The orthodox Rabbis, members of the Rabbinical Assembly of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, met in annual session at Kensington Gardens, Far Rockaway, to discuss problems confronting the Synagogue, Rabbi and American Jewry, and the development of the Jewish Department of the Hebrew University at Jerusalem. There were present one hundred Rabbis and several hundred guests.
The sessions lasted for three days. Letters were received from Governor Alfred E. Smith, Louis Marshall, Justice Irving Lehman, Solomon M. Stroock, Dr. Cyrus Adler, Professors M. M. Kaplan and A. Marx and Dr. Elias L. Solomon, President of the United Synagogue of America.
Rabbi Louis M. Epstein of Boston, President of the Assembly, in his annual message presented the various problems that were facing the Assembly in their duties to Israel, to America and to humanity.
At the second session, Rabbi Max Drob of New York, Chairman of
the Million Dollar Endowment Campaign of the Jewish Theological Seminary, announced that the campaign had been a success. He made a plea to his colleagues to assist him in winding up the drive which was still short several thousand dollars of the million mark.
The main interest of the Conference centered about two symposium which had been the result of studies made by committees during the year. The first symposium dealt with the relationship of the synagogue to labor, and the other with a “Definition and Interpretation of Historical Judaism.”
Among the important resolutions adopted were the decisions of the Assembly to give unstinted support to the establishment and development of the Jewish Library and the Jewish Department of the Hebrew University at Jerusalem; to advise parents to send their children for educational visits to Palestine; to join in the efforts and movements making for peace and social justice; to co-operate with other Jewish bodies in maintaining religious activities at universities and colleges; to assist Jewish religious administration in Army and Navy Training Camps and in penal institutions; to publish a new edition of the Prayer Book and the annual Proceedings of the Assembly. Two commissions were appointed to study the question of the synagogue in its relation to Jewish Community Centers, and to study the ways and means of how to revitalize Jewish institutions and ceremonies in American Jewish life.
The conference then elected the following officers: President, Rabbi Louis M. Epstein, Boston; Vice President, Rabbi Max Drob, New York; Treasurer, Rabbi Louis Feinberg, Cincinnati; Recording Secretary, Rabbi Norman Salit, Far Rockaway; Corresponding Secretary, Rabbi Leon Spitz, New Haven; members of the Executive Council; Rabbis Nathan Blechman, Louis Finckelstein, Max Kadushin, Abraham Burstein, Morris D. Levine, Jacob Kohn, of New York, Max D. Klein, Julius H. Greenstene and Mortimer K. Cohen, Philadelphia, Samuel Sachs, Portland, Oregon, Louis M. Levitz, Wilkesbarre, Max Arzt, Scranton, Jacob Gittleman, Louisville and Jacob Katz, New York City.
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.
