A vast coast-wide program to combat anti-Semitic sentiment by welcoming non-Jews into the lodgerooms of the B’nai B’rith and illustrating what the order is doing in its various fields of endeavor has been undertaken by the General Committee of District Grand Lodge No. 4.
The work is being mapped under the direction of Dr. Maurice Smith of Los Angeles, chairman of the new Good Will and Education Committee. Under this plan, a standardized schedule of cultural, intellectual and educational programs will be prepared, to be followed by the scores of subordinate lodges in the district. To these programs will be invited non-Jewish members of each community, as well as Jews not affiliated with the order.
“The purpose of the plan,” says Edward A. Zeisler, executive director of District Grand Lodge No. 4, “is to combat the steadily increasing volume of anti-Semitic feeling that is making itself manifest in the West.
“Almost daily, I regret to say, reports reach us of some new expression of anti-Jewish feeling coming from some different locality in the district. It is to combat this that the general committee wants to open the doors of the lodgerooms to Gentiles and to show them the high type of cultural and educational work in which our order is engaged. Also it will serve to show Jewish non-members what we are doing and why they should affiliate.”
One of the first features to be introduced into these programs will be presentation of a playlet especially written for the purpose by Erma Lee Levinger, entitled, “Aims and Objects of the B’nai B’rith.”
The programs under way will be offered as outlined throughout the jurisdiction of District No. 4, which embraces all of the territory in California, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, Utah, Idaho, Montana and Nevada.
Jewish teachers in the public schools of San Francisco have been benefitted through a resolution adopted by the Board of Supervisors and introduced by Supervisor Jefferson E. Peyser. It provides that teachers absent from their classes on account of a religious holiday shall not suffer the loss of a full day’s pay but only the amount required to be paid to a substitute teacher. The resolution applies to teachers absenting themselves during the high holy days.
The text of the resolution was agreed to at a conference between Supervisor Peyser and Mr. Zeisler, the executive director of District Grand Lodge No. 4 of the B’nai B’rith.
MT. NEBOH SISTERHOOD
The Sisterhood of Mt. Neboh Temple, 130 West 79th Street, will hold its first open meeting tomorrow afternoon at one-thirty in the Temple Vestry.
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