Philip Seman of Chicago was elected president of the National Conference of Jewish Social Service at the closing session here today. He succeeds the late Boris D. Bogen of Cincinnati who died in office last year. Mr. Seman is the general director of the Jewish People’s Institute of Chicago and has for several years been a member of the advisory board of the Training School for Jewish Social Work.
Other officers elected included Dudley Sicher, Mary Boretz and Hyman Kaplan, vice-presidents, George W. Rabinoff of New York, secretary, and Ferdinand S. Bach of St. Louis, treasurer. The Conference’s executive committee recommended that next year’s meeting be held in Minneapolis during the conference week of the National Conference of Social Work with which the Jewish Conference is affiliated.
Homes for the aged should be affiliated with medical centers so that the departments of the hospital might be freely available for the old folks, Dr. E. M. Bluestone, director of the Montefiore Hospital for Chronic Diseases in New York, the largest non-municipal institution of its kind in the world, told welfare workers attending the sessions of the National Conference of Jewish Social Service.
Dr. Bluestone questioned the tradition which sets homes for the aged apart as independent institutions, pointing out that medical treatment is so much a part of the program of caring for the aged that only by using the most modern facilities of medicine can the inmates be expected to have their physical welfare given proper attention. He called attention to the tendency of institutions for the aged to plan for the building of a hospital department or annex so that the aged may receive what is considered adequate attention and added that this program of the small special hospital was inadequate along side of the plan which would make the institution one of the related groups for the medical care of all ages.
QUESTIONING TRADITION NOT POPULAR
“Questioning tradition,” Dr. Bluestone said, “is not often a popular undertaking, but the task of supinely accepting without regard to their logical or humanitatian relationships the standards laid down by previous generations working under different social conditions is too great for the social worker who is intent on securing for his wards the full benefits of modern social service. We could begin by exclaiming against the thoughtlessness and inaction of communities apparently willing to accept for the aged dependent on their bounty standards of medical service that are out of date in the highly organized society whose vaunted objective is the scientific care of all those individuals who belong to the dependent class.”
Fred M. Stein, president of the Montefiore Hospital for Chronic Diseases, presided at the session addressed by Dr. Bluestone. Among those who participated in the discussion were Isidore Greenspan, Superintendent of the Hebrew Home and Hospital for the Aged, Brooklyn, and Sigmund Feinblatt, Superintendent of the Hebrew Home for the Aged and Infirm, Baltimore.
PLACE OF INSTITUTION IN CHILD CARE
At a morning session, Elias Trotskey, Superintendent of the Marks Nathan Jewish Orphan Home, Chicago, discussed the place of the institution in the field of child care. Harry L. Lurie, Superintendent of the Jewish Social Service Bureau, Chicago, president at the session where Morris Klynn of the Cleveland Jewish Social Service Bureau read a paper on the presentation of case history. Maurice Taylor spoke on investigation of applicants to homes for the aged and the discussion was led by Mrs. William C. Lewi, of the Home for Aged and Infirm Hebrews, New York, and Frances Taussig, executive director of the Jewish Social Service Association, New York.
JOINT FUND-RAISING PROPOSED
The National Appeals Information Service, also in session here, offered the services of its executive committee to the national agencies in the formation of a constitution to serve as the basis for a council of national Jewish agencies. Representatives of various national agencies have been meeting together for the purpose of considering an experiment in joint fund-raising in a limited territory. The result of this limited effort is intended to serve as a guide in any proposed extension of joint fund-raising.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
