Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page.

The Southern Israelite Page 9 Or. Cyrus idler's fCelcome Address To Einstein 11 men arc agreed that, in the dis- t past, the great gift of the Jewish pie to civilization was the Bible— ,,t collected literature of a thousand ars upon which much of the moral law and of the social order of the world rests. But it is unthinkable that the mental energy of a group with a cultural back ground of several thousand years should have grown sterile. Mankind and we ourselves have been much concerned as to the direction in which our par ticular abilities during these past two thousand years have been exerted. Some have indicated banking, trade and commerce; others medicine, law or music. But a careful analysis shows that the greatest ability of the Jews has been not in these fields, but in the rather abstruse discipline of mathe matics. During the Middle Ages, both as intermediaries and by original con tributions, our strength lay in mathe matics and astronomy. Steinschneider, the great hitsorian and bibliographer, listed 252 names of Jewish mathemati cians in that period. The Rabbis of Spain especially de voted themselves to mathematics and physics. Abraham Judaeus, called the Prince, of the twelfth century, wrote extensively on geometry and on the plan of the heavens. His books were translated into Latin and were used by all the students of his day. Levi ben Gcrshon, Gersonides, of Provence, was an astronomer who in vented an instrument which he called “Jacob’s Staff" in effect a quadrant to determine the Right Ascension of the sun and stars and the camera ob- scura is likewise ascribed to him. Crescas, who lived in the fourteenth century, was greatly concerned with the problems of space, vacuum and in finity. He foreshadowed a new con ception of the universe and his works were the logical forerunners of Spi noza. Another name which deserves to he recalled is that of Abraham Zacuto, who was teacher of astronomy at Sala manca and Astronomer Royal to King Lmanuel of Portugal in 1492. His tables were used by Columbus and the copy still exists with the autograph notes in the Columbina at Seville. Coming down to almost our own day is the imposing figure of James Joseph Sylvester, denied his B.A. at Cambridge because he declined to subscribe to the Thirty-nine Articles, yet successively teacher and professor at the Univer sity of Virginia, at Woolwich, Johns Hopkins, ending his career at Oxford and memorialized for his important con tributions to higher mathematics by a medal of the Royal Society of London. I have made this brief recital not for the purpose of inflicting an historical sketch, but rather to indicate that our distinguished guest is not an isolated phenomenon among the Jewish people, but rather the flowering of many cen- tmies of endeavor. It is a source of pride to all Ameri cans that under the clear skies of Cali fornia with the aid of the finest as tronomical and physical apparatus ever devised, surroundd by his own fellow- members of the American Philosophical Society, men of the rank of Michelson, Milliken, Hale, Campbell, St. John and Miller, these formulae and theories have been painstakingly weighed and have not been found wanting. Truly in this restless and difficult world it was an awe-inspiring spectacle to watch great men sitting together con templating and endeavoring to solve the mysteries of the universe. And the leader among these was our guest whom we salute as the first intellect of our time—hut withal, so kindly and so human that we are not abashed in his presence. We dare proudly hail him as a companion who, for this night at least, puts aside the abstract prob lems of the cosmos, and coming down to earth joins us in an endeavor in behalf of a small country on the sur face of this small planet; a country precious by reason of association and hope to us all—the Holy Land, which we would restore to its ancient glory. Master of great thoughts for the whole world, w p e acclaim thee our brother in Zion’s cause. National Officers of American Palestine Campaign StPH L HT MAM Dr. Adler, Felix M. Warburg, L ? eut l 2 < ^ ) e [3J ) o r fc^he^ewisl^ Agency in^ooieration with the Keren Honorary Chairmen of the effort to raise $2,500,OUU i Ha T.° d and K h r°r h - tm ,u n Straus Jr Rabbi Abb. HUM Silver are the national chairmen. “ i "' Solomon Lowenstein is ...ocia.e trea.urer and Joaeph C. Hyman is the honorary secretary. ^^^_....