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Defense League, Philadelphia Jcrc in Standoff on Discussing Jdl’s Plans for City

October 29, 1969
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Efforts by officials of the Jewish Defense League and leaders of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Philadelphia to arrange a meeting to discuss the prospective role of the JDL in this city were unsuccessful, the Jewish Times reports. The weekly declared that an impasse developed over the time and place for a meeting.

Nathan Agran, a JCRC executive, and Rabbi Harold Novoseller, pro-tem JDL chairman here, discussed a meeting on the telephone but both declined to “visit each other’s proposed meeting places,” the weekly reported. The two men exchanged “regret letters” but Mr. Agran added that the JCRC would meet with JDL officials at any time and place specified in the future. Rabbi Novoseller was quoted as having said that the JDL would meet with the JCRC if “the latter had a change of heart.”

Rabbi Novoseller told the Jewish Exponent, another weekly, that Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder and head of the JDL, made a second visit to Philadelphia, addressing more than 100 persons at an organizational meeting held at the Young Israel of Oxford Circle. Rabbi Novoseller said Rabbi Kahane spoke for two hours on the need for a JDL chapter here and how to organize one. He reported also that JDL chapter chairmen were named at the meeting to serve in various parts of the city and Montgomery County and said that chapter chairmen had been named on the campuses of Pennsylvania University, La Salle College, Community College, Central High School and Akiba Academy, a day school. He asserted also that chapters were being formed in Wynnefield, Overbrook Park, Havertown, and Montgomery County and that the Philadelphia JDL unit had “about 200 members.”

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