(J. T. A. Mail Service)
Prof. E. A. Speiser, of the University of Pennsylvania, who has just completed his course of lectures on the Introduction to comparative Philology, gave his opinion of the work which is being accomplished at the Hebrew University in an interview with the representative of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
“The lectures have been to me a source of real and undisguised pleasure. The students showed for the most part an interest in the subject which was a great inspiration to the lecturer.
“It would be difficult to find elsewhere in the world a group of twenty young men and women who. without previous work in a similar field. could follow a course of by no means easy lectures with equal intelligence and understanding. Their thirst for knowledge is both laudable and encouraging. Under judicious guidance and with an adequate distribution and absorption of their energies, the local students should before long be the equals of the best in the long established universities off Europe and America. It is this fine human material that to my thinking. will play the principal part in the speedy and satisfactory development of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.”
New gifts to the Hebrew University Library were announced. A collection of socialistic pamphlets (880 in German and 200 in Russian). dating from the end of the nineteenth century were sent by Jacob Raskin. Almost all Russian and German socialist leaders have contributed towards this collection. Among the pamphlets are included many first prints.
Abraham Almaliach presented to the Library three letters. one a letter which the Rabbis of Tunis sent in the year 1863 to the Alliance Israelite. describing the suffering of the Jews in Tunis and appealing for assistance. The two other letters were written by the Ashkenazic Rabbis in Hebron in 1827. These deal with the sending of delegates of the Hebron community to the Diaspora.
Charles L. Richards. vice-president of the American Association of Museums presented to the Library all his writings on the relationship of art to industry and craft. Samuel Guy Inman. Secretary of the Committee on Cooperation in Latin-America presented the Library with his writings dealing with American problems. Reinhold Cohn presented the Library with a collection of books on Sociology and Chemistry.
Prof. D. Heller. Budapest. sent to the Library, a collection of works of Hungarian Jewish authors. Emmanuel Hertz of New York presented to the Library the valuable work Poli Synopsis Criticorum Scripturae London 1671, in five volumes.
Through the intervention of Ignacio Baner. of Madrid. the Library has become a member of the Spanish Bibliophiles and has received all their publications.
Joseph Fischer, Copenhagen, sent to the Library a portrait and two manuscripts of the well-known Danish Jewish writer Aron Goldschmidt.
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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.
