The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, Digital Edition > My Day
My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt

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LONDON—I was particularly thrilled when I was in Jerusalem recently to have two distinct honors conferred upon me. The first was at the Zionist university when I attended the dedication of the chair which the American friends of the people of Israel have named in my honor.

And to see the new campus of the university by moonlight is very beautiful, for it stands on a hill overlooking the city, but in the daylight it is even more impressive.

The hospital and the university on Mount Scopus have been lost to Israel and they are not even allowed to take the very great library which is a part of the old university and move it to the new one. But certainly both the university and the hospital are going to be even better equipped and more able to function well, and so the loss has some compensation.

The morning ceremonies at the school lasted less than an hour and were very pleasant, and afterward the head of the university took us to see some of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which are on exhibition. We also saw an exhibition, which is not yet opened, of articles taken from an exoavation that dates back to the days of Joshua, in the 15th Century B.C. Every day one is in that ancient and historic land one is reminded of the Bible.

From the university we went to the Youth Aliyah meeting and then to the Youth Center for Handicapped Children, which the Youth Aliyah has named in Mrs. Chaim Weizmann's honor. This center has two nice buildings, housing about 100 children, and they seemed to enjoy the ceremonies. Mrs. Weizman was pleased with what will undoubtedly be a new responsibility but also a new honor.

Early in the afternoon we met for lunch at President and Mrs. Yitzhak Ben-Ziv's house, where Charge d'Affaires and Mrs. Baxter also joined us.

After lunch we drove from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv, stopping on the way to see the Canadian hydrotherapy department which was donated to a hospital for post-polio treatment. This was my second honor.

Nothing could be finer than the equipment there, and I know that any child who has polio in Israel can get the best care in the world without leaving the country. He need merely to apply to the Canadian Women's Organization, which donated this entire department and named it in my honor. I felt very well remembered, and rather unexpectedly so, for I had forgotten all about their gift, which they had written to tell me about a long time ago after I attended their convention in Canada.

E.R.

(Copyright, 1959, by United Feature Syndicate, Inc.)


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About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, April 7, 1959

Roosevelt, Eleanor, 1884-1962
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Digital edition created by The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project The George Washington University 312 Academic Building 2100 Foxhall Road, NW Washington, DC 20007

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Transcription created from a photocopy of a UFS wire copy of a My Day column instance archived at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library.
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