With more than a hundred students registered for the elementary and advanced Hebrew courses added to the curriculum of two high schools here, Henry J. Gerling, Superintendent of Instruction in the St. Louis schools, expressed gratification today that Hebrew is taught in the schools as an accredited subject, and declared the experiment a success.
In a message to Dr. David Reiss, under whose supervision the Hebrew courses will be given, Mr. Gerling states that, what at the outset had the appearance of an experiment, already gives promise of a most encouraging success.
“The success of the courses is, for me, the consummation of an affectionate hope I have long cherished,” Mr. Gerling wrote. After expressing his appreciation of the spiritual values derived from the Hebrew teachers, he declared, “Thinking thus and reflecting also on the unique cultural riches that have come to us through Israel, I felt that the recommendation I made to the Board to place Hebrew in our curriculum constituted, on the one side, a privilege which I had feared might not be given me and, on the other, an avowal of our indebtedness for the legacy that was bequeathed us by Israel as a nation and as the mother of the Prophets through whom Jehovah chose to speak to the world.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
