World Jewish Youth Parley Opened in New York; 42 Lands Represented

Formation of a new permanent world Jewish youth organization as a continuing consultative committee for cooperation among world Jewish youth groups was proposed here today at the opening session of a four-day World Jewish Youth Planning Conference. The parley is attended by leaders of Jewish youth movements throughout the world, representing 700,000 members in 219 Jewish youth organizations in 42 countries.

The proposal for the formation of the new body was made by Dr. Max Baer, national director of the B’nai B’rith Youth Organization, speaking on behalf of the North American delegation. “While there are different approaches to Jewish life, and different kinds of Jews,” he said, “Jewish people everywhere are drawn together psychologically, by common memories and by certain common aspirations that seek to foster the continuity of Jewish life in time and space.”

The new organization, Dr. Baer declared, would fill “a real need” among Jewish youth throughout the world. He proposed that the organization be “a non-political, consultative, educational body,” guaranteeing the autonomy and integrity of the individual youth movements in countries around the world.

The conference, which will conclude its deliberations Thursday, is being attended by seven youth leaders from European countries, six from South America, seven from Israel, eight from the United States, as well as four representing the World Youth Movement, which has groups in 22 countries.

Eliahu Dobkin, a member of the Jewish Agency executive in Jerusalem, welcomed the delegates. He said their prime responsibility is to “take counsel and seek the ways through which we can reach the unorganized Jewish youth of the world, how we can fight the greater danger threatening them as Jews–the threat of indifference and of leaving the fold for strange pastures.” He noted that this conference marks “the first time representatives from various Jewish youth movements and organizations from all over the world are gathered together in the United States.”

He reported that in the year-and-a-half since the Second World Jewish Youth Conference met in Jerusalem, organized Jewish youth organizations have grown from 204 to 219, and that there are now 700,000 members of these groups in 42 countries, whereas at the time of the Conference there were 616,000 members in 39 countries.