The Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture ended its meeting here this afternoon after ear-marking $1,807,912 for grants and allocations in fiscal 1973-74 and electing officers. The meeting decided to make a special IL 100, 000 grant for a Tel Aviv memorial to the victims of the Nazi holocaust.
Dr. Arnulf M. Pins, executive director of the Memorial Foundation, submitted reports relating to past allocations. He noted that the purposes of the Foundation are to stimulate Jewish culture, research and publications in areas of Jewish scholarship and to commemorate and document the period of the Jewish catastrophe in Nazi Europe.
He reported that 508 doctoral students in Jewish studies had received a total of $800,000 in grants from the Foundation between 1965 when the Foundation was established and the end of 1972. He said the subjects covered by their studies included Jewish history; Hebrew letters; Bible; philosophy; linguistics; rabbinic; and Yiddish language and literature. Dr. Pins reported that the recipients’ average age was 35 and that two fifths of them were at Israeli universities and the rest in the United States and elsewhere.
Some of the projects that benefited from Foundation allocations included an anthology of Hasidic melodies; a critical edition of Samuel Ibn-Tibbon’s Commentary on Ecclesiastes; a new dictionary of rabbinic literature; and a history of Jews in the Ukraine.
Dr. Nahum Goldmann, president of the Memorial Foundation, noted in his closing address that the Foundation must respond to new needs arising from the changes that have taken place in the Jewish world since its inception in 1965. He announced an executive decision setting the final date for applications for grants on June 30, effective in 1974 so that universities and other institutions of higher learning can be informed earlier of the results of their applications.
Dr. Goldmann was re-elected president. Elected vice-presidents were Dr, Joseph J. Schwartz, Dr. Solomon Gaon and Louis A. Pincus.
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