Jewish Activities in the Metropolitan Area

“Jewish life in Palestine is a lighthouse to the whole of Jewry,” Dr. Israel Goldstein declared yesterday afternoon at a luncheon given by the Palestine Lighthouse Association at the Waldorf-Astoria to celebrate completion in Palestine of a new shelter for the blind.

Describing the Palestine Lighthouse as a model institution of its kind, he saw in its recently erected building “a monument to the energy of the organization working for that cause here in New York.”

The only institution for the blind in Palestine, and one of three for Jews in the entire world, Dr. Goldstein said that it “conducts its work both with respect to vocational training as well as medical care, in a way comparable to the work of the best institutions in America.” While in Palestine recently, Dr. Goldstein had occasion to visit the new shelter.

“Every institution in Palestine which meets a need,” Dr. Goldstein declared, “and does its work with efficiency contributes toward the up building of the Jewish homeland. Jewish life in Palestine is a lighthouse to the whole of Jewry. From it are emanating rays of creative genius in art, literature, science, drama and music, whose influences are making them selves felt in Jewish life throughout the Diaspora.

“Only in Palestine, in a congenial characteristic Jewish environment, and under the inspiration of an historic locale, can the Jew have a chance to be his own best self and thus be a ‘light unto the nations.'”

More than 1,000 women attended the function, over which Mrs. Samuel D. Friedman, president of the Lighthouse, presided. Among the guests of honor were Dr. David de Sola Pool, Mrs. Stephen S. Wise, Mrs. Rebekah Kohut, Aldermanic President Bernard S. Deutsch, Mrs. Richard Gottheil, Dr. H. Pereira Mendes, Dr. Nathan Ratnoff, Hon. Anna M. Kross and Mrs. Leblang Jasi. Entertainment was provided by Miss Helen Broderick, Mrs. Herbert Rosengarten, Charlotte Sternberg’s protegees, and the Russian Balalaika Orchestra.