Jewish Welfare Board Honors Judge Lehman

Tribute was paid to Judge Irving Lehman for his devotion to Jewish youth, education and the community center movement at a dinner last night in the Hotel Astor honoring him for his fifteen years as president of the Jewish Welfare Board and his sixtieth birthday. More than 750 persons attended.

Speakers were Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau Jr., who made his first appearance at a dinner in New York in three years. Felix M. Warburg, who presided, Dr. Cyrus Adler, president of the American Jewish Committee; Harry L. Glucksman, executive director of the board; Leon J. Obermayer of Philadelphia, former Supreme Court Justice Joseph M. Proskauer and Sol M. Stroock.

A resolution of the board’s executive was presented to Judge Lehman lauding him for his loyalty to Judaism and declaring, “His is the principle that sound Jewish community life may be so organized that Jews of all shades of opinion may participate in its free process of expression and realization.”

The dinner concluded the annual meeting of the board’s national council at which a plan was approved to bring the 300,000 members of the 316 Jewish centers throughout the country into closer touch with the board by issuing uniform membership cards, insignia and by other devices. A national newspaper is also contemplated.

Other resolutions were adopted announcing a $100,000 campaign in behalf of the board, of which $20,000 has already been raised, urging Jewish centers to aid educational and cultural activities to their program and to aid the cause of Jewish education.

The convention marked a departure in that about half of the more than 900 representatives of the board’s constituent and affiliated organizations were youths from Jewish centers. One of the young delegates unexpectedly offered a resolution opposing the National Youth Administration and supporting the contemplated American Youth Act. Judge Lehman ruled the resolution out of order as “outside the board’s scope of work.”

The following were elected members of the executive committee: Hugo Piesen, New York; Simeon Gottschall, New York; Dr. Cyrus Adler, Philadelphia; Harry J. Applestein, Pittsburgh; Harry Lesser, St. Louis; Jacob M. Loeb, Chicago; Michael A. Stavitsky, Newark; Frank L. Weil, New York; Jacob L. Wiseman, Boston and Morris Wolf, Philadelphia.

Speakers during the day were Dr. Frank Kingdon, president of the University of Newark; Rabbi Milton Steinberg, Dr. Adler, who reported as chairman of the Army and Navy Committee and Judge Lehman, who gave the president’s report.

Rabbi Steinberg stressed the function of the Jewish community center in the transmission and preservation of Jewish traditions. Declaring that “Jews are perplexed about their Jewishness,” he said that “for the center to neglect that fact would lead to an incomplete service to those who turn to the center for guidance.”