Jewish National
Fund, to transform arid waste
into habitable, fertile and pro-
ductive soil. President Truman
once referred to this as 'the
initiation of the Point Four
program for underdeveloped
nations.' All such efforts to
raise the productivity of under-
developed lands and increase
standards of living deserve en-
couragement."
In his address, responding
to the tributes, Klutznick told
the assemblage: "In my two
years of intimate concern with

events inside the Administra-
tion, affecting American-Israel
relationships, I found no gap
between President Kennedy's
views, as he stated them earlier,
and his present and dedicated
performance as our nation's
chief executive." He took occa-
sion to deny as "complete and
unfounded nonsense" the
rumors that he quit the UN
delegation post due to "alleged
dissatisfaction with the Admin-
istration's attitude toward Is-
rael."

Klutznick described the
events immediately preceding
Mr. Kennedy's announcement
of his decision to permit Is-
rael to purchase the Hawk
missiles in this country. "I
was among those privileged
to be in Washington," he
said, "to listen to President
Kennedy explain what he pro-
posed," to a small group of
Jewish leaders. "Briefly, in
excellent prose and with per-
fect logic, he traced the his-
tory of the United States
policy and commitments in
the Middle East.
"Other than President Tru-
man's prompt recognition of

Israel on its birth, this is the
highlight in the relationships
between the United States and
Israel," Klutznick stressed.

.

Histadrut Raises
$1 Million, Forms
Education Arm

NEW YORK—(JTA)—,A mil-
lion dollars in cash was pre-
sented here _at the mid-winter
conference of the National Com-
mittee for Labor Israel at the
Hotel Commodore, in the first
phase of the 1963 Israel Hista-
drut Campaign.
A roll call of delegations
representing s c or es of com-
munities and hundreds of Jew-
ish and labor organizations was
condcted by Dr. Sol Stein, na-
tional executive director of the
campaign. Rabbi Jacob J. Wein-
stein, national • chairman, pre-
sided over the conference.
Two special representatives of
Histadrut addressed the confer-
ence—Mayor Joseph Levy of
Eilat, and Dov Barnir, Hebrew
journalist and member of. the
First Knesset. Mayor Levy re-
ported that Eilat, would increase
its population threefold in the
next four years, from 8,500 to
25,000.
Stein announced the establish-
ment of an Educational Depart-
ment that would seek "to clari-
fy the affinity between Ameri-
can Jewry and Israel, and pre-
sent the ideals of Histadrut as
the 20th century mission of our
people, a mission in which
American Jewry can find its
fulfillment while enriching its
American heritage." Dr. Judd L.
Teller, well-known author and
lecturer, has been named direc-
tor of the department.

People are like grass on a
field: some sprout and others
rot.—Erubin 54.

01963 P Lorillcird Co.

The Scholarly Sleuth

Solomon Schechter spent the last thirteen
years of his life as President of the Jewish
Theological Seminary of America. He was
one of the leaders of Conservative Judaism,
a noted Hebrew scholar, mystic and phi-
losopher. Yet his great claim to scholastic
fame came through an odd bit of scholarly
detective work.
While at Cambridge University as a
teacher, Schechter was given some frag-
ments of ancient Hebrew manuscript by
two friends who had bought them in Cairo.
He identified them as part of the lost
Hebrew original of the Book of Eeclesi-
astieus, the Ben Sira, which had been
known only in translation.
The Hebrew custom, which still persists,
calls for the storage of any document,
however worn, which contains the Holy
Name. Schechter reasoned that a hoard

of such documents might still exist. He
went to Cairo to take up the search.
In a crypt at Fostat, near Cairo,
Schechter found a Genizah —the Hebrew
word for depository—containing about
100,000 manuscripts. He got permission
to remove this treasure to England, where
the work of translation and identification
was begun. It goes on to this day.
Schechter's Genizah caused as much ex
citement in his day as did the discovery of
the Dead Sea Scrolls in ours. And, curi-
ously enough, though Schechter is best
known for his work in the United States—
President of the Jewish Theological Semi-
nary, Hebraist and apostle of Conserva-
tive Judaism and a founder of the United
Synagogue of America—he achieved his
international scholarly reputation as the
discoverer of the Cairo Genizah.

ESTABLISHED 1

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•

-

First with the Finest Cigarettes
through Lorillard research.

