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See
if you can find the hidden children on Jewish-American Hall of Fame
Medals
The Talmud teaches that “The world is kept alive
by the breath of children.” And so it is not surprising
that children have appeared on many Jewish-American Hall of Fame
medals.
Emma Lazarus (1849-1887)
Many children came to the United States as immigrants,
as immortalized in the poem “The New Colossus,” dedicated
to the Statue of Liberty:
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teaming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me.
I lift my lamp besides the golden door.
This was written by New Yorker Emma Lazarus when she was 34 years
old. Unfortunately she did not live long enough to see her poem
attached to the Statue of Liberty in 1903, since Emma Lazarus
died in 1887 at the age of 38.
How many
children are on the Emma Lazarus medal?
Point your mouse here to see them.
Henrietta
Szold (1860-1945)
Henrietta
Szold was born in Baltimore, Maryland. Following her first visit
to Palestine, she formed Hadassah in 1912. Today, Hadassah’s
great hospitals in Jerusalem are world famous, treating over 25,000
patients including many children ... Jews and Arabs alike. In
1933, at the age of 73, Szold embarked on a major new project
... rescuing Jewish children from the oncoming Holocaust. Despite
obstacles in dealing with the British Mandate government in Palestine,
by 1948 her Youth Aliya program brought 30,000 children from troubled
Europe to Palestine. Even at the age of 81, Henrietta Szold accepted
a new challenge ... planning the Fund for Child and Youth Care.
How many
children are on the Henrietta Szold medal?
Point your mouse here to see them.
Houdini
(1874-1926)
Houdini was
born Ehrich Weiss on March 24, 1874 in Budapest, Hungary. His
family emigrated to the United States while he was an infant,
and his father became the first rabbi in Appleton, Wisconsin.
They later moved to Milwaukee, and eventually settled in New York.
At the age of 17, he changed his name to Harry Houdini and began
performing in medicine shows, circuses, theaters, etc. and eventually
became one of the most famous magicians in history. His medal
shows children celebrating Halloween because he died on October
31, 1926 after a fan unexpectedly punched Houdini in the stomach
(and ruptured his appendix).
How many
children are on the Houdini medal?
Point your mouse here to see them.
Dr. Bela Schick (1877-1967)
Young Bela
Schick quoted the Talmud: “The world is kept alive by the
breath of children,” to help persuade his father to allow
him to pursue continued education in pediatrics, rather than to
join the family grain merchant business in Graz, Austria. Schick
became assistant at the Children’s Clinic in Vienna, and
later he emigrated to the United States, and in 1923 became pediatrician-in-chief
at New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital. Schick made important
studies on scarlet fever, tuberculosis, and the nutrition for
infants ... but gained international renown for the Schick Test.
This test determined susceptibility to diphtheria, and eventually
led to the eradication of the childhood disease that attacked
100,000 American children in 1927, leading to about 10,000 deaths.
How many
children are on the Dr. Bela Schick medal?
Point your mouse here to see them.
Dr.
Jonas Salk (1914-1995)
Jonas Edward
Salk was born in New York City on October 28, 1914 and graduated
from the City College of New York. At the University of Pittsburgh,
Salk did research into poliomyelitis, where he developed a vaccine
prepared by inactivating the virus. Massive field trials conducted
by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis in 1954 confirmed
the effectiveness of the vaccine, which became the first weapon
against the polio scourge which attacked mainly children. In the
years immediately before mass inoculations with the Salk vaccine
began, there was an average of 25,000 cases a year in the United
States; in 1969 not a single death from polio was reported in
the nation, and the disease has virtually been eradicated worldwide.
How many
children are on the Dr. Jonas Salk medal?
Point your mouse here to see them.
Leonard
Bernstein (1918-1990)
Leonard Bernstein
was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts on August 25, 1918. When his
aunt sent her upright piano to the Bernstein home, 10 year old
Lenny looked at it, hit the key, cried “Ma, I want lessons,”
... and the rest is history. At the age of 25, Bernstein burst
on the national music scene when he substituted at the last minute
for an ailing conductor of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.
In addition to his conducting duties, Bernstein wrote classical
music and Broadway shows like Wonderful Town, Candide and West
Side Story. In 1958, he inaugurated the New York Philharmonic’s
award-winning “Young People’s Concerts.”
How many
children are on the Leonard Bernstein medal?
Point your mouse here to see them.
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