Congregation B’nai Jeshurun, the second oldest synagogue in New York, celebrated its 120th anniversary at a dinner tonight in Jeshurun Community House, where a message of greeting from President Truman was read, expressing the hope that “the sphere of influence of the congregation which has wrought so much for God and country during the last 120 years will ever widen in the generations that lie ahead.”
The speakers at the dinner were Basil O’Connor, chairman of the American Red Cross; Brigadier General David Sarnoff, Dr. Robert W. Searle, general secretary of the Greater New York Federation of Churches, Professor Robert Gordis, president of the Rabbinical Assembly of America, Dr. David de Sola Pool, rabbi of Congregation Shearith Israel, oldest Jewish congregation in America, who delivered the invocation, Dr. Israel Goldstein, spiritual leader of the B’nai Jeshurun Congregation since 1918, and Charles 7, Endel, president of the congregation.
Dr. Goldstein in his address called attention to the anti-Semitic movement in Argentina. He warned that what begins as anti-Jewish demonstrations may, as in the case of Nazi Germany, end up as a menace to civilization as a whole”. He asked that the State Department “which went out of its way to secure the admission of Argentina into the company of the United Nations at San Francisco, serve notice on that country that their Nazi tactics against their tiny Jewish population, will, if continued, disqualify them from civilized company.”
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.
