Rabbi Samuel Margolies reported on behalf of the Ohio State Association.
The report of the Federation was handed out among the delegates. Various questions were asked on the report of the Federation which the chairman answered.
Mr. de Haas of Boston rendered his report in behalf of the Zionist Bureau for New England.
ZIONIST BUREAU FOR NEW ENGLAND
The Zionist Bureau for New England has been in existence eighteen months. It was started as an experiment, to test out whether the establishment of a properly equipped local center could accomplish intensive Zionist development. The work accomplished has justified the existence of the Bureau, which still remains an experiment station in Zionism—a center at which new methods are constantly planned and put into operation. Successes are recorded with pleasure, but failures are acknowledged when made—the issue always being that the right way of doing things must be discovered and proved by test since there has been no previous attempt among Jews to maintain a propaganda effort and to develop it continuously on intensive lines. Formerly the movement depended upon sporadic effort. New societies were formed; old societies died; propaganda was irregular and the activity of societies intermittent.
The problems ahead of the Zionist movement are, therefore:
(a) to establish a Zionist group in every Jewish center in the United States; (b) to make the group expand until it includes either the majority or the active minority in its locality; (c) to hold and increase the interest of every individual member of every group.
The Bureau does not attempt to act as an authority, but as a co-operator. It renders service without taking away the initiative of individual societies. It has organized and developed societies and endeavored to meet their needs. It has done much to systematize propaganda. It has brought regularity into Zionist operations. All this has been possible by co-operation rather than by pressure and arbitrary decisions. Groups that have not yet availed themselves of its service will come in, in time.
No state council has been established because the mass of the Jewish population in New England resides in Massachusetts and most within easy reach of Boston. Yet the groups are so distinct that they do not come in conflict with each other, and it has been felt that intense work would be harmed, not aided, by taking the chief workers away from their own local work and dividing their energies along legislative rather than executive lines. A year or two hence when we have developed more workers for societies and have more men to spare for legislative work a state council may prove desirable—at present it would only weaken our operations.
Ka ir Zt: Lu An de ed 75 ec Ale er hr Fa BE Dpndeiier. ne ee ne ee FE Aher S nn ae Ben nd A en en a Our principal present difhculty is to create a willingness to look a season ahead. In order to accomplish the maximum our societies must work out in the summer a complete program and allow the direct operations of each society to rest on that program. There would then be more time and opportunity to develop new ideas and work new plans. The Zionist Manual was planned to that end but it has not yet been so accepted. So we are continually trying to extem- porize meetings and meet the sudden clash of local interests. Yet we have overcome the old policy that meetings could ‘only be successfully held on Sunday. The Levin, Mossinsohn and de Haas tours have made it clear that meetings can be held every week day and rather more successfully than on Sunday. These tour meetings have also served to establish among secretaries of organizations a habit of careful and prompt response.
Financially, the Bureau has tried to call out in every Zionist a sense of responsibility. It does not appeal to sympathy. It calls attention to Zionist duties. Through this means it has aided in obtaining a large measure of regular support during the war for the Emergency Fund—support that it is hoped will remain with the organization after the war is over.
The most striking single experiment is the Zionist inventory still in process. We are gathering information which is giving us an accurate picture of every Zionist organization in New England and an account of every Zionist's personal relation to all the activities of the movement. Actinge on the
facts as they come to the Bureau we have been able to suggest lines of effort looking for improvement in the society and we are working on lines which should lead the individual Zionist to reciprocate the efforts of his society. Thus as a result of the examination of the various census lists, we have written to individuals in arrears explaining to them the importance of becoming regular and active members. Further, on noting the paucity of Emergency Fund contributors, we have written the presidents of all societies a letter about the Emergency Fund, it uses and significance for the Zionist movement, and called upon them to make an increase of Emergency Fund contributors through administration policy, and inaugurated for the first time a direct correspondence with the individual members advising them of the plan we have proposed to their presidents and requesting their aid and work for the Emergency Fund.
Another inovation was the sending of letters on the Jewish Congress to the various presidents, and suggesting that the pamphlet we sent them, Mr. Brandeis' address on "Jewish Rights and the Congress"—be read to the members at a regular meeting. It is hoped that we shall be able to supply suggestions as to literary programs, or rather topics for discussion of vital Jewish and Zionist interest at periodic intervals.
A still more interesting contact with the societies was furnished by our letter on how to forward mail to the war zones and the more recent request for locating relatives of those destitute families in the war zones about which our European committee has written us. Through this means the Zionist societies become for their respective communities headquarters for all matters about which the larger part of American Jewry is so deeply concerned. While this complicates our correspondence and our transfer work it makes obvious to the Jewish population that to Zionists nothing Jewish is foreign. This is propaganda through acts, whose results will certainly tell in the course of time.
For the rest, the Zionist effort in New England is best told in the followinz statistics:
Rabbi Margolies of Cleveland, as chairman of the Committee on the Congress, presented the following resolution:
CONGRESS RESOLUTION
Be it Resolved: That this Convention endorse the program for the calling of an American Jewish Congress on a democratic basis, adopted by the Preliminary Conference held at Philadelphia on March 26th and 27th, 1916, and the action of the Executive Organization Committee for an American Jewish Congress there elected, and be it further resolved, that this Convention pledges the co-operation of all its constituent organizations and societies to the work of organizinge such a Congress.
A motion was made and seconded that the above report