The five-day 35th General Assembly of the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds closed here today with the adoption of resolutions on a wide range of problems facing American Jewry and with the election of Louis J. Fox of Baltimore as president. Morris Glasser of Chicago was elected chairman of the Large City Budgeting Conference, which is composed of 23 largest Jewish welfare funds reviewing the budgets of national and overseas agencies.
One of the major resolutions adopted by the Assembly stressed the urgency of the needs of Jewish communities overseas and urged that these communities be provided “intensive and massive” aid. “The needs are sharpened by Israel’s current economic crisis,” the resolution emphasized. It recommended that absorption programs to bring immigrants to self-support should be greatly intensified, especially in assisting Israel to absorb more than 200,000 newcomers. “Such welfare, help, vocational and educational programs are of critical importance, regardless of the fluctuations in the volume of current immigration,” the resolution declared.
The resolution recommended that the fund raising and operations of all Israel’s universities, “which are rapidly proliferating,” should be coordinated in the United States and in Israel within and among the institutions. It also urged that there should be a continuous increase of information on overseas needs and services, to help increase American Jewish understanding and support. At the same time, it requested that local community considerations of overseas needs, programs and policies should be intensified. It expressed gratification with the administrative changes initiated in Israel to streamline the staff and the structure of the Jewish Agency there.
The resolution was adopted following two sessions devoted to overseas needs. At these sessions, Israel’s economy and the impact of changes anticipated in 1967 in Jewish immigration in general were discussed. Speakers included Rabbi Herbert A. Friedman, executive vice-chairman of the United Jewish Appeal; Charles Jordan, executive vice-chairman of the Joint Distribution Committee; Max A. Braude, executive head of the World ORT Union; Murray Gurfein, president of United HIAS Service; Dr. William Haber, president of the American ORT Federation; Gottlieb Hammer, executive vice-chairman of the United Israel Appeal Inc.; S. P. Goldberg, of the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds, Gaynor Jacobson, executive director of the United HIAS Service; I. L. Kenen of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and others.
SEVERE CHALLENGES FORESEEN FOR U.S. JEWISH COMMUNITIES
Dr. Haber told the CJFWF Assembly banquet session that the nature of the American economy will inevitably create serious challenges for the Jewish community. Dr. Haber, who is a dean at the University of Michigan, said that, to begin with, the fantastic increases in demand for trained personnel in the social service field, in administration, in planning, and in the health area creates immediately a tremendous competition for the limited personnel now available.
“The very expansion of public programs,” Dr. Haber said, “means that social service workers and other professional people are now in larger demand from public and non-Jewish agencies than has ever been the case.” Dr. Haber also predicted that the budgets of Jewish agencies are certain to be pushed upward because labor costs are bound to expand, particularly in the health area.
“The financial capacity of the American community, as a result of the current affluence, as well as of the immediate and long outlook, imposes upon all of us — upon every budget committee in every town and city — an obligation to reexamine the allocations of the philanthropic dollar as between local and overseas requirements,” Dr. Haber emphasized. “The crisis in Israel, the needs of Jews in France, the developing problems in a dozen other areas, compel us as Jews — just as it compels the United States Government as an affluent society — to aid overseas Jewish communities which need help more than most.”
“We have in recent years shown a large sense of responsibility and a capacity to shore up weak communities and institutions in more than a dozen countries, “Dr. Haber added. “We have at the same time built a vigorous, secure and strong Jewish community in our free country. Our own sense of economic well-being compels us to ask whether the time has not come for us to reexamine the degree to which our philanthropic dollar is properly allocated as between our needs at home and the demands overseas. I think it is not.”
Dr. Haber said also he recognized the direct responsibility at home in Jewish education, in training personnel for Jewish institutions, as well as the responsibility to the youth, to the aged, to hospitals and to other Jewish programs. “The momentum,” he said, “will assure the continuation of these programs. We need now, in my view, to take seriously the special crisis which is being faced particularly in education and adjustment in several overseas communities, especially Israel and France. This task cannot be shirked.”
UNITED NATIONS, GREAT POWERS CRITICIZED ON MIDDLE EAST STAND
The United Nations and the world’s major powers were criticized at a plenary session for failing to bring peace to the Middle East. The criticism was voiced by Irving Kane, chairman of the CJFWF Overseas Committee, who emphasized that “the overriding problem facing Israel and indeed the whole world in this hour is the problem of peace.” He pointed out that 18 years after the establishment of the State of Israel, the country still finds itself surrounded by neighboring states who openly call for and plan for Israel’s destruction.
“The determination of the Arab states to destroy Israel derives encouragement from the failure of the United Nations and the world’s major powers to demand that peace shall reign in the Middle East and to take effective action that will remove the ever-present threat of war and bring about a permanent peace, “Mr. Kane said.
“There is a difference between open aggression and self-defense, “Mr. Kane added.” There is a difference between those who insist on destroying their neighbor and those who want to live at peace with them. It is time the United Nations and our own country recognize these differences and exert the great influence of which they are capable to bring about a just and durable peace. The time is now.”
