Rising Center Budgets Noted at Welfare Board Conference

the Jews in the CCC as well as in the army and navy an opportunity to come closer to their religion.

Spirited discussion was aroused by the plan of M. Maldwin Fertig, president of the Metropolitan League of Jewish Community Associations to reorganize regional federations and to resolve the League into a new organization to be called the Metropolitan Division of the Jewish Welfare Board and which would integrate Jewish social work in the New York area.

In opening a discussion about the Jewish community center, Professor Mordecai M. Kaplan said, “The tragedy of the modern Jew is not so much that he is persecuted for being a Jew as that he himself sees no reason for remaining one… Only the establishment of the type of communal organization which will recokn with all Jewish needs and problems, interests and aspirations will bring about these conditions which will redeem American Jewish life from its present sterility and aimlessness.”

BUDGETS INCREASE

A report prepared by Harry L. Glucksman, executive director, showed that the membership of Jewish centers last year totalled 325,000, including about 100,000, mostly unemployed, who could not pay fees. Budgets of centers range from $3,000,000 to $3,500,000, a fact which Judge Lehman cited in showing the encouraging financial condition of the center movement.

Speaking after Judge Lehman, Dr. Adler announced that he regards it as encouraging that the army last year expanded the Jewish personnel of the chaplains’ service. Ten “contract chaplains,” he said, were appointed last year on a limited basis at a salary of thirty dollars per month plus traveling expenses.

Other speakers during the day were: Rabbi Alexander Basel, Frank L. Weil, president of the Y. M. H. A.; Benjamin J. Buttenweiser, treasurer; Harry Budalsky, David Landau, Nathan A. Heller, J. Meyer Schine, and seven young men and women who participated in the discussion opened by Professor Kaplan.