Jews from Around the Globe Attend 50th Anniversary Observance of Hebrew University

Jews throughout the world were represented here today with all elements of the State of Israel in marking the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the Hebrew University. The major celebration was on Mount Scopus, original site of the university, restored for use by Israel in the Six-Day War after access had been blocked by Jordan for nearly 20 years.

Here, in the presence of President Zalman Shazar, Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, members of the Cabinet, the Supreme Court, the Chief Rabbis, the university faculty and the intellectual elite of the country, honorary degrees were conferred on Arthur J. Goldberg, former United States Supreme Court Justice and Ambassador to the United Nations, and Dr. Joseph J. Schwartz, executive vice-president of the Israel Bond Organization.

In other functions marking the anniversary, there was a symbolic laying of 16 cornerstones for projected new dormitories and the restoration of buildings on Mount Scopus unused since 1948, and a mass meeting of the university’s alumni, headed by Minister of Transport Moshe Carmel, class of 1953. In his address, Mr. Eshkol said the Hebrew University had faithfully reflected every phase of Jewry’s struggle for existence in this country. Its students, he said, had been in the forefront in the country’s defense. Ambassador Avraham Harman, president of the university, Prof. Nathan Rotenstreich, its rector, and Samuel Rothberg, chairman of the university Board of Governors, also spoke. Two octogenarians, Dr. Helen Kagan-Hauser, who founded the first hospital for children in Jerusalem in 1916, and Prof. Norman Bentwich, who was Attorney-General of Palestine in the British Mandate, as representatives of the generation that founded the university, handed over a scroll to two university undergraduates.

The citation conferring the honorary doctorate of law on Mr. Goldberg stressed that “he has all his life been indefatigable in the pursuit of Justice and mercy and has dedicated himself to the interests of the Jewish people.” The citation conferring the honorary doctorate of philosophy on Dr. Schwartz described him as an exemplary leader in world Jewish service and declared that “his career has been marked by devotion to his fellow-men and to the survival and the rehabilitation of the Jewish people in conditions of freedom and dignity.”

Mr. Goldberg said, as he had at UN debates, that the parties to the Middle East conflict “should be the parties to the peace and its making.” A message of congratulation was received from President Johnson, lauding “this magnificent institution” of learning and research.