Plans for the future of Reform Judaism in America will be drawn up at the five-day 80th anniversary convention of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations which opened here today with some 2,000 delegates from all parts of the United States in attendance. The delegates represent 465 congregations. Two organizational affiliates of the UAHC, the National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods and the National Association of Temple Secretaries, are meeting concurrently with the parent body.
Dr. Samuel S. Hollender, general chairman of the Combined Campaign of the UAHC and Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, announced at the opening session that $1,000,000 had been collected from Reform congregations and individuals as an anniversary gift to the Reform movement. Presenting the $1,000,000 check to the convention, he revealed that half the total would go to the UAHC and half to the college.
In the course of his opening address, Dr. Maurice N. Eisendrath, president of the UAHC, recommended to the assembly the formation of a national commission which would bring unaffiliated Jews into the synagogue; the expansion of adult education projects; the creation of summer camps for the extension of religious schools courses; and the standardization of religious practices among Jewish groups.
He also called upon the American Jewish community “in this dark hour of encirclement, of ever more foreboding encroachment, and of religious as well as physical need,” to offer “the utmost of our material and spiritual aid” to the State of Israel.
In a message sent to the biennial convention, President Eisenhower declared: “I am very happy to salute the Union of American Hebrew Congregations on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of its founding. As the oldest Jewish religious national association in America, your great growth as a religious movement in the last decade is a heartening sign of an increasing awareness of the need for spiritual values.
“Your 80th anniversary and the tenth anniversary of the accession to leadership of your president, Dr. Maurice N. Eisendrath, coincide with the beginning of the observance of 300 years of Jewish life in America. Over these centuries, every new house of worship, every well-filled sanctuary, has served as another great citadel of that broad and deep faith in man’s dignity which is freedom’s strength.”
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