Dangers of over-organization and over-expansion of agencies opposing persecution abroad were pointed out today by Joseph C. Hyman, executive director of the Joint Distribution Committee, addressing the thirty-eighth annual meeting of the Conference of Jewish Social Welfare.
Mr. Hyman said that progress was achieved through coordinating movements motivated by differing philosophies rather than by enforced uniformity. He hailed the establishment of the Joint Consultative Council of the American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Congress and B’nai B’rith as an example of the benefits of coordination.
“When the whole framework of civilization is being torn asunder by malignant forces, those responsible for leadership of Jewish organizational life have the inescapable obligation to consult and advise and, wherever possible, to collaborate, Mr. Hyman said.
Describing the coordination of Jewish relief, he said that “almost in every country where emigrants from Germany have found a refuge there has evolved after much trial and error a central committee, or at least a recognized committee on refugee aid, training, settlement and immigration service.”
The second day of the conference was devoted primarily to trend integrating national Jewish action groups with the community and center programs, and the tendencies toward coordination of the overseas relief programs.
Morris D. Waldman, secretary of the American Jewish Committee, urged Jews to resist efforts from without and within to “blind us with emotions and confuse us with demagogic slogans.” He condemned Fascism and other anti-Semitic manifestations here and abroad, and counselled maintenance of a rational perspective.
“The noisy symptoms of anti-Semitism need concern us less than the larger task of immunizing the public mind and building up resistance to the virus of group hatred, “Mr. Waldman said.
Rabbi Milton Steinberg, of New York, urged utilization of any land open to Jewish immigration, but saw Palestine as offering the most complete solution to social problems for the Jew entering there. “Palestine is the one land open to relatively large scale immigration,” he said.
Rabbi Steinberg declared that Palestine offered a richer Judaism even for the American Jews of “positive action and program radically different from the moral tones, philanthropy and negativism of self-defense.”
Other sessions were concerned with the function and results of research in community planning, institutional child care and care of the aged trends, and development of leadership in the centers’ group work. At general sessions this afternoon Solomon Lowenstein, of New York, presided, while Harry Greenstein, director of the Associated Jewish Charities of Baltimore, presided in the evening.
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