(Jewish Daily Bulletin)
Mayor William E. Dever flayed the Klan in welcoming the three hundred delegates from thirteen states to the Mid-West Convention of United Synagogue of America at Hotel Serman on Sunday.
“It is one of the most distressing signs of the time that in some quarters of this nation we are intolerant of each other’s religious beliefs and nationalities,” Mayor Dever declared. “It simply denotes that some of us are not so far removed from savagery as we think we are. It is impossible to have a successful and happy nation if it is an intolerant nation. I am glad that the Jewish people have always been broadminded enough to be tolerant, to understand that it is not quite possible for us all to agree in the matter of religion.”
Describing the generosity of a Jewish citizen in proferring him a blank check to save the city’s credit in an emergency, Mayor Dever said, “There was more humanity, more generosity in that one act of that great Jew than in all the patriotic acts that were ever performed by any Ku Kluxer from the Gulf of Mexico to the Canadian border line.”
Resolutions on questions vitally touching Orthodox Jewry in America were debated and drafted for presentation to the convention on Monday. These include resolutions establishing an extension department to carry Orthodox observance into the rural communities through itinerant Rabbis or the cooperation of rabbis in the towns; the raising of $175,000 in the Middle West to finance the erection of a synagogue in Palestine, the advocating of the arrangement of the school day to leave time for religious instruction after school hours, condemnation of the proposal to register aliens, establishing a commission on college activities and financing organizations like the Amuna Fraternity of Illinois University, establishing Orthodox student houses and restaurants.
The Women’s League considered a resolution calling on the Rabbinical Assembly of the Jewish Theological Seminary to develop a method whereby a woman whose husband is lost or has deserted her and cannot, therefore, be divorced may be remarried.
The Young People’s League elected Manfred Haskell of Chicago as president.
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