Stating that Washington is the heartbeat of both the nation and B’nai B’rith, David M. Blumberg, the organization’s president, dedicated an addition to the B’nai B’rith headquarters building here that will double its size.
In an outdoor ceremony during B’nai B’rith’s biennial convention, Blumberg told representatives of the city, the major religious faiths and more than 1000 delegates attending the convention, that the new wing will allow the organization to provide still more service to members the community and Jews around the world.
“But as beautiful as the building is–and it has won awards for design and architecture–its real beauty is inside, where programs for helping people are formulated and implemented,” Blumberg said.
Rabbi Benjamin M. Kahn, executive vice-president, symbolically affixing a mezuzah to the door of the wing, described the building as the chief cornerstone of the organization’s work–the “enrichment of Jewish life and the enrichment of the life of world Jewry.”
Among the features of the $2.5 million building are additional exhibit space for the Philip and Ethel Klutznick Museum which already attracts some 100,000 visitors annually; an international youth center, with offices for B’nai B’rith’s youth organization, the Hillel Foundations and Career and Counseling Services; and a conference center that will be made available to other groups in Washington. A chapel in memory of B’nai B’rith victims of the Holocaust will have access to the street so that passers-by can enter and mediate.
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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.
