Page Eighteen

Friday, Mardi 5, 1948

THE JEWISH NEWS

Young Campaign Workers Congress Section
PlansPurimBall
To Open Drive March 14

Detroit Section of the American
Jewish Congress is planning its
annual Purim Ball, to be held
Saturday, March 20 at the North-
west Synagogue.
Honoring the 74th birthday of
who is interested in working in Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, the event
this year's drive, is asked to call
Helen Alpert, executive secre- will feature social and folk danc-
tary of the division, at WO. ing to the music of Milt Carr and
his orchestra. Igoe Kessner will
5-3939.
be emcee.
Mrs. Ann Parker is chairman of
the dance, with Mrs. H. Kaminer
and Mrs. Kurzman in charge of
tickets.
The next program of the Yid-
dish culture series, an evening
devoted to Palestinian culture,
Youths
will take place at 8:30 p.m. Sun-
day, March 7, at the Jewish Com-
munity Center, according to I.
Zemel and J. Rosenshine, co-
A representative of the child
chairmen of the joint Yiddish cul- care division of the World Jew-
ture committee of the Jewish ish Congress_ recently returned
Community Council and Jewish from Europe, has forwarded to
Center.
the Detroit Women's Division,
The principal speaker will be American Jewish Congress, a list
Benjamin Laikin, whose subject of _ Jewish students in Belgium
will be "Palestine — Our Hope who would like to correspond
and Future." A Palestinian film, with Americans.
"The House In the Desert" will
These boys, in their early twen-
be shown. Habonim Youth Or-
ganization will give a dramatic ties, have been forced to give up
presentation with musical back- their studies for lack of material
ground showing the building of help, and, being untrained. for
specific work, find it impossible
Palestine by Poale Zion.
Mrs. Shirley Subar Sklash will to obtain jobs. They face an un-
present a dramatic group in "Sev- certain future unless they can
en Golden Buttons," a chassidic be given helP through American
playlet with music by Judith and Jewry.
For further information, con-
Ira Eisenstein. There will be Pal-
estinian music on records and tact Mrs. Jack K: Lewis, service
Mrs. Sk-lash will lead community chairman of the Women's Di-
vision, UN: 1-2998.
singing.

Launching the Junior Division of the 1948 Allied Jewish
Campaign, more than 1,000 young Jewish adults are ex-
pected to attend the Division's workers rally at 2:30 p. m.,
Sunday, Mardi 14, at the Jewish Community Center. Max
Lerner, editorial director of the newspaper PM will be guest
speaker.

In a "pre-campaign" meeting
last week, Lawrence A. Fleisch-
man, chairman of special gifts,
announced this year's division
chairmen for his group. Serving
with Fleischman will be Group
A, Morton Leiberman, chairman;
Shirley S imons, solicitations,
Julian Sandler, resolicitations;
Group B, Celia Winokur, chair-
man, Ruth Cantor, solicitations,
Julian Scott, resolicitations; and
Group C, Arlene Davidson, chair-
man, William Stone, co-chairman,
Sarray Finkelstein, solicitations,
Helen Karabenick, resolicitations,
Sylvia Collins, secretary.
One of America's foremost lib-
eral newspapermen, • Lerner has
gained a naational reputation as
a speaker, because of his frequent
appearances on Town Meeting of
the Air to discuss current issues
of the day. The author of "It Is
Later T h an You Think" and
"Ideas are Weapons," he began
his journalistic career as editor of
"The Nation." Lerner holds a
degree in law from Yale and a
PhD in economics and political
science. He also has a fine record
as an educator, at Sarah Lawrence
College, Harvard University and
Williams College.
Campaign chairmen for the
Junior Division are Leonard
Baruch and Barbara Green-
berg. Any young Jewish adult

