Enlarged Interest in Jemish Culture in U.S. Reported at J.w.b.’s National Convention

Jewish community planning for leisure time and informal education projects reached a new level of activity and achievement throughout the country in 1949, with 325 Jewish Community Centers in more than 200 communities serving as the base of operations for that enterprise. The year also witnessed an unprecedented measure of expension in Center-conducted Jewish cultural projects and recreational services and programs for all age groups.

These developments were reported last night at the opening session of the biennial convention of the National Jewish Welfare Board at the Hotel Netherland Plaza here. The session, presided over by Frank L. Well, president of the organization, was devoted to a presentation of the ammual report. A panel, composed of the chairmen of five J.W.B. divisions, participated with Mr. Weil in the report presentation.

MEMBERSHIP IN JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTERS IS CLOSE TO 500,000

Membership in the 325 Jewish Community Centers affiliated with-the J.W.B. reached a record of 483,000 in 1949, it was stated by Mrs. Walter E. Heller, of Chicago, chairman of the J.W.B.’s Center Division. More than 11,500,000 persons attended Center activities in the course of the year, Mrs. Heller reported, describing the mass attendance figure as a 27 percent increase since 1947. The Centers employ close to 1,000 professionally trained workers and, in 1949, had an aggregate budget of almost $11,500,000, she declared.

Unmistakable signs of progress in “the development of a living, every-day kind of Judaism for American Jewish were noted by S.D. Gershovitz, J.W.B. executive director. He called attemtion to “the enlarging interest in Jewish culture and adult education, in no small measure a reflection of the expanding Jewish substance of Jewish Community Center programs and of the work of the J.W.B.-sponsored cultural councils.”

The J.W.B.’s Armed Services Division in 1949 operated in the United States through 146 local committees made up of thousands of volunteers, it was reported by Milton Weill, of New York, chairman of the division. Cultural, recreational, and religious activities for GI’s and hospitalized veterans, provided by those committees, attracted an aggregate attendance of 271,494. This program, Mr. Weill said, was in addition to “a world network of J.W.B. service to armed forces personnel. The division’s work in 1949 reached into 225 installations–Army, Navy, and Air Force–here and abroad, and was extended as well to 110 V.A. hospitals,” he added.

Rabbi Solomon B. Freehof, of Pittsburgh, chairman of the J.W.B.’s Division of Religious Activities, reported that in 1949 twenty-eight full-time Jewish chaplains “and a good-sized anxiliary corps–163 part-time Jewish chaplains” served eight branches of the federal government, presenting programs of a religious, welfare, and morale nature at 520 military installations and hospitals. Overseas, Rabbi Freehof stated, the division in 1949 continned to provide chaplaincy coverage with special emphasis on the Passover celebration and the High Holy Days.