The B’nai B’rith Hillel Foundation today broadened the scope of its campus activities by inaugurating an intensive national Hillel program for Jewish faculty members. The Hillel Commission, holding its 40th anniversary meeting on the Brandeis University campus here, adopted a proposal outlined by Professor Louis Gottschalk of the University of Chicago, to provide Jewish faculty members with “a continuing opportunity to examine the meaning and relevance of Jewish teachings, and to discuss issues of Jewish scholarly and ethical concern.”
The program would also be designed to encourage the faculty group “to explore, in common with intellectuals of all faiths, some of man’s ultimate questions, and help develop an understanding of our respective traditions on a level which would reflect the intellectual needs and standards of the academic community.”
Dr. Gottschalk, who today was elected successor to Dr. William Haber, of the University of Michigan, as chairman of the Hillel Commission, headed a Hillel faculty consultative committee that laid the groundwork for the new program. The committee, comprised of distinguished educators from a dozen campuses, met here yesterday to formulate policy recommendations for the new program. Dr. Haber, a member of the committee, said that exploratory work for the faculty program is being financed by a $20, 000 grant made to the B’nai B’rith Hillel Foundations by the Charles E. Merrill Trust.
KONVITZ DELIVERS CONVOCATION ADDRESS: KAHN NOTES NEED FOR MORE FUNDS
Dr. Milton Konvitz, in the principal convocation address yesterday, deplored the loss of “many of our best minds and talents” among Jewish professors and intellectuals who “have evaded or escaped from the Jewish community and have no ties or Jewish loyalties, ” But the existence of a small minority “who are deeply involved, deeply committed and well informed Jewish intellectuals, is a new phenomenon of the American campus,” he said.
The need for greater community support for Jewish education among college students was stressed in a report by Rabbi Benjamin M. Kahn, Hillel’s national director, While advocating more funds for every phase of Jewish education, he noted that the $65 million spent annually on the primary and secondary level averages about $100 per student, as compared to an average expenditure of $8 per student on the university level. The problem is further aggravated by heavy increases in Jewish college enrolments each year, Rabbi Kahn said. He reported the results of a Hillel study which show that there are now more than 275,000 Jewish students at American and Canadian colleges, representing about seven percent of total enrolments.
The study also showed that more than 200 North American colleges with Jewish enrolments of 25 or more students are without religious or cultural facilities for them.
The Hillel Commission reelected Joseph Paradise, of Rye, N. Y., as vice-chairman; Philip W. Lown of Lowell, Mass., treasurer; and Maurice Bisgyer, of Washington, as secretary. Dr, Haber, whose retirement as chairman, a post he held for eight years, was in conformance with B’nai B’rith’s policy of limiting the tenure of its highest officials, was elected an honorary chairman, sharing that distinction with Dr. Abram D Sachar, president of Brandeis.
Dr. Gottschalk, the new Hillel chairman, is 64, has been a member of the Hillel Commission since 1959, and had served a five-year span as president of the Chicago Board of Jewish Education. He has been a member of the University of Chicago faculty since 1927.
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