“Hebrew is indispensable as a means of giving the Jew, wherever he resides, a feeling of continuity with the Jewish past and of unity with the entire Jewish people, “Dr. Mordecai Kaplan, founder of the Reconstructionist movement, declared here at the annual dinner of Hadoar, the only Hebrew weekly in the United States.
Mrs. Rose Halprin, acting head of the Jewish Agency in the United States, declared that a knowledge of Hebrew was important for the survival of the Jews as a people. Now that Hebrew has become a living tongue in Israel. “Jews outside Israel have the greatest opportunity in many centuries to make Hebrew their second language,” Mrs. Halprin said. She noted that the Zionist movement, “appreciating the survivalist importance of Hebrew, has made the renascence, study and acquisition of Hebrew one of its cardinal objectives.”
Other speakers included Prof. Israel Eros, chairman of the Hebrew Department of Hunter College, and Dr. Simon Federbush, head of the education department of the World Jewish Congress. All speakers lauded the role of Hadoar in spreading a knowledge of Hebrew in the American Jewish community.
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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.