Laikin to Discuss
Palestinian Culture

Seek
Belgidn
Corespondents Here

Full -Weekend Program Scheduled
For Midwest Young Israel Parley

Young Israel of Detroit is host
this weekend to the executive
conference of the MidWestern
Council of Young
Israel. A full
program of ac-
tivities has been
planned, accord-
ing to Hillel
Abrams, treasur-
er of the Mid-
western Council
and conference
chairman.
At the Friday
•
forumRabbi Rosenfeld
evening
March 5 at Yeshivath Beth Yehu-
dah, Dr. Samson R. Weiss, nation-
al director of Young Israel, will
speak on "The Jewish Personali-
ty and the Challenge of Modern
Thought." The discussion period
will be followed by a social hour.
Young Israel will join Cong.
Mogen Abraham at Sabbath
morning services, when the ser-
mon will be delivered by Rabbi
Paul Rosenfeld, ' spiritual leader
and executive director of Young
Israel' of Cincinnati. At 2:30 p.m.
the Women's League of Young
Israel will hold an Oneg Shab-
bat at the home of Mrs. Meyer
Weisenfeld, 4835 Cortland. Rabbi
Rosenfeld will speak. At 4 p.m.
at the Yeshivah, Dr. Weiss will
lead a class, followed by Mincha
and Sholosh Seudos.
The major social event of the
weekend will be a Mlava Malka
Saturday evening, honoring na-
tional and midwestern delegates.
The affair will take . place at
Lachar's, 9144 Linwood, and the
speakers will include Elijah
Stein, national vice-president;

Bernard Berman, treasurer; Moi-
she Krumbein, and presidents of
Midwestern Young Israel
branches.
Conference sessions will take
place all day Sunday. The agen-
da includes discussion of the local
and national work of Young
Israel and plans a summer camp
under the sponsorship of the Mid-
western Council. Young Israel of
Detroit is celebrating its 25th
year in the city.

`Message of Israel'
To Carry Dr. Glueck's
Inauguration at HUC

When Dr. Nelson Glueck, world-
famous Biblical archeologist, is
inaugurated as president -of the
Hebrew Union College in Cincin-
nati Sunday, March 14, the event
will be broadcast on the Message
of Israel, heard in Detroit at 10
a.m. each Sunday on Station
WXYZ.
Recently returned from many
years of residence in the Near
East and Palestine, Dr. Glueck is
currently director of the Amer-
ican School of Oriental Research
of Baghdad. Until assuming the
post of acting president of He-
brew Union- College, he was pro-
fessor of Bible and Biblical arche-
ology at that institution.
Rabbi Robert Gordis, recently
returned from a 23,000 mile air
tour of the Pacific and Asiatic
.theatres in the interests of the
War and Navy Departments, will
speak over the Message of Israel
on March 7, 21 and 28.

Bnai Brith's Position On American Jewish Assembly

THE FOLLOWING STATEMENT WAS

ISSUED BY FRANK GOLDMAN, PRESIDENT
OF BNAI BRITH, FEB. 16, 1948:

The Bnai Brith decision not to affiliate with the
proposed American Jewish Assembly was made
unanimously by a special committee of 63 men and
women from all parts of the country. That speCial
committee, which had full pdwer to act, had been
created by the Supreme Lodge Convention of last
year. The committee's decision having .aroused so
much interest, it is deemed helpful to emphasize the
reasons underlying the resolution passed by the com-
mittee. a
That resolution plainly stated that "however much
we favor the Plan . . . substantial unity is unachiev-
able" under it because it had already been rejected
"by major national Jewish organizations" and accept-
ed by others with qualifications tantamount to rejec-
tion. The resolution further pledged that Bnai Brith,
in accordance with its century-old policy of fostering
Jewish unity, would continue its search "for agree-
ment in a consultative body that will provide the
outlet for common action in the interest of Jewry."
Thus, in effect, what Bnai Brith said was that from
a realistic point of view, the action of several other
_ organizations made it, beyond all doulpt, utterly im-
possible to accomplish the purposes for which the
Assembly was to be created, and that Bnai Brith was
resolved to find a vehicle that would make it possible,
under favorable circumstances and at the proper
time. to accomplish- those purposes.
The entire so-called Bnai Brith bloc at the Chi-
cago session of the American Jewish Conference,
almost without exception, favored the Eisendrath
Plan for an American Jewish Assembly, and voted
for it. It was generally hoped that a unified voice for
American Jewry was in the making, in spite of some
clouds on the horizon.
But what was the total picture faced by the Bnai
Brith special committee when it met?
The American Jewish Committee had rejected the
Plan out of hare..
The Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare
Funds had objected to the Assembly, on the basis of
duplication of the work of existing agencies.
The Jewish Labor Committee, without reference
to the Plan, through its president had laid down con-
ditions that a certain constituent of the proposed
Assembly be excluded before it would join.
The Jewish War Veterans had also laid down con-
ditions, including one that all major organizations
had to accept the Plan before it would come in.
Other groups, such as the Union of American
Hebrew Congregations and the American Jewish Con-
gress, had postponed their decisions for many months.
And at the Chicago session of the Conference, the
president of the American Jewish Congress had made
a public announcement that his organization would
vote on the Plan at its convention in Philadelphia on
January 9—later postponed—and that he could not
predict what the vote would be.
All these actions were taken before Bnai Brith
made its decision.
The organizations that took them are among the
outstanding and most respected in the country. With-
out doubt, they had reasons which seemed good and
valid to them—whether we agree or disagree with •
those reasons—for refusing to join the Assembly, or
for imposing conditions which amounted to the same
thing, or for postponing action. It is not for us to
assess their reasons here. The fact remains that major
Jewish organizations refused to join the Assembly.
What kind of unity, then, was possible? Only a
shell, a pretense of unity. Real unity was clearly out

