Conference of Jewish Communal Workers Discusses Community Problems

The 67th annual meeting of the National Conference of Jewish Communal Service opened here today with an address by Dr. Ben Halpern, professor of Near Eastern and Judaic studies at Brandeis University, urging American Jews to set up a method to arrive at “a Jewish consensus of matters of public policy.”

Addressing the more than 1, 000 Jewish professional workers in welfare, health, education and other communal services who gathered here from all parts of the country for a four-day conclave, Dr. Halpern said that the 5, 500, 000 American Jews must establish some way to reach basic agreement among themselves on issues involving their relationships with American society as a whole. He warned that if they do not achieve this consensus the Jewish community may be subjected to powerful disruptive forces “which could quite conceivably tear it apart, dissolve its union, or cause it to lose or cast off its outer members.”

Dr. Halpern thus revived an issue that has been debated intermittently for many years among American Jews and insisted that the matter has now become urgent. His address marked the opening of a consideration of “Sectarianism and the Jewish Community in the American Society Today,” the main theme of the conference. The sessions will cover the whole range of Jewish welfare work and communal service at home and abroad.

OPTIMISM VOICED ON POSSIBILITY OF DEVELOPMENT OF JEWISH EDUCATION

Louis L. Kaplan, president of the Baltimore Hebrew College, called for the development of a program of Jewish education for the total Jewish community. He examined the sociological and psychological forces influencing current structures and programs for Jewish education; the changes that are taking place and will take place in structure, policy, program and financing; and the challenge to planning leadership.

“Given the skill and devotion with which American Jews organized for fund-raising, for medical care and social services, for providing splendid architectural buildings to house our synagogues and in recent years two universities, we can develop a program of Jewish education for the total Jewish community worthy of our past and bearing the promise of a creative and dignified future,” he said. He pointed out that American Jewish education today has a powerful ally in Israel in its efforts to transform Jewish life.

Mr. Kaplan called for moving forward “out of the present wilderness of Jewish illiteracy” in the midst of higher levels of general education. He said it made no sense to build beautiful synagogues so that Jews may come into them for all sorts of secular social activity or to pray to a “cosmic bell-hop” with no transformation of character resulting from the experience of prayer.

FEDERAL AID TO EDUCATION DEFENDED; OPPONENTS CRITICIZED

Dr. Eleazar Goelman, dean of Gratz College, and president of the National Council of Jewish Education, strongly criticized the Jewish groups which continue to oppose the Federal Aid to Education Act which provides funds for education in both public and religious schools of educationally disadvantaged children from families earning less than $2, 000 a year.

Describing 1965 as a turbulent year for both American general and Jewish education, he said that the controversy around the Federal aid to education bill seems to have subsided with the enactment of the bill by a large majority in both houses of Congress. “However, some Jewish bodies, for lack of a positive program,” he said, “vowed to continue to oppose the act. Other groups, who until recently were antagonistic to the proposed law, are now crowding government offices pretending to represent Jewish day school education and insisting on having a hand in implementing the act, which they still cannot stomach.”

Dr. Goelman pointed out that the National Council for Jewish Education overwhelmingly endorsed the elementary and secondary education bill while it was still pending. He added that “this unprecedented action on the part of the NCJE” entitles its leader ship which, he said, represents the Jewish education profession of all shades and tendencies, to call upon dissenting organizations to “call a halt to misjudgment and misrepresentation.”

“It is not in the interests of America, nor to the benefit of the American Jewish community that they act as self-appointed guardians of democracy.” he said. He predicted the Federal Education Act will be followed by bills in various states aimed at servicing private schools by allowing them grants for textbooks and transportation.

“New horizons are opening up for the continued development of Jewish day schools,” he said. “There is no reason whatever why these schools should not take advantage of the great opportunities offered to them by the emerging great society.”

Bernard Postal, director of public information of the National Jewish Welfare Board, said he believed the time has come for American Jewish communities to train personnel for positions in communal public relations and communications posts. He was joined in the discussion by Henry W. Levy, president of the American Jewish Public Relations Society; Roman Slobodin, public relations director of the Philadelphia Federation of Jewish Agencies and others.