A Chair in American Jewish Life and Institutions in memory of the late Rabbi Stephen S. Wise will be established at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, it was announced today at a luncheon of the American Friends of the Hebrew University. Daniel G. Ross, leader of the group, is chairman of a committee which is raising $150,000 for the establishment of the chair.
The program to establish the Stephen S. Wise Chair was lauded at the luncheon by Dr. Nahum Goldmann, president of the World Zionist Organization and of the World Jewish Congress. “Nobody better deserves a Chair in his name at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem than Stephen S. Wise–one of the greatest and most unforgettable Jewish leaders of our generation,” he said. “His devotion to Israel was unlimited. The foundation of his concept of Jewish problems was his conviction that the basis of Jewish existence and survival is in the spiritual and moral values of Judaism. As the Hebrew University symbolizes this concept in a more spectacular and effective way than perhaps any other institution in Israel, we discharge a moral obligation both to the University and to the memory of Stephen S. Wise by establishing this Chair in his name.”
Other speakers at the luncheon included Dr. Wise’s daughter, Judge Justine Wise Polier, Prof. Moshe Davis, head of the Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University, and Lionel R. Bauman, president of the American Friends of the Hebrew University. The purpose of the Chair was defined by Prof. Davis who stressed that it will provide accurate knowledge of American Jewry in its totality at the Hebrew University’s Institute of Contemporary Jewry and to the world of scholarship.
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