Theodore R. Mann, a Philadelphia lawyer and chairman of the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council (NJCRAC), has been elected chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, effective July I, it was announced today. He succeeds Rabbi Alexander M. Schindler who headed the Presidents Conference since February, 1976.
Mann was elected yesterday afternoon by a vote of 21-6 by the representatives of the 32 constituent organizations of the Conference. He was opposed by the five Orthodox groups and the Zionist Organization of America. Louis Bernstein, president of the Mizrachi-Hapoel Hamizrachi, had been the Orthodox candidate. There were three abstentions and two members were absent.
Mann, 50, was born in Czechoslovakia and came to the United States with his parents in 1929. He is married and the father of three children. Long active in civic and Jewish affairs, he is a former president of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Philadelphia and serves as a senior vice-president of the American Jewish Congress. Mann is a partner in the Philadelphia law firm of Mann and Unger. He has argued before the U.S. Supreme Court on matters affecting religious liberty, separation of church and state and civil rights.
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