Convention of Communal Workers Discusses Jewish Education

“Education remains the matrix of Jewish survival in America” under the conditions set for it by the American scene and the American idea, Dr. Horace Kallen told the 57th annual convention of the National Conference of Jewish Communal Service which is being held at the Ambassador Hotel here. The Conference represents professional workers in social agencies, community centers, educational institutions and community organizations in more than 100 cities in the U. S. and Canada. Twelve hundred delegates are in attendance at the sessions.

In his call for increased Jewish education of the American Jew, Dr. Kallen cited its universal values as the only effective cure for isolation, fanaticism, intolerance. and aggression against difference merely because it is different. The education required, he said, “Is the education which leads from reciprocal understanding to mutual respect, from mutual respect to equal participation in the diverse responsibilities of communion and community.”

Opening the Conference, whose theme is “On the threshold of the fourth century of Jewish life in America – retrospect and prospect,” Dr. Judah Pilch, leading Jewish educator and chairman of the Conference, said: “At the dawn of the fourth century in the history of the American Jewish community, we. the thousands who lay claim to the proud title of community servant must discharge the responsibility inherent in the very nature of our profession-to conceive of our competencies and skills not solely in terms of meeting immediate and specific needs, but also as means to be used for the furtherance and implementation of the social goals and values basic in Jewish tradition and American democracy.”

Tying the voluntary contributions which support all the agencies and institutions represented in the National Conference to the degree of education, Dr. Kallen said: “Hopes of favors and fears of displeasure aside, a contribution is an act of faith, an expression of personal commitment to an end and a cause, and of confidence in the men and methods engaged in realizing it. The vital fact in every freewill offering is the giver’s commitment to what he gives to; it is the strength of his faith and the scope of his knowledge. And these follow first and last, from the range and the depth of his education.”

“Only modern, democratized, continuous Jewish education can freely induce and nurture the commitment “he continued. Whatever future the Jewish communities of our United States are likely to come into will follow from the content, the methods, the meanings of the education received not only by the generations as they grow up but also as they grow old. Whatever be the community or the culture, its vital center is education as both the end and the means of its existence and growth.”