Louis Lipsky, veteran Zionist leader, was presented with the 1962 Seminary Award of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America at ceremonies last night which were held in connection with the ninth annual Chaim Weizmann lecture of the Seminary Israel Institute at the Seminary.
The award was accepted for the Zionist leader by his son, Eleazar Lipsky. The award was given to Mr. Lipsky for distinguished service to the world community of Judaism. Eleazar Lipsky read the acceptance reply in his father’s absence. The veteran Zionist leader said he particularly wanted to pay tribute to Dr. Solomon Schechter, founder of the Seminary, whom he described as a friend who had been deeply devoted to the Zionist cause.
Mr. Lipsky paid tribute to Dr. Weizmann, Israel’s first President, as one under whom “the grand tradition of Zionist leadership was restored.” “Chaim Weizmann was the builder of the Jewish Homeland, the man who laid the foundations of all the institutions which were to make statehood possible,” Mr. Lipsky added. “The dream of his youth–a Jewish State, as the organic creation of a dedicated Jewish people–was being fulfilled in his own age. He had never really expected that to happen.”
Mrs. Rose Halprin, chairman of the American section of the Jewish Agency, paid tribute to Mr. Lipsky, declaring she did not agree with the view that he had sacrificed a promising literary career to devote himself to the Zionist cause. She said that although Mr. Lipsky might have missed writing a few books, history would write them for him in his name and achievements as a Zionist leader.
Delivering the Chaim Weizmann lecture, Ambassador Avraham Harman told the 200 guests that throughout his Zionist career, Dr. Weizmann had believed that a people had to prepare itself for independence and that a number of steps had to be traveled on the long road to national independence.
The Israeli envoy said that Dr. Weizmann had noted frequently, in the few years that remained to him after the rebirth of Israel, that the British Mandatory regime had left the Jews in Palestine with “organized chaos” but that the Jews were able to start operating a state machinery almost from scratch because they had prepared the instruments of statehood long before.
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