Proposals for the most effective organization and coordination of Jewish community relations work in the United States and for financing of the community relations field will be debated and acted upon at the Plenary Session of the National Community Relations Advisory Council which starts on September 6th in Atlantic City, it was announced here today.
About 150 delegates from the six national organizations and the twenty-seven community councils which comprise the N.C.R.A.C. are expected to gather for the session.
The proposals to come before the session are the outcome of a study process initiated some three years ago. Publication in 1951 of a report by Professor Robert I. MacIver, Columbia University sociologist, after a ten-months survey focused attention on the study process.
A Special Committee on Evaluative Studies of the N.C.R.A.C., including representatives of the Large City Budgeting Conference-which comprises the federations and welfare funds of the largest cities was directed by the last plenary session of the N.C.R.A.C. in November 1951 to develop specific recommendations for joint program planning which should have as its objective “the development of integrated program for the field as a whole, with logical and practical division of labor among national agencies, within the framework of generally accepted policy.”
At the same time, the plenary session directed a joint committee of the L.C.B.C. and the N.C.R.A.C. to develop a plan for financing of the community relations field that would “relate financing to the joint planning of program, so that the total funds available for national community relations activities will be distributed on the basis of the entire program of activity.”
The Special Committee on Evaluative Studies has adopted a report calling for division among the national agencies, with each having a distinctive responsibility for a functional area of the entire Jewish community relations field. This report, which will be presented to the plenary session, has been the subject of controversy, the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith having expressed strong opposition to some of its central recommendations.
The member organizations include the American Jewish Committee, American Jewish Congress, Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, Jewish Labor Committee, Jewish War Veterans, Union of American Hebrew Congregations and Jewish councils in Akron, Baltimore, Boston, Bridgeport, Brooklyn, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, Essex County, N. J., Hartford, Indiana, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Minnesota, New Haven, Norfolk, Oakland, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Rochester, St. Louis, the Southwest, San Francisco, Washington, D. C., and Youngstown.
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