Dr. Judah Pilch, executive director of the American Association for Jewish Education today called for “a systematic and effective program of Jewish education for Jewish parents and adults “to reinforce the efforts being made in Jewish religious schools throughout the country to educate Jewish children.
In a report issued to 650 delegates attending the Fourth National Conference on Jewish Education at the Hotel Roosevelt here, Dr. Pilch warned: “Unless we engage in such a program of education for parents and adults, much of our work in the Jewish religious schools has little significance. We bend every effort in providing our children with the best possible Jewish education, while the parents themselves, except for a minority, are ignorant of the Jewish heritage. To bridge this gap is the task of adult Jewish education. “
Dr. Horace M. Kallen, philosopher and author, addressing the evening session pointed out that a re-evaluation of the function of Jewish education for American Jews has been developing slowly over the past 20 years. In this process of reappraisal, he saw the role of the American Association for Jewish Education as that of “a catalyzer and a ferment.” “The organization,” he said, “has awakened American Jewish schooling to the principles and practices of democracy, and their necessary place in the idea of Jewish education. It has alerted Jews of all affiliations to community responsibility for education. “
Joseph I. Sachs of New Haven, Conn., chairman of the National Committee on Teacher Education and Welfare, reported on several Association projects aimed at attracting more qualified personnel in Jewish teaching, elevate teaching standards and enhance the status of the profession. A new National Retirement Plan which transcends geographic and institutional lines and applies to all categories of the profession — classroom teacher, school administrator, bureau director, and instructor in institutions of higher learning — has just gone into effect.
As part of the 20th anniversary celebration of the American Association for Jewish Education, a 60-year-old veteran teacher in Jewish schools was singled out of a field of approximately 17,500 teachers in the nation’s Jewish religious schools as “Teacher of the Year. ” Harry Perach, an instructor for the past decade at the Hebrew Academy of Miami Beach, was honored for his outstanding service to Jewish education.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
