The four-day 29th annual convention of the Junior Hadassah opened here today with 500 delegates from all parts of the country attending. A resolution condemning the McCarran-Walter Immigration Act and asking for its appeal was adopted at the opening session.
President Truman, in a message to the convention, lauded the activities of the young women on behalf of Hadassah both in this country and in Israel. “The generosity and warmth of feeling which have moved so many Americans to interest themselves in aiding refugees and advancing the welfare of Israel, exemplify the highest ideals both of Judaism and of the American spirit, ” President Truman said in his message.
Dr. David Petegorsky, executive director of the American Jewish Congress, address sing the delegates, attacked the State Department regulations that permit Nazis to enter the United States under the McCarran-Walter Immigration Law. Rabbi Arthur Lelyveld, national director of the B’nai B’rith Hillel Foundations, who delivered the keynote address, emphasized that in the pressure of immediate needs, Jews in America and Israel were prone to neglect a major problem they face in common.
“That problem,” Rabbi Lelyveld said, “is the potential decline of the intensity with which we hold fast to that portion of our Jewish inheritance which may be called spiritual. The trend in the modern world toward the emergence of the ‘mass man’ and toward emptying distinctive content and values out of our lives effects Israeli society just as it affects American society.”
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.
