The widespread growth of Jewish education on the adult level contradicts “false speculations” that the American Jewish community threatens to vanish through assimilation. Rabbi Morris Adler, of Detroit, chairman of B’nai B’rith’s Commission on Adult Jewish Education, said today. Dr. Adler and other Jewish educators and scholars who participated in the B’nai B’rith commission’s three-day annual meeting, at the Hotel Biltmore, viewed the advances in adult study as “the most significant strengthening development” in the American Jewish community in the past decade.
“American Jews are clearly determined to survive as a distinct community, ” Dr. Adler said, “No group better exemplifies both acculturation and opposition to assimilation. ” The rabbi and other speakers were agreed that organized study has not yet “penetrated deeply into the mainstream” of the adult Jewish community, but the strides it has made in the past 10 years “have touched the consciousness of a multitude of Jewish families.”
Dr. Louis L. Kaplan, dean of Hebrew Teachers College in Baltimore, found in the resurgence of adult Jewish study “a reflection of the greater appreciation of Americans are showing to education generally. In that sense, the Jewish community is a mirror of its environment, ” he said. Label A. Katz, president of B’nai B’rith, said the Jewish community must continue to intensify its “war on poverty in Jewish education. ” He said that the “serious deficiencies in formal Jewish education for youth can only be overcome when the adult community is itself less illiterate about its Judaism.”
Last night, the commission honored Maurice Weinstein, of Charlotte, N.C., founder of B’nai B’rith’s program of adult Jewish education and its first commission chairman. At a testimonial dinner, Mr. Weinstein, an attorney, was particularly cited for initiating a program of adult institutes of Judaism. He had organized the first one 17 years ago at a rustic retreat in Wild Acres, N.C. The institute program, in which adults gather for a weekend or longer of lectures and study discussions guided by a faculty of leading rabbis, Jewish authors and scholars, has become a highly popular adult education technique, and has been widely adopted throughout the country.
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.
