In times of severe unemployment and economic depression, leading workers in Jewish social welfare activities realize increasingly the inadequacy of private resources for assuming wide and inclusive responsibility for the relief needs of Jews in America. Accordingly, they are gradually transferring these responsibilities to public relief agencies, city, state and federal. And yet the burden of Jewish welfare needs as a result of the present social and economic dislocation is so great that constant provision for new emergencies is called for.
Naturally, the specific problem of the Jewish social service agency versus the non-sectarian agency obtrudes itself upon the attention of Jewish communal workers. Is the distinctly Jewish social work still needed? What of its special province? These and similar questions occur to the mind of every student of American-Jewish affairs.
COOPERATING WITH PUBLIC RELIEF
In connection with this matter, it is pertinent to observe that long before the organization of public relief departments in New York and other large centers there were, for Jewish family relief agencies, well-defined supplementary functions. So, for instance, supplementation of relief on cases cared for partly by the public agency that administered workmen’s accident compensation, mothers’ pensions and child care is of rather long standing.
In the last few years, however, with tax funds available for relief, a new type of supplementation of service to Jewish families receiving relief from public agencies became necessary. For technical reasons of one sort or another, many Jewish families cannot be reached by public relief with the kind of help peculiar to their needs.
Few if any public welfare departments, for that matter, have as yet undertaken a preventive program which has been the distinguishing features of the Jewish family case work for many years. A few cases of endeavor to keep Jewish families together instead of tearing them apart follow.
NEED FOR GROUP READJUSTMENTS
Families on the verge of social breakdown because of domestic strife, industrial maladjustment, physical and mental ill health, and unsatisfactory relationships between parents and children, delinquency and the whole field of personality problems which endanger economic self-sufficiency do not ordinarily appeal to the governmental agency.
They would not be accepted for treatment unless the problems were so acute as to have actually participated the need for speedy relief.
In fine, the supplementation emanating from Jewish quarters must be on the service side. Again, guardians of Jewish welfare must be sure that the men who are put in charge of public relief have the right point of view and proper bearings as to the cases of maladjustment peculiar to the conditions of Jewish existence and historical background.
PROBLEM CHILDREN DEMAND CARE
Next comes the problem of group readjustment as a result of new general social conditions. Take, for instance, the question of child care. There are more problem children today than orphans, as the birth rate has dropped so considerably since 1919. The Jewish birth rate, let us remember, has always been lower than the general birth rate.
Since orphanhood is o# the decline, we may look forward confidently to having fewer and fewer children as guests of orphan homes. At the same time, child guidance clinics and qualified foster homes for Jewish children shift closer to the focus of Jewish child care activities.
New aspects of the care of the aged loom large in connection with the growing place of social security plans, such as old age pensions, in the scheme of American life. The Jewish Charities of Chicago, to illustrate the point, have only 240 people in two old age institutions, while 250 old people live in foster family homes in Chicago.
In August, 1934, about forty-nine per cent of the Jewish aged under the care of the Chicago Jewish Social Service Bureau were citizens of the United States. About eighty-nine per cent of the heads of families among the old age cases have lived in Illinois ten years or more. Thus, the bulk of the Jewish old age cases will soon be eligible for state pensions.
DISCRIMINATION AND ECONOMIC RECONSTRUCTION
The task of Jewish social service, in the light of recent social developments, should not be conceived, however, in terms of dependent groups, as in previous times, but rather along lines of interest for the general social and economic problems of Jews, who are affected by discrimination in employment, vocational maladjustment, obsolescence of old skills, etc.
Accordingly, foremost among the things that a Jewish family agency can and should do are guidance of young people, vocational training and self-redirection, personality adjustments, industrial retraining and promotion of similar projects.
It is interesting to record that fifty-one per cent of the major cases that were accepted, during a recent period, by the Jewish Social Service Bureau of Cleveland, came to the attention of this agency on the application of the individuals themselves. None of these cases either requested or accepted relief, as all came strictly and only to secure constructive case – work service. Plainly, a new approach to the questions of family social relief is needed.
No doubt these problems cannot be solved merely by collection and distribution of voluntary funds. They require, in addition, cooperative effort of all social-economic and cultural agencies in which Jews participate.
JEWISH CONTENT IN SOCIAL WORK
It is therefore evident that Jewish social work can only be defended on the principle, as against the non-sectarian position, that the Jewish worker is inspired by a group consciousness and recognition of the existence of the Jewish group with peculiar economic and historical or cultural traits. This kind of influence is more necessary now than ever before.
To ring the changes on this all-important subject, the existence of separate Jewish social service is intended to inject something of the Jewish group spirit into the lives of the families and individuals that are served. Also, a Jewish group consciousness on a national scale is in the making, as contrasted with the former local and institutional approach to the problems of Jewish philanthropy.
In order to keep pace with the irrepressible growth of new needs and functions, a new program and a far-sighted policy of Jewish communal endeavor in America must be deliberately and methodically built up.
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.
