Lack of Qualified Personnel for Jewish Communal Services Reported

Jewish communal services are “scraping the manpower barrel” for qualified personnel, Dr. Max F. Baer, director of the B’nai B’rith Youth Organization said here today. He emphasized that not enough of the Jewish community’s most promising young persons “are being attracted to careers in the Jewish community.”

Addressing an installation of officers’ meeting for five B’nai B’rith lodges and chapters, Dr. Baer said “there is more mediocrity apparent in applications for positions in Jewish agencies today than in any time in the past.” While Jewish young men and women are more likely to devote leisure hours to Jewish causes than their parents, they prefer to express their professional talents and interests elsewhere,” he stated. “We have failed to imbue our Jewish youth with the kind of zeal for a dedication to Jewish life that becomes a decisive factor in choosing a career,” he declared. He cited these two factors as contributing to the growing shortage in trained personnel:

1. A relatively feeble recruitment effort by Jewish agencies which is largely obscured by the “unprecedented glamorization” given to such fields as science and secular education; 2. The financial aid for training in Jewish communal professions are often outbid by scholarship and fellowship; offers of public agencies, private foundations and universities.

“What is required is greater alertness and more systematic effort in identifying Jewish professional leadership, a liberalization of training subsidies and greater ingenuity in motivating promising Jewish youngsters,” he pointed out.