“While there had been no marked effect on Jewish communal services resulting from the integration crisis, there is a danger that in the desire to help solve the problems of integration, Jewish agencies may be too ready to sacrifice their valid sectarian character.”
This warning was voiced by Charles Miller, special planning director of the Federation of Jewish Agencies of Philadelphia, at a session of the 66th annual meeting of the National Conference of Jewish Communal Service which concludes here tomorrow. More than 1, 000 Jewish communal workers are attending the conference.
Mr. Miller warned that “any threat to this sectarianism is undemocratic and contrary to the best principles of cultural pluralism.” Noting that many Jewish agencies had nonsectarian policies and would continue to have them, he said “this does not prevent them from having a primary responsibility to serve the Jewish community and its members.”
“The major way in which Jewish agencies can maintain their sectarian character is to serve the cause of Jewish survival, strengthen Jewish community and cultural life, and maintain the integrity of the Jewish family,” he declared.
Another speaker at the session, Jacob H. Kravitz, executive director of the Jewish Welfare Federation of Dallas, said that “all sectarian and non-sectarian social welfare agencies” were now “facing the significance of the integration struggle and its impact on their services.”
He urged that Jewish welfare agencies “take the lead in examining this problem with agency staffs and boards, in keeping with the Jewish tradition of social Justice so that the ‘open door’ policy of social services shall exclude no one because of race, color or creed.” In the south, he pointed out, “the majority of Jewish communal services” have traditionally “combined Jewish purposes with non-sectarian service policies.”
RESULTS OF STUDY OF INTERESTS OF JEWISH TEEN-AGERS REPORTED
Victor D. Sanua reported on a study of Jewish teen-agers and their interests as related to membership in Jewish Centers. He said that about 50 per cent of the teen-agers joined Jewish Centers because of the Jewish auspices of the Center and that most adolescents regarded the Center primarily as a place to meet friends.
One-third of the respondents indicated they had no objection to dating non-Jews, one-third expressed reservations such as fears of “getting serious” about a non-Jewish date and one-third would not date non-Jews at all. More of the boys were inclined to date non-Jews.
Forty per cent of the boys and ten per cent of the girls aspired to a career in one of the major professions and 26 per cent of the girls mentioned teaching as their ambition. Girls spend their spare time in various social activities and boys engage in various sports activities. In Center programs, dances, social lounge activities and gymnastics received top ratings from the teen-agers.
Dr. Sanua said that very few of the youths expressed dissatisfaction with Center activities and staff and that it was possible that many answered in a manner they considered socially desirable. However, he added, most of those interviewed in the study returned to the Center for a second or successive year of membership.
A report on a national study of Jewish Young Adults showed that the typical Jewish young adult was well integrated in American society. Dr. Harry Specht of the Richmond, California Youth Project, also reported that the ties of the young adult to Jewishness and other Jews were mainly on the level of social activity. Group activities, such as large dances and parties which provide opportunities to meet members of the opposite sex are the chief basis of most group formations for such Jews.
At a session on Soviet anti-Semitism, Emanuel Muravchik, national director of the Jewish Labor Committee, said there were deep historical roots for anti-Semitism in Russia. He added that while it could not be said that there was purposeful planning of anti-Semitism by the Soviet Government, there were no efforts by that government to counteract anti-Semitism. Soviet leaders are disturbed by the desire of Jews to identify themselves as Jews, having assumed that such desires would disappear.
Dr. Hans. Rooker, director of the Russian and Eastern European Studies Center of the University of California in Los Angeles, said that whether Jewishness was defined religiously, culturally or ethnically, its expression in the Soviet Union was “nearly impossible.
Arnold Horelick of the Social Science Department of the Rand Corporation, told the session that the Soviet Government’s policy on anti-Semitism was based on expediency and on indifference and even hostility to Jews as a national and ethnic group. He asserted that the Soviet regime “probably is not deliberately creating anti-Semitism” but that it appeased anti-Semites and exploited anti-Semitism “to achieve objectives that are important to it.”
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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.
