Leaders of Government and labor, were among the 2,000 personalities gathered at Town Hall here today to pay homage to the memory of the late Abraham Cahan, famous as one of the founders of the Jewish Daily Forward, who was born 100 years ago.
Among the prominent personalities who sent messages honoring Mr. Cahan’s memory on the occasion of the centenary of his birth were President Eisenhower, President-elect John F. Kennedy, Israel’s President Izhak Ben-Zvi and Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, New York’s Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller, and Abraham A. Ribicoff, Governor of Connecticut who has been designated as Secretary of Health. Education and Welfare in the next Washington Administration.
Speakers included Mayor Robert F. Wagner, David Dubinsky, president of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union; Jacob Potofsky, president of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America: Adolph Held, president of the Forward Association; Alexander Kahn, general manager of the Forward; Nathan Chanin, general secretary of the Workmen’s Circle; and Hillel Rogoff, editor of The Forward, who succeeded Mr. Cahan when the latter died in 1951.
Mr. Cahan was praised as an editor; as an author who wrote prolifically in English as well as in Yiddish; and as one of the leading figures who helped the Americanization of many Jews who came to the United States during the great flow of mass immigration in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. His pioneering efforts in social reform were praised in many of the messages.
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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.
