Boys Town Jerusalem Feted

The need for Israel to develop as a Jewish State that combines the law of the Torah and modern technology was stressed last night at the 27th annual dinner of Boys Town Jerusalem. Dr. David W. Weiss, chairman of the department of immunology at the Lautenberg Center for General and Tumor Immunology at the Hebrew University, told the 1000 persons attending the dinner at the Americana Hotel that this is what Boys Town Jerusalem accomplishes since it provides both religious and secular studies as well as specialized scientific and technological training.

Dr. Weiss, whose son Hillel recently graduated from the industrial design center at Boys Town Jerusalem, said the Jewish people’s only legitimate claim to Israel was the Torah. He criticized those who ignore the Torah as having no value in modern life and at the same time he criticized Torah scholars who lock themselves away in yeshivot excluding themselves from the modern world.

Stephen Shalom; general dinner chairman, explained that Boys Town Jerusalem was created to educate the poor and make them useful contributing members of Israeli society. He noted that two-thirds of the students are Sephardim.

Boys Town Jerusalem, which conducted its first classes in a refugee camp for a handful of students, now is located on a modern campus in the Bayit Vegan suburb of Jerusalem. The school has some 1200 students, ages 12-20, enrolled in junior and senior high school as well as a College of Applied Engineering and a Technical Teachers College. There are plans to expand the facility to take in 2000 students by 1980.

Ira Guilden, president of the American Friends of Boys Town Jerusalem, presented a sculpture by the artist, Chaim Gross, to Meshulam Riklis, chairman of the Rapid-American Corporation, who was the guest of honor at the dinner. Among those present were Rabbi Alexander S. Linchner, dean of Boys Town Jerusalem, who along with Guilden and Shalom’s father, the late Isaac Shalom, helped found the school.