The 37th biennial council of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, which closed last night, reelected Robert F. Goldman as president. Other officers elected are Adolph Rosenberg, Cincinnati, board chairman; Jacob W. Mack, Cincinnati, Harry N. Gottlieb, Chicago, Eugene Strassburger, Pittsburgh, and Frederick S. Greenman, New York, vice-presidents, and Herbert C. Oettinger, Cincinnati, treasurer.
Charles P. Kramer, New York, was elected president of the National Federation of Temple Brotherhoods. Arthur Straus, Chicago, was chosen chairman of the Jewish Chataqua Society. A National Association of Temple Secretaries was formed which elected Irving Katz, Detroit, as president.
Following an impassioned debate, the delegates to the Union convention adopted a resolution expressing deep regret and disappointment that the General Jewish Council’s objectives, envisaged in Pittsburgh in 1938, had not been realized and called upon the four major Jewish agencies to join together in another effort to constitute a national body for defense, to include lay religious leaders. The resolution provided for a Union committee, together with a committee of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, to take steps to achieve this objective.
Another resolution urged maximum support of the embattled democracies and endorsed aid to Britain through the Jewish Section of the Interfaith Committee for Aid to the Democracies. The action followed an appeal by Rabbi Maurice Perlzweig, chairman of the British Section of the World Jewish Congress.
Other resolutions pledged support of the United States defense program, expressed sympathy with Jewish and non-Jewish victims of the ravages of war, denounced Nazism, Fascism and Communism and recommended to constituent congregations that they welcome refugees into religious fellowship.
At the convention banquet last night, James Marshall, president of the New York City Board of Education, declared that the triumph of democracy demanded rejection of the worship of false gods. He appealed for a moral fiber created out of fearless inspection of the truth to distinguish a democratic victory from an autocratic victory.
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