The 36th general assembly of the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds, which concluded its sessions here yesterday, devoted its major efforts to three areas of chief concern to the Jewish community, Philip Bernstein, executive director of the Council, reported in a survey of the weeklong deliberations of the 1,600 delegates and guests at the parley. He defined these areas as measures to strengthen Jewish communities and Jewish life; the human rights revolution and the crisis in the cities, and the crisis in the Middle East.
Looking ahead to the future of Jewish life, he noted: the Assembly developed plans for involving Jewish college youth in the work of federations and agencies, dealing with issues of primary concern to the youths themselves–civil rights, anti-poverty programs, public welfare legislation, protests against the destruction of Jewish life in the Soviet Union, the Middle East crisis and in volunteer services such as tutoring, work with the sick and aged and children. These plans will be carried out in cooperation with the Hillel Foundation, where three-quarters of the Jewish university students are in cities with Jewish federations.
Community leaders at the Assembly met with leaders of national Conservative, Orthodox and Reform congregational bodies and the American Association for Jewish Education, to plan for closer cooperation with community federations and bureaus of Jewish education in strengthening the quality of Jewish education. The plans dealt especially with recruitment and training of teachers and with post elementary schools, Mr. Bernstein said. In many areas where congregations individually maintain quality high schools, community schools cutting across congregational lines but respecting ideological differences, are being established.
Other workshop sessions of the Assembly dealt with pathologies in Jewish communities, particularly in health and in mental impairment among the aged. A national study reported to the Assembly revealed that 68 percent of the residents of large homes for the aged were mentally impaired. The study found that many such persons could be helped, and pointed the way for homes for the aged to undertake rehabilitation programs.
A group of national health experts helped define goals for Jewish federations and hospitals to achieve comprehensive health care instead of the current fragmented programs and to emphasize high quality and broad coverage. Emerging new patterns of financing affected by Medicare, Medicaid and other federal funds, were discussed. In community planning for the aged, stress was placed on involving the aged themselves in the determination and leadership of programs to serve themselves, Mr, Bernstein reported.
WORKSHOPS APPRAISED NEW APPROACHES TO COMMUNITY PLANNING AND NEW TECHNIQUES
The Assembly, he said, examined new approaches in community planning for the broad spectrum of communal needs, to take full advantage of new opportunities for improving services and channelling allocations. Such planning would involve new techniques of advanced operations research and budget and cost benefit systems pioneered in other fields. The planning discussions took account of the new urban geography, resulting from population shifts to the suburbs.
The 150 young new leaders at the Assembly, many of them winners of the outstanding young leadership awards of their communities, reviewed the community seminar “study programs in depth” to deal with the “why” as well as the “what” and “how” of Jewish communal services. Plans were made to extend such seminars to more cities.
Women’s sessions dealth not only with women’s fund raising, but particularly with creative volunteer services for the major concerns of federations and the major issues of the total community. The role of volunteers is expanding and more complex, the sessions found, in the light of current urban problems.
Underlying much of the discussions was that of the workshop on the personnel shortages of Jewish agencies. The General Assembly recommended that the federation in each city should set up machinery for the intensive recruitment and training of people for careers in Jewish communal service.
Communal leaders examined the experience of Jewish federations and other organizations in dealing with critical urban problems, particularly programs to overcome poverty. The case studies revealed many Jewish organizations conducting a variety of anti-poverty programs–sixty different projects in one city–and giving leadership to action by the entire community, Mr, Bernstein said.
The great attention given by the General Assembly in plenary sessions to the crisis in the Middle East was carried also into the workshops on these issues. The meetings were concerned with the critical problems of Jews in Arab Lands and new responsibilities for refugees coming to Western Europe as well as to Israel. At the same time, the community leaders projected greater cooperation with the communities in Western Europe to strengthen their community organizations’ self-help services and fund-raising for their own needs and for sharing in world wide Jewish responsibilities, especially for Israel.
In the continuing crisis of the Middle East, leaders of federations and welfare funds at the Assembly, in cooperation with UJA officials, formulated plans for all-out fund raising for the Israel Emergency Fund, carrying forward the extraordinary experience of 1967 when welfare funds raised by far the largest sums in the history of American Jewry for these purposes.
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.
