The B’nai B’rith Hillel Foundation marked its 40th anniversary here today with an academic convocation at Harvard University. It commemorated the event by presenting a Hillel Academic Award to Professor Harry A. Wolfs on, 75-year-old Harvard scholar, who held the first academic chair established in the United States for Judaic studies.
An audience of 600 gathered in Paine Music Hall, on the Harvard campus, to pay tribute to Dr. Wolfson, and to laud the growth and activities of the Hillel movement. It included prominent Jewish educators and scholars from universities throughout the country.
Dr. Wolfson, who is Emeritus Nathan Littauer Professor of Hebrew Literature and Philosophy at Harvard, a chair created for him in 1925, was cited for “a half-century of monumental scholarship in Jewish thought and letters.” Among those who praised the Lithuanian-born educator was President Kennedy.
In a message read at the convocation, Mr. Kennedy, who is a member of the Board of Overseers at Harvard, spoke of Dr. Wolfson’s “extraordinary personal influence, not only on your students, but on all those engaged in reflective learning and research.”
“You have broadened the horizons of human thought and have given an example of personal devotion and humility for which we are all grateful, ” the President declared. “The award which you are receiving from the Hillel Foundation is but a symbol of the respect we all share for your accomplishments,” the President said.
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The Hillel movement was first established in 1923, at the University of Illinois. B’nai B’rith sponsorship began two years later, with an annual budget of less than $12,000. Since then, the program has expanded to 205 colleges and universities in the United States, and 39 others in Canada, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Israel, South Africa and Australia. The 1963 operating budget, established by B’nai B’rith for the Hillel program is almost $2,200,000.
Label A. Katz, president of B’nai B’rith, in one of the convocation addresses, attributed in large measure to the Hillel program “the dramatic reversal in Jewish attitudes” that has transpired on the college campus in the past generation.
The presentation to Dr. Wolfson was made by Dr. Abram L. Sachar, president of Brandeis University, and honorary chairman of the Hillel Foundations. Other convocation participants were: Dr. William Haber, who retires tomorrow after eight years as chairman of the Hillel Commission; Dr. Milton R. Konvitz, of Cornell University; Dr. Louis Gottschalk, of the University of Chicago; Dr. Franklin Ford, dean of Harvard’s faculty of arts and sciences; and Mrs. Moe Kudler, president of B’nai B’rith Women.
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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.
