Jewish Emigration Discussed at National Convention of Communal Workers

The prediction that “in the months ahead many thousands of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa will seek our assistance in “helping them to join their families in the United States, Latin America, Canada and Australia” was made here by James P. Rice, executive director of the United Hias Service, addressing the annual convention of the National Conference of Jewish Communal Service, the organization of Jewish communal workers, which closed here today. In the last three months alone, said Mr. Rice, United Hias Service has aided 1,500 persons to migrate to new lands of permanent settlement. More than half of this number came to the United States.

“We are told that there is no anti-Semitism in Cuba,” Mr. Rice reported. “Most of the Jews are middle class people whose businesses have been nationalized or who fear it.” Although these Jews are suffering equally with Cubans of other faiths because of the sweeping changes introduced by the Castro regime, there is added tragedy for many of the Jews who originally came to Cuba as refugees from Europe and the Middle East because “now they are on the move again,” Mr. Rice said.

Dr. Judah J. Shapiro, Conference president, told the delegates that “The 1961-meetings of the Conference are devoted to one of the most profound changes in history–the separation of the generations. Probably never before were values under so much threat from the breakdown of the orderly flow of communal responsibility,” he declared.

Sol Rafel, president of the National Association of Jewish Center Workers, reported that-annual salaries of professional social workers in Jewish community centers and YM-YWHA’s averaged 40 percent higher than the national average for all social workers. Citing figures compiled by the National Jewish Welfare Board’s Bureau of Personnel and Training, Mr. Rafel said that the average salary of Jewish Community Center and YM-YWHA workers is $7,750 per year as compared with an annual average of $5,210 for all social welfare workers throughout the country.

Donald B. Hurwitz, executive director of the Federation of Jewish Agencies of Greater Philadelphia, was elected president of the Conference. Mr. Hurwitz, who has spent 28 years in Jewish social work, has held leadership positions also in Montreal, Houston, Cleveland and New Haven. He has also been a representative of the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in North Africa, Portugal and England.