J.w.b. Convention Urges Jewish Centers to Back Demands on Soviet Jewry

Declaring that “token concessions” made by the Soviet Union to Soviet Jewry “do not meet the expectations of world opinion, especially those of the Jewish community in America,” the National Jewish Welfare Board today unanimously adopted a resolution voicing its support of “minimal demands to restore the right of Soviet Jewry to live as Jews.”

This action was taken by the delegates at the closing session of the JWB Jubilee biennial convention, where the year-long celebration of the organization’s 50th anniversary was launched. In addition to the resolution on Soviet Jewry, the convention adopted resolutions dealing with the national shortage of professional social workers, the war on poverty, higher educational opportunities, disarmament, the Peace Corps and Vietnam.

Urging its affiliated Jewish community centers throughout the United States “to continue to give leadership and to cooperate with local groups in the effort to reduce the injustice done to Soviet Jewry,” JWB, which is a member of the American Jewish Conference on Soviet Jewry, stated that the minimal demands on behalf of Soviet Jewry are:

The restoration of Jewish schools and classes in Yiddish and Hebrew, which will make it possible for Soviet Jews to transmit their heritage to their children; the creation of unified central institutions to supervise the enhancement and expansion of Jewish educational and cultural life; the reunion of families dispersed during World War II and the Nazi occupation, and permission for thousands of Soviet Jews to rejoin their relatives in other countries; and the establishment of an institutional center to provide for the religious needs of Soviet Jews, including communication among congregations inside the USSR and between Soviet Jewry and Jewish communities abroad.

LOUIS STERN REELECTED J.W.B. PRESIDENT; REPORTS ON VIETNAM WORK

Louis Stern, of South Orange, N.J., was elected to a two-year term as president of the National Jewish Welfare Board at the convention. He had served as president since January 1966, to fill the vacancy created by the death of his predecessor Mrs. Florence G. Heller. Mr. Stern was president of the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds, and is now co-chairman of the Interreligious Committee Against Poverty.

Reporting to the 800 delegates on the impact of the Viet Nam war on JWB services, he said the organization was able to reassign staff and resources “almost automatically.” He reported also that a new chaplaincy retention program will be started to attract Jewish career chaplains, and announced that a conference on the Jewish cultural arts will be held soon.

The new JWB president said that his organization has to move forward in helping to solve the manpower crisis, in strengthening services to the armed forces and veterans, in building an American Jewish culture, in conducting extensive research projects, and in setting priorities to assure that the most essential needs in its fields of service are met within the boundaries of its resources.

AMBASSADOR GOLDBERG WARNS ON DANGER OF LOSS OF JEWISH IDENTITY

Arthur J. Goldberg, United States Ambassador to the United Nations, hailed last night the “dramatic progress” in the postwar era toward “the breakdown of anti-Semitic barriers” in “virtually every segment of American society,” but added a warning that this gain posed the danger of loss of Jewish identity among American Jews.

Speaking at the banquet session of the convention, he said that the dropping of such barriers was “a wonderful historical trend” for which all America should rejoice and that he believed it would continue. Then he added the warning that “as this trend continues, it brings on another problem for American Jewry — one which we have faced for a long time but perhaps never on so large a scale: the danger of losing our identity as Jews, or of seeing that identity so watered down that we begin to forget who we are and whence we came.”

Citing the concern of many Jewish organizations “about the support and involvement of Jewish intellectuals.” the Ambassador suggested that the answer was probably not for the organizations to become less Jewish and more secular “but, on the contrary, in their reaffirming their Jewish heritage. Perhaps the way to make the Jewish intellectual feel at home in Jewish communal life is not to de-emphasize but rather to reaffirm that which is most universal in our heritage.” He also declared that, if American Jewry “is a vital force, it must prove that vitality among the young people who are tomorrow’s leaders. Perhaps too many of today’s Jewish youth programs are aimed at making the young people grow up to be just like their parents — instead of encouraging them to find their own style and their own modes of expression.”

He cautioned the present American adult Jewish generation against setting itself up as a model “for the succeeding generation.” “Our real message to them,” he said, “is not in our own sterling virtues, nor in our activities but in something far deeper — the Jewish heritage, whose prophetic tradition should be a model and inspiration for the idealist and the reformer of tomorrow.”

He proposed “new forme of cooperation” in American Jewish life “to replace some of the competing efforts of today and to bring all of the doctrinal divisions of the Jewish community into a single national effort.” While such a united approach would be hard to achieve, he asserted, “it might offer the most effective way to survey emerging needs, to set priorities, and to mobilize the necessary money and talent.”

ESTABLISHMENT OF CONFERENCE OF EXECUTIVES OF JEWISH GROUPS URGED

The establishment of a Conference of Executives of Major Jewish Organizations was proposed by Sanford Solender, executive vice-president of the National Jewish Welfare Board at the convention. The major deficiency in American Jewish life, he said, is that “most American Jews are without knowledge of their rich heritage, without appreciation of the contemporary relevancy of this heritage, and without significant Jewish experience.”

“Serious though this situation is,” he said, “Jewish organizations have given curiously little indication of a united response to the challenge which it poses. This is a problem which affects every Jewish institution committed to an affirmative Jewish life. The synagogue, the school, the Jewish Community Center or Y, the Federation, the national Jewish youth organizations and others are vitally related to it. Nonetheless, most travel an independent road in trying to cope with this situation, often without knowledge of or even regard for what the others are doing.”

Mr. Solender said: “As a first step, the executive heads of each of the organizations should convene to consider avenues for joint activity. Cut of such sober consultation by the distinguished professional leaders of our organizations can surely emerge the beginnings of a shared approach to this problem. There are several pressing needs which beg for such collective endeavor.”

Rabbi Joseph H. Lookstein told the convention that, unless there will be one Jewish institution on whom the Jewish community can depend and from whom there can emanate a creative Jewish life, “little else that we do will matter.” “That institution,” he said, “is the Jewish school. Jewish education is not only for children, it is for adults, too. And this is where Jewish Community Centers and YM and YWHAs can do a job.”