Two thousand students and guests gathered last night to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Hebrew University’s Center for Pre-Academic Studies and the opening of the new academic year. The occasion brought together Premier Golda Meir and former Premier David Ben-Gurion. The 86-year-old patriarch, who did not speak, paved the way for the center when, as Premier and Defense Minister, he agreed in 1963 that it deserved the government’s support.
Mrs. Meir focussed on the pre-academic center and its activities in uplifting the underprivileged by training them to reach educational levels qualifying them for college. “Just as an economy should be Judged not by the few rich men that it might produce, so the culture of a country ought not to be judged by the educational elite that it produces,” Mrs. Meir said. Rather, she added, a country’s culture should be Judged by how well education was penetrating the masses, and the center is an important part of that effort.
Sam Rothberg, chairman of the Hebrew University’s Board of Governors and an architect of the center, announced the distribution of 1200 scholarships to students of the center.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
