One hundred and fifty orthodox rabbis, representing as many Jewish congregations in Greater New York, participated in a conference of the Agudath Ha’rabbonim (Union of Orthodox Rabbis) at which a resolution was adopted endorsing the United Jewish Campaign.
The conference, held at the Broadway Central Hotel, and presided over by Rabbi Israel Rosenberg, chairman of the Presidium of the Agudath Ha’rabbonim was attended by a large representation of the Orthodox Rabbis of New York City.
Jewish conditions in Europe are worse today than they were at any time during the World War, declared Rabbi Rosenberg in his opening address.
“Though our sons died on every battlefield,” he said, “they fell in war, they died at the hands of the enemy, nevertheless the Jews of Europe suffering untold misery, lived in the hope of the coming of peace and the dawn of a better day. Today again our sons and our daughters, our merchant princes and our philanthropists are dying–but now they die by their own hands, because they see no future, they have lost all hope.”
Felix M. Warburg, chairman of the Joint Distribution Committee stressed the necessity of sheltering the hundreds of thousands of Jewish orphans who he said, are roaming the streets of European cities because asylums have been compelled to close on account of the lack of funds for their maintenance He spoke of the importance of reopening the Jewish religious schools and institutions in Europe, because, he said it is as important to save the Jewish spirit as it is to rescue the Jewish body.
Besides proclaiming the United Jewish Campaign a sacred obligation resting upon all their co-religionists, the conference voted that every Rabbi should make a personal contribution to the campaign, and to place himself at the disposal of the city chairman. It was also voted that the campaign should be the only subject on which the Rabbi should preach beginning next Saturday and every Saturday until the middle of May.
David A. Brown and Rabbi Aaron Teitelbaum, secretary of the Agudath Ha’rabbonim, also addressed the conference.
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