Return of B’nai B’rith to N. C. R. A. C. Ranks Urged by Trager

Hope that B’nai B’rith may soon “rejoin the family of Jewish organizations from which it has estranged itself,” was expressed here by Bernard H. Trager, chairman of the National Community Relations Advisory Council, in a speech accepting a citation from Abraham Lodge of B’nai B’rith as “man of the year.”

Mr. Trager, former president of the lodge, referred to withdrawal of B’nai B’rith from the NCRAC, national coordinating body for Jewish community relations agencies, in 1952. He emphasized that “the wider purposes of B’nai B’rith can only be realized through the broadest participation in the life of the whole Jewish community.”

Expressing the conviction that B’nai B’rith had acted “in consonance with its finest tradition in joining the cooperative process represented by the NCRAC.” Mr. Trager called it a “regrettable lapse from its own tradition of service in the cause of all Jewry that led the B’nai B’rith to withdraw from the NCRAC.” These are “times of great crisis in the affairs of the world,” in which “grave implications for Jewish life abound,” he said, which call for “cooperation, not competition, among those who recognize the overriding needs of common Jewish causes.

“I believe in cooperation in the common cause of American Jewry,” he said, “and I believe that this credo is inherent, also in the spirit of B’nai B’rith.” He was “saddened,” he added, “that our great order, representing for me some of the most vital principles of Jewish living in a democratic society, has – I hope only temporarily – been derailed from its own truest interests by an unhappy misunderstanding.”

Mr. Trager lauded the philosophy of B’nai B’rith. “Its program and the history of its evolution have established it as a major beneficent force in American Jewish life,” he said, “B’nai B’rith has not been content to grow merely as a fraternal order. As it has embraced within its membership Jews from all walks and conditions of life, as it has grown in numbers, it has developed a spirit that reaches out to the whole Jewish community.”