Some 180 Jewish college students from schools in this country and Canada will gather here tomorrow for the 10th national Hillel Summer Institute to consider “Judaism for the Modern Age.” The institute, sponsored by the B’nai B’rith Hillel Foundations, will include lectures by Hillel directors from representative American and Canadian campuses and discussion by the student leaders.
The 250 teen-age leaders attending the leadership institute of the B’nai B’rith Youth Organization here wound up their six-day meeting with a panel at which it was agreed that there is a definite increased interest among Jewish youth in Judaic literature, increased attendance at religious services and a general desire among the youth to identify themselves with Judaism. The youths also came to the conclusion that they felt “more at home as Jews” than had their parents who rejected traditional Judaism as part of their pattern of adjustment to the new world they found in the United States and Canada.
The young people also held a special Israel day at the conference, during which they participated in a mock Knesset session and spent most of the day in “Knesset committees” discussing the problems facing Israel. They also heard Yohann Meroz, First Secretary of the Israel Embassy in Washington, say that Israel’s rebirth “should be an inspiration to Jews everywhere.”
CALLS FOR PRIORITY FOR YOUTH
Philip M. Klutznick, world president of B’nai B’rith, told 200 delegates to the convention of Aleph Zadik Aleph in session here that youth must be given priority in understanding by adults if the resources to solve the problems of juvenile delinquency are to be found.
“We cannot have too much interest in youth.” Mr. Klutznick declared. “But I think that what we really need is an inquiry into the state of the adult mind. While we get so worked up about questionable television programs and comic books that we are almost ready to accept the far greater evil of censorship, elementary schools in city after city are starving under stringent financial limitations. Classrooms are overcrowded; teachers are underpaid and unhappy. School boards and high schools are hopelessly unprepared for the onslaught of teen-agers whose mounting numbers have been carefully compiled for future years by our population experts. While adults investigate, our young people must wait.”
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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.
