The four-day national conference of the American Association for Jewish Education, attended by 250 educators and community leaders from all over the country, opened here tonight with a plea by Dr. Isadore Breslau, AAJE president, for the mobilization of the human and financial resources of the Jewish community in a “bold and imaginative” move to strengthen its education apparatus. Jude Simon E. Sobeloff presided over the opening session.
“We must bring together the sponsors of and teachers in Chairs of Judaic studies at various universities for a meeting of minds, “Dr. Breslau said. “We must also broadcast the needs of young Jewish adults and persuade community leaders to serve them far more effectively than heretofore.”
To solve the teacher shortage in Jewish schools and to attract the highest caliber of professionals to Jewish teaching, Dr. Breslau recommended special inducements in recruiting, training and employment. “We must give the teaching profession greater status and the type of financial compensation it deserves, “he said.
Declaring that the full, imaginative and cooperative use of all the resources of the Jewish community is required to determine the future of Jewish life in the United States through an effective system of Jewish education, Dr. Breslau pointed out that never before has the Jew been provided with facilities and afforded the opportunities in freedom to “preserve and enrich whatever identification he may choose.”
Deploring the trend which has split the closely-knit Jewish family, Dr. Breslau said that the current transition which takes children away from home beyond the high school age, saps a great source of Jewish strength. Nonetheless, he stressed that this aspect of failure in Jewish secondary education must be attributed to the negligence of parents who consider Jewish training a superfluous part of the general education of their children.
In his address of welcome, Judge Sobeloff stressed the importance of affording equal opportunities for Jewish education to all children regardless of economic status. He warned that “the community cannot leave the education of its children to the contingency of their belonging to a wealthy congregation which can hire better teachers or attending a school which happens to stress more intensive education. “Each child, ” Judge Sobeloff said, “shall be eligible for equal educational opportunity. The highest standards must be maintained and the best teachers employed. ” He urged the establishment of central, community-wide systems of Jewish education “in order to avoid chaos. “
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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.
