Former Senator Herbert H. Lehman announced tonight at a dinner in honor of Adlai Stevenson, sponsored by the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, that the guests had established a $1,500,000 Stevenson Foundation as an adjunct of the Lehman Institute of Ethics of the Seminary.
Mr. Stevenson, United States Ambassador to the United Nations, was told that the Foundation was launched in response to his frequently mentioned desire to see a nongovernmental undertaking which would search for enduring values to overcome frictions among nations.
Each of the guests contributed a $25,000 scholarship to the Foundation to enable students grounded in Jewish ethical traditions at the Seminary’s rabbinical school and at the Lehman Institute to learn how to apply their research to contemporary issues.
Senator Lehman, who is chairman of the Board of Overseers of the Seminary, said the students would use the scholarships to continue their studies not only in the wisdom of Jewish tradition but also in the way in which great Jewish statesmen applied this wisdom to human affairs in earlier ages. He told the guests that opportunities would be created for scholarship winners to meet with peers in other traditions and that the Foundation would invite statesmen and scholars from other countries to live with the students for short periods.
The Foundation will seek to find positions in which graduates would use their special knowledge in applying the values of different cultures to the solution of current problems, including teaching posts in universities throughout the world and special counseling posts in government and international organizations, Mr, Lehman said.
Mr. Stevenson told the dinner guests that each country inevitably supports its national interest through an ethical rationalization but that human progress could be achieved only if some way was found to identify the ethical ideas which are the basis for long range goals helpful to all men. He called for the development of an international program under non-governmental auspices to search for enduring values transcending the day-to-day frictions besetting relations among nations.
Dr. Louis Finkelstein, Chancellor of the Seminary, said that because Jews have been forced by circumstances, to live among various peoples and to combine their traditions with those of others, they have had experience in the application of the teachings of Jewish tradition to a variety of contemporary problems. Samuel H. Daroff of Philadelphia served as chairman for the dinner. Alan M. Stroock, chairman of the Seminary board of directors, also spoke.
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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.
