The General Assembly of the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds at its concluding session here adopted a resolution urging the Council to expand its fact-finding service “so that a maximum of available information on agency programs, financial expense and agency needs can be provided to local communities.”
The resolution, which was adopted unanimously, recommends that the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds provide:
1. Audited financial reports on all national and overseas agencies and uniform methods of accounting; such reports to be prepared by the national and overseas agencies, or at the option of the Council, by its own auditors.
2. Reports on areas of overlapping service by existing or new agencies.
3. Detailed description of services now being performed, and the areas of service not now being provided.
The delegates attending the Assembly pledged themselves to recommend to their respective communities to provide sufficient funds for the Council to implement the above service.
JEWISH COMMUNITY PLANNING FOR FUTURE URGED BY LURIE
Reporting on the activities of the Council, H.L. Lurie, executive director, pointed out that while there were only 40 Jewish federations and welfare funds in 1930, there is now some form of central Jewish organization in over 300 cities.
“We are at the beginning of the period when the emphasis of Council services night properly be not on the achievement of local organization, but the achievement of organization in relation to the changing problems of our time,” he said. “This is the period for courageous planning for the future. We are certainly justified in hoping that some of the unsolved Jewish problems both here and abroad, which still lie as an incubus upon us, will gradually be solved by the operation of general political and social factors, and that these solutions will restore more normal conditions for Jews in Europe, in Palestine and in this country.
“We have passed through the most catastrophic period in our history, and we may be said to be suffering from the shock reactions of our time. There are parallel aspects of conflicts and uncertainties in the world at large, both here and abroad. The tendency for groups to work cooperatively to solve their problems is more intrinsic than the opposite tendency toward group dissension,” Mr. Lurie declared.
JEWISH INSTITUTIONS SPENT $10,000,000 ON EDUCATION IN 1945
Judge Louis E. Levinthal reported a marked trend toward the intensification of Jewish religious education in the United States. Pointing out that Jewish educational institutions have spent more than $10,000,000 in 1945, he predicted an even greater expansion this year. Many communities, he declared, have increased their appropriation for this purpose by more than 50 percent.
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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.
