Conference of Jewish Community Leaders Advocates Discouragement of New Organizations

A resolution urging the discouragement of new Jewish organizations duplicating existing services and recommending that the essential Jewish agencies operating overseas coordinate their services and fund-raising, was adopted here at a two day executive conference of the New England region of the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds. Eighty-five delegates from seventeen cities participated.

Other resolutions adopted by the conference advocated that the national civic protective agencies in the National Community Relations Advisory Council achieve greater coordination in their work with a minimum of competition in program and fund raising; and reaffirmed that the Government of the United States use its good offices with the British Government in order to abrogate the White Paper, and to open the doors of Palestine to unrestricted immigration. Milton Kahn, of Boston, was re-elected president of the region.

Problems of post-war adjustment were analyzed by Eli E. Cohen, executive director of the Jewish Occupational Council in New York; Leonora B. Rubinow, administrative assistant of the Veterans’ Service Center in New York; and Sidney Simon, executive director of the Springfield Jewish Community Council. They examined the basic provisions made by the Government and general community and indicated the nature of supplementary services by Jewish organizations in regard to economic problems, personal and family services, recreational and cultural needs. All of the members of the panel stressed the necessity of giving proper attention to the needs of both veterans and civilians, urged community-wide action, and stressed the need of higher standards of agency performance.

David Sher, chairman of the National Community Relations Advisory Council, analyzed the underlying factors and problems of anti-Semitism, and the activity to date of the National Community Relations Advisory Council in coordinating and clearing civic protective programs. He pointed out the important role which the local Jewish communities have and should continue to play in effecting sound community planning in the civic protective field. Dr. Alexander M. Dushkin, executive director of the Jewish Education Committee of New York, pointed to three immediate needs for sound planning for Jewish education: “to communalize it, to intensify it, to Americanize it.”