Frank L. Weil was re-elected president of the National Jewish Welfare Board, and Judge Irving Lehman was re-elected honorary president at the Twenty-Fifth annual conference of the J.W.B. which concluded its three-day session here today, after listening to a number of reports on Jewish participation in the wartime welfare services.
Major General Phillipson, commanding officer of the Second Corps Area, speaking at the conference declared that the work of the Board and other USO agencies “was invaluable” in terms of army morale. If there were no such organizations, the army would have to create them, the general said.
Dr. David de Sola Pool, chairman of the Board’s Committee on Religious Activities, discussed the role of the Army chaplain and the work of the Committee. “The army chaplain,” he declared, ” has the responsibility of maintaining morale at its highest level, preventing the men from becoming mere mechanized soldiers, helping them to be men with souls, men with a sense of dignity, trying to find some high purpose in all this world of evil.” Dr. Pool said that so far 350 civilian rabbis had applied for posts as army chaplains, while many have waited their right to deferment and jointed the army as privates.
Mr. Walter Rothschild, chairman of the Board’s National Army and Navy Committee, said that “the USO, of which the Board is a member agency, in its conception is a great and noble endeavor, and we hope that with the increased realization by the American public of the deep significance that underlies its character it will meet with their approval.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
