A report reviewing the rapid growth of central Jewish community organizations during the last 25 years as one of the outstanding developments in American Jewish life was made public here today by H.L. Lurie, executive director of the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds.
Mr. Lurie points out that 54 communities had functioning central agencies in 1925. Within a span of 25 years the number of communal units has grown to over 300 serving 800 cities and towns with some Jewish population. Paralleling this growth of organization, there was also an unprecedented increase in the dollars contributed to Jewish programs and services–“from an estimated $24,000,000 in 1925 to a figure nearly ten times as great in 1949,” the C.J.F.W.F. executive director emphasizes.
These significant developments in central organizations, Mr. Lurie explains, were brought to light in a recent study conducted by the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds on intermediate cities with Jewish population ranging from 5,000 to 40,000. The Council previously studies communities over 40,000. The inquiry revealed that there is a definite trend today toward broadening the scope of central organizations. They are increasingly becoming concerned not only with fund raising, but with community planning as well.
“As Jewish needs increased concurrently with lack of expansion of community chest funds, local service agencies, especially those with cultural or sectarian objectives, turned to the Jewish welfare funds for their maintenance and growth,” Mr. Luris states. “Thus, the central Jewish organization is becoming, more and more, the responsible financing instrument for local Jewish services.”
NEW AREAS OF LOCAL RESPONSIBLITIES ASSUMED BY JEWISH AGENCIES
New areas of local responsibilities have been assumed by Jewish central agencies, Mr. Lurie continues, pointing out that they include programs of Jewish education, internal and external community relations, vocational agencies, free-loan societies, community newspapers, arbitration and organizations for dealing with communal problems of kashruth. One of the most significant developments in present Jewish communal life, he declares, is the increasing interest which local central agencies are showing in the programs and policies of the national and overseas agencies which seek their support.
“The desire for more intensive local participation in guiding the nature and extent of national programs has been sharpened by the overwhelming overseas need, by the increasing demands of national agency programs, as well as by the pressures for the continuing support of essential local services,” Mr. Lurie says.
“The conviction is growing in local communities that they should devote to programs and budgets of national and overseas agencies the same kind of careful analysis and evaluation to which local needs and budgets are subjected. Central community organizations are now developing procedures for greater understanding and improved relationships between national agencies and local communities. In this area the work of national committees of the C.J.F.W.F. has assumed increasing importance.”
This expansion of community responsibility engendered a parallel growth in the participation of the various social and cultural groups in the affairs of the central Jewish organization, Mr. Lurie declares. “Where the central organization enters upon programs touching the basic interests of all groups, increased participation has followed,” he says. “An example of this is the high index of community participation in the overall campaigns of recent years seeking funds for the whole gamut of local, national and overseas causes.”
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