World Association for Hebrew Studies Hold 2-1/2-day Conference

The third European Conference of the Brith Ivrith Olamith (World Association for Hebrew Studies) closed here last Wednesday night after two-and-a-half days of sessions attended by some 70 scholars from Western and Eastern countries and Israel. The conference decided to convene again in two years in Warsaw.

One of the highlights of the gathering was the presentation to Prof. Witold Tiloch, professor of Hebrew at Warsaw University and two of his aides who discussed the development of modern Hebrew studies at the university. Warsaw University is the only institution of higher learning in Poland where modern Hebrew is taught and has been for the past 15 years, with the aid of material from Israel.

Prof. Aryeh Tartakower, president of the Brith Ivrith Olamith delivered the closing address in which he stressed the importance of modern Hebrew to the continued existence of the Jewish people in diaspora. Sam J. Goldsmith, of London, retired editor of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in Britain, urged that diaspora Jews should become bilingual with a fluent command of Hebrew as well as the language of their respective countries. The conference was attended by representatives of Jewish communities in Holland, Britain, France, West Germany, Austria, Italy, Belgium, Spain, Switzerland, Yugoslavia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Rumania. There were a number of non-Jews among the scholars, including Prof. Maas Boertien, Professor of past-Biblical literature at the University of Amsterdam, who was chairman of the organizing committee.

APPEAL ON BEHALF OF BEGUN

Efrath Naor, of Jerusalem, currently living in Milan, appealed to the conference and other Jewish organizations abroad to act on behalf of the Soviet Jewish Hebraist Iosif Begun, who is serving a long prison sentence in Siberia. She urged that an action committee be established to secure his release and permission for him to emigrate to Israel to join his wife and children.

Leon Yudkin, of Manchester, spoke about the knowledge of and interest in Hebrew among Jews in the USSR where he visited last summer. He said that outside of Moscow knowledge of Hebrew is very sparse and there is little opportunity to study it. He said he was asked by Soviet Jews to request Jews abroad to urge the Soviet authorities to recognize Hebrew as a language just as the languages of other minorities in the Soviet Union are recognized.

The Brith Ivrith Olamith and the cultural department of the World Jewish Congress co-sponsored the conference. Greetings were extended to Alexander Rosenfeld, one of the founding members of the Brith Ivrith Olamith in Berlin in 1931 together with Haim Nachman Bialik.