Message from President Will Feature Purim

A message from the President of the United States to the Jews of America will be read during the Feast of Esther–Purim–Radio Program over the NBC-WJZ network tonight at 10:30. It will be a call for a spiritual renaissance among the Jews of America and a strengthening of their support of the Jewish religious and educational institutions. The half hour coast-to-coast radio program has been arranged by the Religious Reconstruction Committee of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America.

Since President Roosevelt will be unable to deliver his message personally, he has requested that it be read by Congressman Sol Bloom, honorary secretary of the committee. Congressman Bloom will read the President’s message from Washington. Messages from Governor Lehman and Mayor LaGuardia will also be read. The speakers will be William Weiss, president of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America; Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein, chairman of the Religious Reconstruction Committee, Albert Wald, president of the Synagogue Council of American. and Mrs. N. Taylor Phillips, chairman of the Women’s Division of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations. The Rev. H. Pereira Mendes, honorary chairman of the committee and Rabbi Emeritus of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue will give the closing blessing. A group of cantors led by Jacob Rappaport, president of the Cantors’ Association of America, will sing Jewish Festival music.

The program will be broadcast at a time when Jews throughout America will be dining in their homes in the traditional observance of the Feast of Esther, or Purim. Purim celebrates Queen Esther’s deliverance of the Jews from massacre 2,300 years ago.

The honorary chairmen of the committee are Rabbi M. S. Margolies, Rev. H. Pereira Mendes, Rev. Dr. Bernard Drachman, Rev. Dr. Leo Jung, Rev. Dr. David de Sola Pool, Samuel Levy and William Weiss. The officers are Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein, chairman; Rabbi Joseph H. Lookstein; Dr. S. Braun of Cleveland; Samuel Feuerstein of Boston; A. Goldblatt of Chicago; Israel S. Gomborov of Baltimore, vice-chairman; Max Herskovitz, treasurer; Arthur I. LeVine, co-treasurer; Sol Bloom, honorary secretary and Morris Engelman, secretary.

MANY LOCAL CELEBRATIONS

The Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue is celebrating Purim with a four-day carnival, including a feast, the reading of the Megillah and a theater pageant.

In the Bronx, the Jewish Guild will rejoice over the downfall of Haman, this evening, at the Paradise Manor. Judge Benjamin Greenspan will assist at the festivities.

Three hundred religious schools throughout the city will take part in plays, masquerades and parties, devour Purim delicacies and otherwise demonstrate their joy at the deliverance of their ancestors.

The women, to whom this holiday is peculiarly significant, due to Queen Esther’s playing the chief role, have planned scores of parties all over the city. Among them is a Purim card party this afternoon at the Hebrew Orphan Asylum, under the auspices of the Washington Heights group of Ivriah. The Jewish Center of Jackson Heights will give a Purim masquerade ball, under the chairmanship of Mrs. Carolyn Lehfeld.

Hundreds of pretty girls, throughout the country will glory in their selection as “Queen Esthers,” at various balls and functions. Ida Feltman, the lucky choice in Paterson, New Jersey, won a free trip to the Chicago Century of Progress next summer, at the second annual ball held in Temple Emanu-El, Paterson.

And in Berlin, the principal feature of the Purim holiday is to be the presentation of the dramatic fragment “Esther,” by Franz Grillparzer, at the Berliner theater.