The 1980 Plenary Session of the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council (NJCRAC) will take place from Jan. 13 through Jan. 16 at the Fairmont Hotel here. More than 400 delegates, representing national Jewish community relations agencies and local community relations councils, will be in attendance. The Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) of Greater Philadelphia will host the Plenary Session which is the highest policy forming body of the NJCRAC.
A highlight of the four-day plenum will be the JCRC annual dinner Jan. 15, when Lane Kirkland, president of the AFL-CIO, will receive the agency’s Jules Cohen Memorial Award. The award, which is named in memory of the late JCRC executive director who served from 1959 until his death in 1967, will be presented by JCRC president Joseph Smukler. The dinner is being held in conjunction with the NJCRAC.
Theodore Mann, outgoing chairman of NJCRAC and past president of the Philadelphia JCRC, also will be honored by NJCRAC at the Jan. 15 dinner. Mann currently serves as spokesman for the American Jewish community in his position as chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.
At the session on Jan. 15 which is the anniversary of the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., a special tribute will be paid to the slain civil rights leader by Richard Maass, president of the American Jewish Committee.
Among the speakers at the plenum will be Benjamin Hooks, executive director of the NAACP; Stuart Eizenstat, presidential assistant for domestic affairs, Ephraim Evron, Ambassador of Israel to the United States; Shmuel Tamir, Israel Minister of Justice and a member of the negotiating committee on autonomy; Sen. Howard Metzenboum (D. Ohio); and David Aaron, deputy assistant to the President for national affairs.
Among the issues to be discussed at general sessions and in workshops are: “The Election Campaign: Do’s and Don’t’s for the Jewish Community”; “The Peace Process: An Israeli Assessment”, “The Peace Process: The U.S. Role”; “Soviet Jewry: Are we at the Crossroads?”; “A National Energy Program: Assessing the Responses of the Administration and Congress”; “Reassessing the Mass Media and Israel’s image”; “Black-Jewish Relations; Problems and Opportunities”; and “National Elections 1980: Issues Facing the Jewish Community.”
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