Jewry's Role in
Human Events
LEAVING THEIR IMPRINTS ON THE WORLD
Our columns have often showcased Jewish men and women whose
achievements have been honored by the world's most distinguished body of
their peers: The Nobel Prize Committee. What is most astonishing is how
many of our kinsmen were named to its rolls since the award program was
implemented in 1901. The century has seen people of Jewish origin win
more than twenty-percent of the prizes given--while we number less than
one-quarter of one-percent of the world's population.
It is also a matter of interest that many of our Nobel Laureates were
born elsewhere than America and have been represented in every category
within which the awards are presented. Honorees such as:
NADINE GORDIMER
(1923-) b. Springs, Transvaal, South Africa
Novelist She published her first work at age
fifteen and has since produced ten novels and more
than 200 short stories. Her writings movingly
lashed out against the cruelties of apartheid and
.decried racial segregation for what it was--
degrading to her native country and to other
African states. Through the experiences of her
characters, Gordimer explored clearly and without sentimentality how
officially-imposed prejudice and repression devastated lives and offended
the basic principles of social justice. She was the first woman in a
generation to win a Nobel Prize for Literature (1991), and has had several
of her books banned by the former South African government. While in
mid-career, Gordimer also taught and lectured at colleges in the U.S. and
supported political movements to rescind her nation's racist policies.
Among her best known and most poignant works were A Guest of Honour
(1970), The Conservationist (1974), Burger's Daughter (1979) and A Sport
of Nature (1987).
KONRAD BLOCH, Ph.D.
(1912-) b. Neisse, Germany
Biochemist
Cholesterol has become a health topic of concern
that eclipses most others in popular and medical
discourse. Among its early and most prominent
researchers is a foreign born Ph.D. (emigrating to
the U.S. in 1936) who won a 1964 Nobel Prize in
Physiology or Medicine "for discoveries of the
mechanism of cholesterol and fatty acid metabo-
lism." Konrad Bloch escaped Nazism after earning a chemical engineering
degree in Germany and obtained a doctorate at Columbia University in
1938. Soon after, he launched studies of unsaturated fatty acid components
.which he continued through the 1950s as a professor of biochemistry at
Harvard. In hand with several collaborators, Bloch discovered how .
cholesterol is synthesized in the body and the relationship of its blood levels
to the formation of atherosclerosis--a breakthrough in understanding
cardiovascular disease. The former associate editor of the Journal of
Biological Chemistry was also a prolific writer with hundreds of scientific
papers dealing, as well, with the metabolism of proteins and amino acids.
GEORGE CHARLES de HEVESY, Ph.D.
(1885-1966) b. Budapest, Hungary Chemist
Within half a decade, the tireless researcher was
instrumental in bringing three important findings
to the world of science. In 1923, then a colleague
of Neils Bohr, he co-discovered a new chemical
element which he called hafnium. That same year,
while at the University of Freiburb in Germany,
he developed the first biological use of radioactive
tracers for which he was to earn a Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1949. And
by 1926, de Hevesy introduced X-ray fluorescence--a new system for
calculating the chemical composition of rocks, minerals and meteorites.
After a dramatic escape from wartime German oppression--aboard a fishing
boat to Sweden--the professor took refuge in Stockholm University's
Institute of Organic Chemistry. Here he continued biological research into
the effects of radiation, particularly as they relate to cancer and anemia.
Much honored internationally for his pioneering discoveries, de Hevesy also
received a prestigious Atoms for Peace Award in 1959.
- Saul Stadtmazier
Visit many more notable Jews at our website: www.dorledor.org
6/26
1998
18
COMMISSION FOR THE DISSEMINATION OF JEWISH HISTORY
Walter & Lea Field, Founders:Sponsors
Harold Berry & Irwin S. Field, Co-chairmen
Harriet F. Siden, Secretary
Study Taking
Shape
Hillel proceeds with its
long-range planning process.
113
JULIE WIENER
Staff Writer
illel Day School needs to
overhaul its board and
administrative structures,
develop a clearer mission
statement, evaluate its curriculum and
take steps to ensure its future fiscal
viability
According to a recent letter sent to
Hillel parents, these are some of the pre-
liminary findings of a long-range plan-
ning process initiated this spring by the
40-year-old Conservative day school.
Hillel formed a long-range plan-
ning steering committee that hired
Washington DC-based consultant
William Weary to help evaluate a
range of issues. Some of the issues are
use of volunteers, fund-raising, com-
munity outreach, public relations, and
communication among parents,
administrators and teachers.
, Two teachers are on the 13-person
steering committee, chaired by board
members Lisa Weiner and Rich
Grossman.
According to a recent letter to par-
ents drafted by Weiner and Grossman,
Weary reviewed a "foot-high stack" of
documents and spent three days inter-
viewing faculty, administration, board
members, students, parents, alumni
and community members to gain
familiarity with all aspects of Hillel
life. He facilitated the first of three
board and administration retreats and
will lead a faculty retreat and a corn-
munity retreat this fall.
The process will conclude with
Weary writing the first draft of a long-
range plan, which the steering com-
mittee will revise and present to
Hillel's board for approval and imple-
mentation.
Weiner's and Grossman's letter said
the process has exposed Hillel's
strengths as well as its challenges.
Among the school's strengths are per-
petuating Jewish values, forging strong
friendships among students and par-
ents and teaching religious and ritual
skills, they told parents.
The letter did not address teacher
I
morale, but Weiner and Grossman
told The Jewish News that Weary inter-
viewed at least 20 teachers, and that
faculty will have further opportunity
to give feedback at the fall retreat.
The Hillel Day School Teachers'
Association, an affiliate of the
Michigan Federation of Teachers, stat-
ed its interest in an independent
review of the school in January, a week4
after the board, alleging a history of
misconduct, voted to dismiss longtime
teacher Shula Fleischer.
The teachers' association briefly
considered hiring its own consultant
independent of Hillel's board, but
appears to have dropped that plan.
Hillel Day School Teachers'
Association President Malka Littman
could not be reached to comment on 1
the current long-range planning
process.
Fleischer, former president of the
teachers' association, is contesting her
dismissal through an arbitration
process, which concluded hearings on
June 10. A binding decision is expect-
ed by the end of summer, said the
arbitrator, Erwin Ellmann.
Hillel President Steven Margolin
4
declined to say how much the school
is spending for the long-range plan-
ning process. Weary said he has con-
sulted for almost 200 institutions,
including a number of Conservative
day schools. ❑
Clarification
Rick Goren, not "Oren," as
noted in the June 19 edition, is
the director.of development at
Tamarack Camps.
Albert Ben Drihen was pictured
on page 78 of the June 19 edition.
He is deputy mayor of Migdal
FlaEmek.
Partnership 2000 was launched by
the Jewish Agency for Israel's
Department of Rural and Urban
Development, not the United
Jewish Appeal as noted in the
June 19 edition.
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