J. W. B. Convention Denies Use of Jewish Centers to Communists

Policies which will affect American Jewish communal life in several vital areas were adopted here today at the closing session of the National Jewish Welfare Board biennial convention. Irving Edison of St. Louis was re-elected president of the organization for another two-year term.

The convention adopted a resolution asking the National Jewish Welfare Board to initiate an intensive review of experiences in local communities in regard to relationships between community centers and Jewish federations and welfare funds “as a basis for developing guiding principles which will help centers and Jewish community organization agencies to develop and maintain healthy working relationships essential to effective Jewish community life.”

The delegates adopted a statement on the use of center facilities which reads: “The facilities of the Jewish Community Center should be open to all groups whose purposes and objectives are in harmony with those of the center. Totalitarian groups, whether Communist, Fascist or others, are incompatible with Judaism and American democracy and with the purposes and principles of the center and should be denied the facilities of the center.”

The criteria for judging whether a group is totalitarian are: 1. Acknowledgment by the group itself of its totalitarian character, 2. Judicial determination to that effect, and 3. In the absence of either of these, the center’s own decision. “The center,” the statement reads, “should seek information in as calm, deliberate and dispassionate a manner as possible, and should be scrupulous to give any group under consideration full notice and an opportunity to be heard.”

Another statement adopted deals with public forums and controversial speakers in Jewish community centers. Making the point that “consideration of controversial public issues and the presentation of controversial speakers has their proper place in the center” and ” the principle of the open forum is basic to Jewish community center philosophy,” the statement outlines procedures and techniques of implementation. These include: a broadly representative committee: presentation of various points of view “when a controversial public issue is to be considered in a lecture or forum program”; the disavowal of center endorsement of the “expressions and views of any particular speaker” and the assertion that the center “presents all points of view as a matter of educational policy.” and calm and forceful judgment by the center in deciding whether to invite a particular proposed speaker who “is considered personally a controversial figure.”

The session also was marked by the presentation of the 1952 Frank L. Weil awards. Those honored were Mrs. Samuel R. Glogower of Detroit, for her “distinguished contribution to the advancement of the Jewish community center movement”; Mrs. Alfred R. Bachrach of New York, for her “distinguished contribution to the welfare of Jewish personnel in the United States armed forces,” and Maurice Samuel, author and lecturer, for his “distinguished contribution to the development of an American Jewish Culture.”