The Rev. John Haynes Holmes, of the Community Church in New York, has accepted the invitation of Nathan Straus to dedicate the Nathan and Linda Straus Health Center in Jerusalem. Dr. and Mrs. Holmes will sail on January 7. The dedication will be held on January 31, Mr. Straus’s eighty-first birthday.
The center is the gift of Mr. Straus to the Hadassah, Women’s Zionist organization. Mr. Straus journeyed to Palestine two years ago to lay the cornerstone for the building.
The Community Church News, official monthly publication of the church, speaking of Mr. Straus’s selection of Dr. Holmes, writes:
Mr. Holmes was selected by Mr. Straus for the mission of dedication largely because of the former’s three sermons on ‘Judaism and Christianity,’ given in the Community Church in the winter of 1928. After hearing these sermons, Mr. Straus felt that Mr. Holmes, of all liberal ministers, could best strike the universal note of brotherhood and peace consonant with the occasion, since the center is to be not merely a Zionist center, but is planned to meet the needs of all people in Palestine-Jews, Syrians, Turks, Armenians and Greeks alike.
“He is therefore sending Mr. and Mrs. Holmes to Palestine and in addition, has given to the Community Church a gift large enough to cover the services of a supply pastor during Mr. Holmes’s absence.”
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