Convention of Communal Workers Discusses Question of Jewish Identity

The question of Jewish identity and of the future of the Jewish community in the United States was discussed here today at the 65th annual five-day meeting of the National Conference of Jewish Communal Service attended by 2, 000 Jewish communal workers from all parts of the country.

Dr. John Slawson, executive vice-president of the American Jewish Committee, who was one of the principal speakers, said that “the greatest opportunity for the development of Jewish self-regard exists today” in this country. “Never in American history,” he stated, “has the prevailing social framework afforded as great an opportunity for this development as today.” He cited the election of President Kennedy as consistent with the current trend in American civilization toward a multi-faceted cultural milieu.

“The current concern with Jewish identity,” Dr. Slawson said, “centers increasingly on how to achieve an integrated yet unassimilated status in the general American community. Integration is working and interacting with others for common purposes. Assimilation is “forgetting that one is a Jew. Acculturation to American society without loss of identity–either religious or religio-cultural, depending upon one’s point of view–is the essence of Jewish integration.”

He defined Jewish identity as “the concept of peoplehood, or sense of community. Jews are people bound together by a common faith, a common history, tradition, culture and language,” he said. “Jewish identity is characterized by adherence to Jewish values–the morality and system of ethics derived from Judaism–and devotion to certain pursuits, such as learning–both secular and religious–and philanthropy. Participation in Jewish community activity is another way of expressing identity.

“With a society hospitable to differences, and a vigorous tradition that has much to say to the modern world, it would appear that Jewish religious and communal leaders, social workers and educators, lay and professional, have both an opportunity and a responsibility–namely, to help the individual Jew to find the personal enrichment and sense of community that Jewish identity can give.”

SOCIAL WORKERS URGED TO LAY EMPHASIS ON JEWISH EDUCATION

Dr. Samuel Dinin, dean of the University of Judaism, Los Angeles, challenged the social and communal workers to re-evaluate their thinking and reassess their programs. He said: “There is need to shift the emphasis of Jewish communal endeavor from social services and defense and leisure-time activities to Jewish education and culture. It is difficult to see how one can be meaningfully identified with the Jewish people without an adequate Jewish education. A quest for Jewish identification pursued in ignorance of Torah and the Jewish tradition is a meaningless quest.

“Only seven percent of Jewish children of school age are to be found in secondary or higher Jewish schools of learning,” he reported. “Since most of our college youth receive at best a Sunday School or elementary Hebrew School education, their recollection of Judaism is at an infantile level. It is during these formulative years, when our youth attend high school or college and are exposed to new ideas and challenges from science and philosophy, that they should be in a Jewish school.”

Saying that “our generation has made Jewish giving a substitute for Jewish living,” Dr. Dinin warned the communal workers that “we do not exist as a Jewish community in order to support Jewish hospitals or homes for the orphans and aged or even synagogues. Philanthropy and defense and resettlement are necessary for our physical security and survival. They can not provide content and meaning for a creative Jewish life.

“The time has come for a reassessment of our position as a people, for a new look at the structure of the Jewish community, for a new evaluation of what it is that we are expending our monies and energies,” he declared. “We have to cultivate, as a people, the art of being Jews. This means a return to Jewish literacy, to a commitment to the values and ideals which characterize Judaism at its best.”

200, 000 JEWS LEFT THEIR HOME FOR NEW COUNTRIES IN 1962

Philip Soskis, president of the Conference, told the delegates that about 200, 000 Jews were on the move to countries of new opportunity in the year 1962. Presiding the opening session, he called the continuing problem of migration “one of the big tasks facing Jewish communal service. Mr. Soskis, who is executive director of the New York Association for New Americans, pointed out that the big migrations in 1962 were from Algeria and Cuba. “Of the 200, 000 migrants,” he stated, “the largest number found haven in Israel.”

The conference award for 1962 was presented to Arnulf M. Pins, of New York City, and Bertram H. Gold, of Los Angeles, “for the outstanding paper presented at the sixty-fourth annual meeting as an important contribution to professional literature in the field of Jewish communal services.” An honorable mention was awarded to Irving Canter, of Washington, D. C. and Harold Silver, of Detroit, for their paper.