A pledge to help make Dropsie College for Hebrew and Cognate Learning into a center that will “serve as a storage house and source of Judaism” was voiced by the institution’s new president, Dr. Abraham I. Katsh, who was installed in his office at ceremonies conducted here today. Dr Katsh became the third president of Dropsie, a post previously held by the late Dr. Cyrus Adler and, until his retirement last year after a quarter of a century as president, by Dr. Abraham A. Neuman.
A colorful convocation was held at the University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania for the installation of Dr. Katsh, More than 125 representatives of universities, colleges and learned societies from all parts of the United States attended the ceremonies. Honorary degrees were conferred on Mrs. Golda Meir. former Foreign Minister of Israel; Pennsylvania Governor Raymond P. Shafer; James L. Michener, a world-renowned American author; and Dr. William F. Albright, professor of Semitic languages at Johns Hopkins University, an archaeologist known particularly for his explorations into the past of Palestine.
“Dropsie College,” said Dr. Katsh in his presidential address, “can become a center that will serve as a storage house and source of Judaism, of fresh intellectual Jewish content, that will help replenish and replace the declining generation of Jewish scholars in other parts of the world with an indigenous group of American Jewish intellectual leaders.”
“American universities and colleges,” Dr. Katsh noted, “have been displaying in recent years a growing interest in the teaching of various phases of Judaism. There is a dearth of professors at this time. This is an opportunity for Dropsie to become a center in order to prepare professors in Judaism for American institutions of higher learning.”
Another significant undertaking for Dropsie, he said, is the training of scholars for research in the Jewish field, in order “to rewrite and reinterpret Jewish history in the light of the two great episodes which have occurred in the last quarter of a century — the Nazi holocaust and the re-establishment of the State of Israel.”
Dr. Katsh, who received his doctorate of philosophy at Dropsie College in 1944, recently resigned his 33-year association with New York University, where he had been founder and curator of the Library of Judaica and Hebraic, He has also been director of the Summer Professorial Workshop in Israel, conducted in cooperation with the United States Office of Education. He is a prolific author and is known, among other achievements, for his microfilming of the Soviet Union’s vast Hebrew collection which includes many thousands of ancient Jewish documents from Russia and Eastern Europe.
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