Kohs Reviews Atlantic City Parley

Dr. Samuel C. Kohs, psychologist and member of the Graduate School for Jewish Social Work, reviews in the following article the sessions of the National Conference of Jewish Social Service, the National Association of Jewish Center Executives and the National Council for Jewish Education, held jointly in Atlantic City Ist week. Mr. Kohs is an authority on psychology, and has given courses on the subject in several universities.

To record one’s impressions of a seven-day conference representing the deliberations of some dozen different groups in the limited space available is indeed a gargantuan task. The assignment is undertaken with due humility. It is hoped that both the reader and those who participated in the Atlantic City conference will be charitable with any omissions or possible misinterpretations.

The subject matter submitted to and discussed by the conference may be divided into four divisions: (1) Concerning social work techniques, social work processes, and the evaluations of these in terms of improved services for those we try to help. (2) Concerning the relations between these various methods and the various problems of Jewish life.

Perhaps more effectively than in any other year the members of the National Conference of Jewish Social Service, the National Association of Jewish Center Executives and the National Council for Jewish Education were successful in integrating their joint programs so that at various points they all made their contributions to the main theme of the sessions: “The Social and Economic Adjustment of the Jewish People in the United States.”

In the family welfare field there were discussions regarding private and public social work relationships. It was clearly indicated that although the maximum utilization should be made of existing public resources, the Jewish relief and family service societies have a definite responsibility to carry on and to adjust their field of essential usefulness to those phases of Jewish family welfare work not being met by tax-supported agencies. Although the demand for meeting the entire relief need was not exclusively an obligation of the Jewish relief society, it was indicated that there were many needed services which could be carried or developed which would supply much needed wants in the work with Jewish families.

Interest was also manifested in the measurement and evaluation of family social service in order to determine improvements in social service methods. These improvements would not alone save time and energy, but far beyond that would bring more immediate, better and more effective services to clients suffering from various maladjustments.

Other sections discussed child care, health, the care of the aged and delinquency. In each of these instances it was evident that regardless of the changes which have occurred in the past five years in the increase of public funds for the care of these groups, the needs of the Jewish community have remained practically the same. Financing has become more difficult and wherever possible public funds should be drawn upon to supplement existing income of Jewish organizations.

PROBLEMS OF JEWISH LIFE

To the specific questions affecting Jewish life in America, its preservation, its enrichment and advancement, the Jewish Center and the Jewish Education groups directly and effectively applied themselves. The evident failure of assimilation as a practical way out for the Jew did not have to be overemphasized. The alternative course of strengthening the forces making for an intelligent, cooperative, effectively self-expressive Jewry was self-evident.

The conference on Jewish relations reported its interest in securing facts about Jewish life in America which would serve as a paucity of information which paralyzes much constructive effort at this time was deplored.

On the whole, there was very little omitted from the rather complicated and involved diagnosis of all these experts to explain why American Jewry is so sick today. The X-ray charts, the clinical thermometer readings, and the results of various observations regarding the patient were there in rather large number.

The tragedy of it all is the absence of a clear-cut, unified, constructive, acceptable and practical program for the reconstruction of Jewish life in America.

NEW ISSUE INTRODUCED

Perhaps greater progress might have been made this year except for the introduction of a new issue: Which must come first-the solution of the economic problem or the concentration upon the development of a better program of adjustment to the status quo and the strengthening of Jewish life under those conditions to the best possible extent?

The advocates of the former view argued that without a radical reconstructing of our social and economic order there is no hope for Jewish perpetuation on a self-respecting basis. The latter insisted that regardless of the social order which now functions or will come to function later we must face our daily task of carrying on and strengthening the efforts making for the preservation of our people on the best possible level.

These are problems of internal organization, management and control. If social reform is necessary, be it through the ordinary channels of social legislation, be it Communism or any other form of political action that should be left to social reformers and political movements and should not be the direct concern of social workers, community center workers or Jewish educators.

This brings the writer to the discussion of the participation of the younger members of the conference, which produced considerable heat and we hope some light.

THE YOUNGER GROUP

It was quite evident this year that a significant portion of the younger group in the conference presented an organized opposition based on clearly defined dissatisfaction with the ideology of the older, the more conservative group. These were reflected not alone in the discussion on how to go about reconstructing Jewish life in America but also on the matter of political action on a national and international scale.

At one point, their arguments were charged as being “sugarcoated pills of Communism.” This, however, was belligerently refuted by many of the members of this group. Associated with this desire for political action was the developing program for self-protection which perhaps has shown the largest growth on the eastern seaboard.

The basic assumptions underlying the organization of protective groups for the rank and file social workers is the lack of confidence in the executives of agencies to secure the workers’ rights; the feeling that board members keep down the wage level and are ruthless on salary cuts and other personnel practices; the certainty that without effective organization and protest the cause of workers will be no one’s cause; and finally that the interests of the rank and file of social workers are identical with the interests of the working class as a whole, in contradistinction to the capitalist class and its hangers-on.

The conflicts which developed cannot remain quiescent until the next year’s conference. Some methods will have to be developed during the year looking toward a basis for the satisfactory cooperation of both the older and these younger members of the conference, so that the constructive possibilities of this organization will not be seriously impaired.

Reports of efforts for the Jewish populations of Palestine, Germany and other European countries were made. Although the tremendous resources of the war years are no longer available for the reconstruction of Jewish life necessary in foreign lands, substantial results, however, were being achieved. In many respects the suffering of our people overseas in these depression years are as great if not greater than in the days of the war catastrophe. The full and adequate support of current appeals will in great measure relieve the tragedies now being re-enacted on a more oppressive scale.

It is to be regretted that larger numbers of significant lay people and rabbis do not participate in these annual deliberations. The splendid publicity given these meetings by the Jewish Daily Bulletin, for which it deserves special commendation, may awaken a greater interest in what is undoubtedly American Jewry’s most important deliberative body.