,

of the question, on the basis of the Eisendrath Plan.
Naturally, there was profound disappointment at
this lack of adherence. But there is more to it-than
that. It is high time that American Jews know the
truth. In the more than two months following the
final session of the American Jewish Conference in
Chicago, only a very small minority of the organiza-
tions which are members of the present Conference
voted to join the proposed permanent Assembly! This
was not surprising, however, since the Plan itself,
while zealously promoted, did not win the enthusiasm
of any significant proportion of American Jews in
the communities throughout the country. This was
later admitted by no less an authority than Mr. I. L.
Kenen, Executive Secretary of the American Jewish
Conference. He reported to the Interith Committee
on Feb. 12, 1948:
"I have had something to do with contacts with the

community and with national organizations in the last
two or three months, and I know that there was a very
sorry indifference to the whole matter of the American
Jewish Assembly throughout the country, largely as a
result of the lack of enthusiasm behind the program in
New York . I think many of the leaderships of the
national organizations outside of Bnai Brith were guilty
certainly of indifference to the whole plan and as a result
it was impossible to mobilize any large public sentiment
in the country in favor of it." -
It is important to re-emphasize that Bnai Brith

has been and is loyal to the American Jewish Con-
ference. It must be remembered that the Conference
is not the Assembly. The Conference was created as
a temporary body, for the purpose of meeting the
unparalleled emergency abroad during and imme-
diately after the war. The Assembly, on the other
hand, was proposed as a permanent organization to
deal with the entire gamut of Jewish life in the
United States as well as abroad. Bnai Brith did not
withdraw from the Conference. But it will not enter
the proposed new Assembly because it is now certain
that such an Assembly will be only another organi-
zation, another letterhead, and will not be the over-
all unifying agency it set out to be, and which it was
hoped it might' be. It certainly was not the intention
to create "just another" organization, which would
be only one of several voices purporting to speak for
American Jewry in the matters of import covered by
the Plan itself.
It is true that important organizations remained
outside of the Conference itself after its first session.
But Bnai Brith not only initiated the Conference, but
remained in it. The nature of the emergency which
witnessed the slaughter ,of six million of our people
during the most ghastly war in all history made even
a partial unity better than none at all in the execution
of whatever we could do during such unprecedented
conditions. The Conference is a temporary agency,
limited in time to the duration of that emergency,
and in scope to overseas problems.
But the proposed Assembly would be a permanent
organization, with a virtually unlimited scope. For
that, concrete unity is the sine qua non. We were, are,
and ever will be for such unity. But it was destined
not to be—not yet, at least, and not in the form pro-
posed. Others determined that—not Bnai Brith. We
merely recognized a fact. If there be some who refuse
to face facts, we cannot be responsible for their
actions. But we feel the American Jewish public is
entitled to isnow the exact basis for our decision.
We regret that after Bnai Brith announced it
would not Join the Assembly, the spirit of the late
Henry Monsky was invoked, in some instances by
those who caused him so much intense grief during
the building and continuance of the Conference. It
was even charged that Bnai Brith's abstention from
joinifkg the proposed Assembly was a repudiation of
Mr. Monsky's lifework. Such assertions could be made
only by those who do not know or who disregard .
the facts. (It is needless for Bnai Brith, in such a dis-
cussion as this, to reassert its undying affection and
unexcelled admiration for Henry Monsky and all his

