Conference of Rabbis and Social Workers Discusses Mutual Cooperation

“Jews are sharing in the ‘population explosion’ of our times, and are safely past the danger of possible extinction which existed in the last 20 years,” Dr. Salo W. Baron, a lending-Jewish historian, last night told an audience of over 400 rabbis and social workers.

Dr. Baron, director of the Center of Israeli studies at Columbia University, delivered the keynote address at a conference of rabbis and social workers called to promote “greater understanding and more fruitful cooperation between the rabbi and the Jewish social worker” The conference was held under the auspices of the Commission on Synagogue Relations of the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York.

“Twenty years ago there existed real problems of the possible annihilation of the Jewish people by world anti-Semitic movements. For a time there also loomed the biological menace of extinction through a decline in population, owing to a decreasing birth rate such as we witnessed in the 1930’s,” Dr. Baron declared.

“This danger, too, has passed and the Jews are sharing in what has come to be called the ‘population explosion’ of our times. The only question really is, how the surviving Jews will shape their religion and culture so that it should be as meaningful to the future generations as the older forms of the Jewish faith have been to their ancestors,” Dr. Baron said.

Rabbi Judah Nadich denied that there need be any conflict between religious and social welfare leaders. “The time has perhaps come now.” he said, “to stop whipping a dead horse, to call a halt to mutual recrimination–that the American rabbi and synagogue are eager to gain a monopoly over Jewish life in all its aspects, and that the Jewish community center generated speedy assimilation with its workers antagonistic to Jewish survival.”

Dr. Morton Teicher, dean of the Yeshiva University School of Social Work, the first university-based social work program under Jewish auspices, discussed the importance of special training for Jewish communal service and of collaboration between rabbis and professionals in this field.

Dr. Louis Linn, attending psychiatrist at Mt. Sinal Hospital, called the religions leader “an indispensable member of the treatment team” in cases of mental illness. “The psychiatrist, the psychologist, the social caseworker, and members of allied disciplines need his help. Just as he needs theirs to round out his own contributions to the community.” he said, “Further, it has become apparent that the religious leader participated in the total treatment program in a specific way.”