Aj Committee, Aj Congress Officials Say Talks Held to Coordinate Activities but Merger Not in Offing

Top officials of the American Jewish Committee and the American Jewish Congress said today that meetings have been held for many months on means of coordinating their community relations activities for greater effectiveness and to reduce duplication in such efforts, but that a merger was not in the offing.

Bertram Gold, executive vice-president of the AJ Committee, and Naomi Levine, executive director of the AJ Congress, agreed, in statements to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, that preliminary talks have been underway for such objectives for some time and that the talks have included the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith. Gold said that “our discussions with the American Jewish Congress are exploring the whole range” of such cooperation. He said he would not rule out possibility of a merger of the Committee and the Congress but that, at the present time, the talks were informal and “very preliminary.”

Mrs. Levine also stressed that officials in the three community relations agencies have long recognized that “better coordination” is needed. She said that talks between officials of the agencies had been going on for many years. She said that the issue discussed was “how can we do it better?”

ABSORPTION REPORT IS A DISTORTION

She denounced a press report that an “absorption” of the Congress by the Committee had ever been considered, calling this “a total distortion of truth.” She said “the truth is that the American Jewish Congress and the American Jewish Committee have been talking to each other and to other national Jewish agencies to discuss the best way of cooperating so that the Jewish community can be assured that its concerns are dealt with in the most expert and efficient fashion.” She added that “no absorption of either agency has ever been contemplated,” calling the word “absorption” an “insult” to the AJ Congress.

Mrs. Levine also denounced reports that the reason for the alleged plans for “absorption” was that the AJ Congress was suffering financial problems. She said the Congress reports to the Large City Budgeting Conference of the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds “have shown consistently that our financial condition is sound and that our membership and fund-raising have increased over the past several years.” She added that “in today’s inflationary economy, our problems are no more difficult than those of other Jewish institutions or agencies.”

Mrs. Levine cited, as an example of the kind of cooperation sought in the ongoing talks, a visit to the Health, Education and Welfare Department in Washington on May 23 to discuss the problems of “affirmative action” in HEW guidelines for student admission. She said the three community relations agencies, plus Agudath Israel of America, were represented at the meeting, adding “we would very much like to see much more cooperation of this kind.”