The delegates were told at another session that successful campaigning can only be a product of an effective Jewish community and that an effective Jewish community can only be the response of a sensitivity to human needs, combined with the relevance of its institutions. These points were made by Irving Blum of Baltimore, chairman of the CJFWF Campaign Services Committee. Mr. Blum emphasized that in making American Jewish institutions relevant to the present rapidly-changing times, Jewish communal leaders must be prepared to engage in a searching reexamination of the major issues facing federations and welfare funds.
He noted an encouraging trend among Jewish communal leaders throughout the country to press forward with this kind of penetrating examination of the basic purposes and goals of the federation movement. He also outlined the basic principles in fund-raising for local and overseas Jewish needs. The session at which he spoke was presided over by Dr. Max W. Bay, of Los Angeles, president of the Los Angeles Jewish Federation-Council, and a vice-president of the CJFWF.
NEED TO STRENGTHEN U.S. JEWISH EDUCATION STRESSED IN RESOLUTION
Concern over the unmet needs in American Jewish education was expressed at the Assembly which adopted a resolution emphasizing that “the strengthening of Jewish education in quality and effectiveness is of the utmost importance to the future of our Jewish communities in America.”
The resolution noted that a CJFWF committee on Jewish education had worked actively for a program for the recruitment, training and utilization of teachers, administrators and specialists in the field of Jewish education and for the organization and financing of post elementary Jewish education. The CJFWF resolution recommended that the committee continue along those lines, and urged that the findings and proposals of the committee be thoroughly considered by community federations and welfare funds which should act to strengthen their programs of Jewish education.
David Silbert, president of the Jewish Welfare Fund of Metropolitan Chicago, presented to the General Assembly a telegram signed by more than 40 Chicago community leaders active in Jewish education. The telegram stressed that it was “imperative” that all that has been said about Jewish values and the transmission of the Jewish heritage “be promptly implemented in an intensified augmented offensive on the Jewish education front of our communal programs. Only by focusing our resources on the education front can we ensure a meaningful feature for American Jewry.”
Dr. Benjamin B. Rosenberg, executive director of the Combined Jewish Philanthro pies of Greater Boston, addressing a session of the Assembly, urged that Jewish central community organizations “should place Jewish education high on the agenda for planning. for support and for action “and not simply high on the agendas of conferences.” He said that there seemed to be a crisis in both the quality and the quantity of teaching personnel in Jewish schools.
Taking note of the critical shortages in personnel for Jewish health and welfare agencies, the Assembly also adopted a resolution calling for the recruitment, training and placement of additional manpower. The resolution emphasized that no problem facing Jewish communal services was more serious than the shortage of professional personnel.
Mrs. Joseph Cohen, of New Orleans, chairman of the CJFWF Personnel Services Committee, reported that there were some 5,000 professional workers in Jewish local and national agencies in the United States and Canada. This figure, she said, does not include the rabbinate and those teaching in Jewish schools. “Because of turnover, retirement and natural losses, a minimum of 275 new people are needed every year just to maintain the present services,” Mrs. Cohen declared. “But we are not getting them.” To assure that qualified personnel come into the field of Jewish communal services, Mrs. Cohen made a number of recommendations which included scholarships, field work placement and summer work programs for training students for Jewish social work.
Other resolutions adopted by the Assembly called for support of the government anti-poverty program; cooperation of all groups in overcoming discrimination; implementation of new and advanced techniques of strengthening fund-raising in the communities; continued support of Medicare and additional legislation to strengthen community planning for health services.
ASSEMBLY RESOLUTION URGES GREATER PRESSURES FOR SOVIET JEWRY
The Assembly adopted a resolution welcoming the intensification of the efforts by the major American Jewish organizations in demanding from the Soviet Government the restoration of full religious and cultural rights to Jews in the Soviet Union.
The resolution also welcomed the more closely coordinated action of the organizations in this direction. The resolution stressed that “the Soviet Union continues to deny to Jews opportunities, available to others, for the development of their own cultural and religious institutions. Synagogues are closed; seminaries are not available; almost no Jewish books are printed; children are denied a Jewish education. The limited concessions that have been made are minimum.”
The resolution called upon the Soviet Government to permit the Jews in the Soviet Union to freely practice and perpetuate their culture and religion by removing all discriminatory measures designed to restrict this freedom. The resolution requested that the Soviet authorities make available schools and textbooks and other materials necessary to teach Jewish children the languages, history, the beliefs, the practices and the aspirations of the Jewish people.
The General Assembly also requested that Jews in the Soviet Union be permitted freely by their government to develop Jewish communal life and to associate and work with Jewish communities inside and outside the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Government was also asked to use all the means at its disposal to eradicate anti-Semitism thereby implementing the public pronouncement in 1965 that anti-Semitism is “absolutely alien to and in contradiction to our world view.” The resolution also demanded that Soviet Jewish families separated as a result of the Nazi holocaust be permitted by the Soviet authorities to be reunited with their relatives abroad.
The William Shroder Awards were presented to the Jewish Community Foundation of the Jewish Welfare Federation of Detroit and to the Jewish Community Council of Norfolk, Va., at the banquet session at which Stanley Myers of Miami presided. Tributes were paid at the dinner to Samuel A. Goldsmith of Chicago, Harry Greenstein of Baltimore, Dr. Maurice B. Hexter of New York, Joseph Willen of New York and Sidney Hollander of Baltimore.
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.
