Hadassah Concludes Four-day Conference; Honors Dr. Kaplan

The seventh annual Henrietta Szold Award for Distinguished Humanitarian Service was conferred today upon Dr. Mordecai M. Kaplan, Professor of Philosophies of Religion at the Jewish Theological Seminary, at the closing session of the mid-winter conference of Hadassah. More than 1,500 Hadassah leaders attended the presentation ceremony in the grand ballroom of the Plaza Hotel.

The Henrietta Szold Award was instituted in 1949 to perpetuate the memory of the founder of Hadassah. Previous recipients of the award include former President Harry S. Truman, Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, Prof. Selman Waksman, Senator Herbert H. Lehman, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas and the late Monnett B. Davis, American Ambassador to Israel.

In accepting the award, Dr. Kaplan declared that “the Jewish people must become once again a community of faith as well as of fate, its way of life must find an outlet not in a new religion but in a more religious spirit which is viable in a modern climate of opinion.”

Mrs. Nathan D. Perlman, chairman of the Hadassah vocational education department, reported at the session that the organization’s vocational programs would have to be expanded in the coming year to equip youngsters entering Israel from North Africa with technical skills needed by the national economy. She added that in keeping with the national emphasis toward agricultural production in Israel, the Hadassah vocational educational program would place special stress on teaching modern farming methods as well as the use of modern agricultural equipment.

Twenty-four Hadassah leaders from different parts of the United States were scheduled to depart immediately following the conference via EI AI-Israel National Airlines for a three-week survey of economic, social and political conditions in Israel.