Challenge of American Life Made Jewish Education Community Problem

(Jewish Daily Bulletin)

The challenge of American life has been a potent factor in compelling community responsibility and a long range community program in Jewish education. Dr. Alexander M. Dushkin, director of the Board of Jewish Education of Chicago, declared here last night at a dinner given by the local Jewish community to the members of the National Conference of Jewish Social Service, in session at the Hotel Fort.

“One of the most encouraging signs of spiritual awakening in American Jewry,” declared Dr. Dushkin, “has been the general recognition of one Jewish community after another that Jewish education is a community problem. So long as the teaching of the history, literature, ideas and practices of Judaism was considered an individual problem between parent and child, or between an individual congregation and its children, real educational progress was of necessity very slow.”

The declaration at an earlier session of the conference by Raymond Clapp, director of the Cleveland Welfare Federation, that social harmony is impossible in a community unless the various denominations combined their fund raising in a community chest, brought forth a storm of objection from speakers who followed.

“Cannot people work together for the others’ good without becoming financial partners?” Morris D. Waldman, secretary of the Jewish Welfare Federation of Detroit, asked. L. Irving Lipsitch, director of the Jewish Welfare Federation of Los Angles, complained that the chest was more financial than spiritual in practice, and predicted that Jewish communities would have to be given assurance that the general group will not check expansion of Jewish social work.

Dr. I. M. Rubinow of Philadelphia, expressed the opinion that separate Jewish federations stimulate the general community to raise its standards.

Samuel A. Goldsmith, director of the Bureau of Jewish Social Research of New York and secretary of the Conference, presented a paper at the Wednesday morning session, on child care, Speaking of recent child care surveys made by the Bureau stressed the value of critical appraisal of this work both from the inside and by outsiders in order to insure the very best type of care for the particular children. He also made the point that should such surveys determine that such organizations have outlived their usefulness or that they should be converted to more modern or more effective means of caring for children, then the community should organize itself on that basis. Regardless of the need for disbanding or revising there always lurks the need for but one children’s society with ramifications that would care for all the children that need communal care.

JEWISH COMMUNAL ACTIVITIES

The United Palestine Appeal in Jersey City will be opened Sunday night with a banque: in the Bergen Hebrew Institute. The quota has been set at $30,000.

The principal speakers will be Maurice Samuel and Mrs. Archibald Silverman, of Providence. R. I.

Harry Goldowsky is honorary chairman and A. J. Goldstein, active chairman of the campaign.

The laying of the cornerstone of the syna-gogue of the Congregation Hagro Anshei Vilna, Chicago, took place last Sunday.

The synagogue, when completed, will represent an expenditure of $150,000. It will provide accommodations for a community center and a Hebrew School. The congregation was organized thirty-three years ago with a membership of ten. It now numbers several hundred.

Addresses were made by Mayor William Hale Thompson, State’s Attorney Robert E. Crowe, Rabbi Haim Epstein, Rabbi Baruch Rabino-witz, Hymnn Berkson, J. Berkson, Dr. George K. Rosenzweig, Max Shulman, Meyer Abrams. Judge Samuel Heller and Samuel Ginsburg. Hyman Berkson is president of the Congregation.

Dr. Henry Spitzer, a gynecologist attached to the staff of Polytechnic Hospital, died Sunday night.

Born in Hungary in 1862, he came to America three years later. He obtained his A. B. degree at City College at the age of nineteen, and was graduated in medicine from New York University. He served in the Spanish-American War, was a member of the New York County and Harlem Medical Societies, and belonged to the Progressive Club and the Manhattan Chess Club.