B’nai B’rith Executive Conference Approves Plan to Call American Jewish Assembly

The three-day conference of the executive committee of the B’nai B’rith, marking the 100th annual meeting of that body, concluded last night by voting its approval of and adherence to the proposals adopted last month at the Pittsburgh conference of representatives of Jewish organizations who recorded themselves as favoring the calling of an American Jewish Assembly to provide a representative forum for the unified expression of the opinion of American Jews with regard to action on the status of Jews in the postwar world and the implementation of the rights of the Jewish people with respect to Palestine.

Reports presented to the executive committee indicated that B’nai B’rith groups throughout the country have been responsible for the sale of $40,000,000 in war bonds. It was also announced that 23,000 members of B’nai B’rith and its affiliates have donated blood to Red Cross blood banks. Announcement was also made of a nationwide effort on the part of B’nai B’rith to help the Board of Economic Warfare and Office of Strategic Services to locate people in the United States who either have personal specific knowledge of economic and industrial conditions in Axis and Axis-dominated countries through residence there or extensive travel, or who have in their possession photographs and pictures of strategic value.

The executive committee also heard that B’nai B’rith now has 62 Hillel Foundations and Counselorship on as many college campuses through the country, serving 45,000 Jewish students with a program of religious, cultural and social welfare activities, in addition to providing supplementary recreational and cultural activities for men in the armed forces at camps adjacent to Hillel units. It was stated that B’nai B’rith now numbers 150,000 men and women in addition to 50,000 young people organized in 680 men’s units, 557 B’nai B’rith women’s groups and 475 youth chapters. Expenditures of B’nai B’rith women during the past year for war service efforts exceeded $125,000.

Continuing its 60-year tradition of support of and alliance with the American Red Cross, nationally and locally, the meeting of the executive committee of B’nai B’rith appropriated $5,000 to the forthcoming Red Cross War Fund Drive, making a total of $175,000 contributed by B’nai B’rith to the Red Cross and other non-sectarian war relief agencies, since Pearl Harbor. Reduction of the age limit in Aleph Zadik Aleph from 16 to 14 because of the fact that nearly 3,000 members 18 and ever have gone into the forces, was voted by the annual meeting of Aleph Zadik Aleph’s Supreme Advisory Council, which met before B’nai B’rith’s executive committee went into session.