Plans for official honors to be paid the great Jewish philosopher Maimonides on the occasion of his 800th birthday celebration by this, his native city, include several novel features.
It has been agreed by the committee sponsoring the celebrations that the only commemoration in #tone is to consist of a slab to be #rected in the synagogue of which the Rambam was spiritual leader. A psalm of the Bible is to be engraved in the slab.
Other means by which the memory of the Rambam is to be honored will include the following:
The new teachers’ seminary will be named the Maimonides Seminary.
A path in the municipal Kings’ Park, running near the walls of the synagogue, will hereafter be known as the Maimonides path.
In this park admirers of the Jewish medical scientist and sage will plant in his honor the four trees of the Bible: the vine, the olive, the fig and the pomegranate.
A society of Friends of the Sephardim is to be established for the propagation of Sephardic culture.
At a meeting of the organizing committee it was decided that it would act separately from the so-called central committee for the festivals which is functioning in Madrid. The central committee has been asked to refrain from organizing any festival acts in Madrid or Cordoba during the last week of March, since this week is to be reserved for the official committee.
To round out the program, Dr. Maranon, a leading member of the medical profession in Spain, has been invited to lecture on Maimonides as a doctor. Other lecturers will include Jose Ortega y Gasset, director of the School for Arabian Studies at Granada, and Emilio Garcia Gomez, a specialist in Maimonides lore.
It is planned to form a commission, comprising the governor, the mayor and a representative of the tourist bureau, to deal with the lodging of visitors during the festivals. The same commission will also develop a program for the popular festivals.
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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.