works, including his projection of and leadership in
the Conference during the crucial era during which
he lived.j
Now let us look at the record.
Mr. Monsky died on May 2, 1947. He was stricken
while presiding at a meeting of the American Jewish
Conference Interim Committee. During the last
speech of his life, made on that day and at that meet-
ing, which was not without pangs for him, he alluded
to the proposed organization taking under its wing
"the entire gamut of Jewish life." Here is a verbatim
report of the most important portion of his statement:

"We have to take this into consideration: it is not
only the American Jewish Committee, it is not only the
Jewish Labor Committee, and other agencies not yet in
the Conference; it is the JDC, it is the UJA. I mean: we
are trying to take under the wings of this Conference the
entire gamut of Jewish life. Is that correct? Relief,
philanthropy, the Council of Welfare Funds and Feder-
ations. As long as they are assured that this new organi-
zation cannot take the place of their functions and do
the things that they are doing and to reduce them to a
position of complete futility, or to take control and
jurisdiction over their operations, in the interest of the
principle of a democratically representative body, they
are likely to come in. You will never be able to persuade
them to come in otherwise.
"If we don't get them in, or if certain organizations
that I could name, but I won't name them, that are now
in the Conference that wAll refuse to come in unless the
document remains as it is—and I am not speaking now of
Bnai Brith; I am speaking of five or six other organiza-
tions that I could name that will have the greatest re-
luctance to come in unless they come in with these
restrictions for the present and at the beginning—and
IF THEY DON'T COME IN, THEN YOU HAVEN'T
UNITY IN - AMERICAN JEWISH LIFE; then you have
an American Jewish Conference that won't have the
vitality, the vigor, the strength that this Conference has
had, and the agencies that remain out of the Conference
will build up their vigor and vitality and attain in the
course of time a parity with the Conference."

In that statement, Mr. Monsky was pleading with
the Interim Committee to accept a plan for future
organization that would not set up anything even
faintly resembling a Kehillah, or a dictatorship, or
that would invade the autonomy of constituent or-
ganizations. He was arguing for a basis calculated to
win adherence of all major organizations in Jewish
life. His statement, quoted above, makes this clear.
It is inescapable that without some of these groups,
there is no unity, and any agency that styled itself
as a unifying organization in the face -of that fact
would be a farce, a snare, and a delusion.
But alas for Henry Monsky's fond hopes. EVENTS
HAVE SHOWN THAT EVEN THE EISENDRATH
PLAN—WITHOUT THE SO-CALLED "TEETH"
DEMANDED BY SOME GROUPS—HAS FAILED
TO WIN THE ADHERENCE OF MAJOR BODIES.
We who knew Henry Monsky best know that he
never would have consented to furthering and keep-
ing alive such a purely self-styled—and not at all real
—unity as will be the case if the Assembly is formed
with only some of the major organizations included.
It would militate against the achievement of genuine
unity—and actually freeze present divisions!
Bnai Brith does not believe in trying to advance
a cause whose, futility is painfully obvious. That is
why we express the hope that genuine unity of all
agencies may yet be found in some other form,.per-
haps in a consultative body. The recent meetings of
the American Jewish Conference (representing its
members, including Bnai Brith), the Jewish Agency,
the American Jewish Committee, Agudas Israel,
World Jewish Congress, and other organizations,
which led to common agreement and joint action in
the most controversial area of Jewish life in our time
—Jewish Palestine—demonstrated what can be done
when persuasion—not compulsion—brings together
men and organizations for a meeting of minds. These
diverse groups unanimously supported the UNSCOP
majority recommendation for the partition of Pales-
tine.
This is the pattern which we believe is indicated
at the present time.

