Leniency in Jewish Youth Education Hit at New Orleans Convention

Leniency in Jewish youth education was attacked today at a discussion meeting of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, which is holding its 35th council at the Hotel Roosevelt here in conjunction with allied temple brotherhoods’ and sisterhoods’ groups.

Dr. Samuel M. Blumenfield, Chicago, declared that “the whims and caprices of youth are too often the guiding element. So jittery and apologetic is our attitude that we permit oven vulgarities to pass for education in coddling and sheltering youth, ” he said.

Lester B. Cohn, Nashville, said that “we people of the book are in danger of becoming a bookless people.” Rabbi Leon Fram, Detroit, advocated formal adult classes.

The Federation of Temple Sisterhoods opened its twelfth biennial assembly this morning with a discussion on “Educating through Sisterhood for the Modern World.” Mrs. Leon L. Watters, New York, president, presided over discussions in the afternoon, with Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver scheduled to preside at a discussion tonight on ” The Synagogue and the Non-Jewish World.”

LAZARON HITS WORLD JEWISH CONGRESS “DOMINATION”

In a sermon yesterday morning, Rabbi Morris S. Lazaron, of Baltimore, sharply attacked the World Jewish Congress. He said:

” It is time for us emphatically and publically to repudiate a group which refuses to cooperate except on its own terms, prates of democratic control and is dominated by imitation Jewish fuehrers. I yield to no one, not even Zionist Organization officials, in loyalty to Palestine reconstruction, but there has been overemphasis on political nationalism.”

Referring to the threat of war and fascism, Rabbi Lazaron declared the choice was not between communism and fascism, but communism and fascism on the one hand and democracy on the other.

“Jew-baiting,” he said, “is an obsession Jews do not suffer alone. Protestants, Catholics, liberals, all are victims. We dare not surrender to the Hitler philosophy. The Jew is the symbol of the struggle for civic and religious freedom.”

On Friday, Jacob W. Mack, Cincinnati, chairman of the Union’s executive board pleaded for a Jewish unity which would be spiritual as well as practical, asserting at the same time the right of the individual Jew to do his own thinking. The rabbi and layman must cooperate, he said, in the matter of “spokesmanship” for the synagogues on important present-day issues.

“For 2,000 years we have maintained a religion without the trappings of a hierarchy,” he said. “In the synagogue we have all been laymen and this wise provision we should never abandon. The rabbi should not relinquish the right to prophecy, but where the opinion and action of the congregation are involved, and this applies equally where a conference of rabbis of a Union of Congregations is involved, the layman should not relinquish his responsibility.”

Since the destiny of “all who dare to think and speak and act independently” is oppression, said Mr. Mack, “we Jews should not ask to be shielded from this fate. Such treatment is not a badge of shame but a crown of glory.”