Jerusalem Rotary Club – Founders and Presidents by Past President Benad Avital

Jerusalem Rotary Club – Founders and Presidents

Historical notes by P/P Benad Avital (Source: Jerusalem Rotary Club Bulletin April 9, 2008 from talk given at the April 2, 2008 Club meeting.)

President Shlomo, Fellow Rotarians;

Nine months from now, we shall begin to celebrate a birthday, a very special
birthday. It is our collective 80th anniversary as a special club; the Rotary Club
of Jerusalem. We are a special club because we are the first; the first Rotary
club established in Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel; the first club in what we
now call District 2490; and may I say, with a little poetic license, that we are the
Mother of All Clubs – in our District, of course.

Our President believes, and I agree with him, that we should know more about
those who came before us; before we became Members of this club; before
some of us were even born.

Accordingly, I agreed to take up 2 or 3 minutes occasionally, to tell you just a
little about some of the Past Presidents; about who they were, so that we might
better understand the threads that held this club together. And I shall start us
off right now, by going right back to January 1929, to the first official meeting
of the 21 men who signed up as Charter Members of the Rotary Club of Jerusalem.
The Rotary Club of Jerusalem was founded on January 22nd 1929, with 21 Charter
Members; and was accepted by Rotary International on March 11th.

Among the Jewish charter members were Hugo Bergman and Norman
Bentwich. Hugo Bergman was born in Germany and was Chief Librarian of the
Hebrew University/National Library and subsequently the University’s first Rector.
Norman de Mattos Bentwich was born in England, in 1883. His father, Herbert,
was a lawyer; the editor of Law Journal; and also the leader of Hovevei Zion and
the Zionist movement in Britain, before settling in Palestine in 1929. Norman
Bentwich was the first Attorney-General in Mandated Palestine, serving in that
capacity from 1920-31. For the next 20 years he was Professor of International
Relations at Hebrew University and, from 1933-36, Director of the League of Nations
Commission for Jewish Refugees from Germany. His wife, Helen, was
chairman of L.C.C. (London County Council) in the mid-1950s. Their daughter
Thelma, a prominent cellist, married David Yellin’s son, Eliezer. Norman’s
brother, Joseph, was Principal of Reali High School in Haifa, from 1948-55.
With Charter Members like Norman Bentwich and Hugo Bergman, the Jerusalem
Rotary Club was off to a good start!


The first four presidents were British; the fifth a distinguished Arab from a
prominent family, D.G. Salameh. The member’s choice for the 6th President was
Leon Roth, 38 years old; a British-born philosophy Professor at Hebrew University.
Leon Roth was the sixth President of the Jerusalem Rotary Club; and the first
Jew to be so honoured. Professor Leon Roth served as club president again in
1949-50: the 20th President of the Rotary Club of Jerusalem. Leon Roth had a
younger brother, Professor Cecil Roth, a most distinguished Historian, specializing
in Jewish History, who was Editor-in-Chief of the Encyclopaedia Judaica.