American Jewish Year Book, 1933 Edition, is Published

The Jewish population of Palestine has increased by 90,816 in a ten-year period since 1922, according to the latest Palestine census begun in November, 1931 which is reported and analyzed in the 1933 edition of the American Jewish Year Book. This is the thirty-fifth volume of the Year Book which is published annually by the Jewish Publication Society of America, of Philadelphia. The book is edited for the American Jewish Committee of New York by Harry Schneiderman, assistant secretary.

The total population of Palestine at the date of the census was 1,035,821. Of this number, 759,712 were Mohammedans, 174,610 were Jews, 91,389 were Christians and 10,101 were persons of other religions. A table listing the languages habitually spoken in Palestine in 1931, brings out the fact that while Jews speak over ten languages, 94.59 per cent of all Jews speak Hebrew, and 2,216 Jews speak Arabic; only eight Mohammedans speak Hebrew.

Ii addition to the section dealing with the population figures in Palestine, the Year Book contains a review of Jewish events of the twelve-month period, from September 21, 1932 to September 9, 1933. This article, written by Mr. Schneiderman, is devoted in the main to a resume of the events in Germany and their reprecussions in other lands. In an appendix there is published the Franz Bernheim petition to the League of Nations and the minutes of the League Council’s sessions regarding that petition which was based on the minority clauses of the German-Polish Convention of 1932, with respect to Germans in Upper Silesia.

The volume also contains a biographical sketch of the late Professor Max Leopold Margolies, biblical scholar and philologist, by Dr. Cyrus Adler, president of Dropsie College for Hebrew and Cognate Learning; an article on the synagogue and Jewish communal activities by Judge Horace Stern of Philadelphia, presenting what has become known as the “Stern plan” of community organization; a biographical study of the late Cyrus L. Sulzberger, noted communal leader, by Morris D. Waldman, secretary of the American Jewish Committee.

As in former years, the book includes directories, lists and statistical records of the Jews; lists of Jews who have served as Governors of states or as Ministers or Ambassadors of the United States; and the latest reports of the Jewish Publication Society and the American Jewish Committee.