Hebrew Council

San Francisco's huge-domed Temple Emanu-El is a bright Byzantine touch on Arguello Boulevard. The coruscant half-globe catches the sun's rays, seems to blaze with its own light. On an especially sunny day, last week, when the dome was very bright 600 Jews of the "reformed" faith gathered underneath it. One of them, glancing at the synagog, quoted "How beautiful are thy tents, O Jacob; thy dwelling places, O Israel." Thus opened the 31st Council of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations.

Soon the synagog echoed with prayers, speeches, music. From 60 voices rang the triumph of Felix Mendelssohn's Elijah* The speeches had to do with various aspects of Judaism, youth, science.

Said Rabbi James G. Heller of Cincinnati: "Let the behaviorist and psychoanalyst beware. They may be able to use science for the dissection and description of matter, but they cannot use it to tell men why to live or how to live. Freud and Watson are old-fashioned and their psychology is under the overwhelming influence of Newtonian physics. That is of the past and of the past their conclusions based upon it will also be."

Said onetime (1913-16) U. S. Ambassador to Turkey Henry Morgenthau: "The Jew is going to be judged not by his commercial or other financial successes but by what we contribute to the spiritual welfare of the world. If we do not respect one another none will respect us. For real advancement we need more colleges."

It was about colleges that most of the delegates were thinking, particularly about Hebrew Union College, U. S. Judaism's Reformed rabbinical institute in Cincinnati. /-

As most religious conferences slowly work up to a climax so last week did this one in San Francisco. The climax came when Adolph S. Ochs, owner-publisher of the New York Times read his report on the $5,000,000 endowment fund for Hebrew Union College. Impressive was the list of names and donations which Mr. Ochs read. From David, Murry, Solomon and Simon Guggenheim, $500,000; from Mrs. Jacob H. Schiff, Mortimer L. Schiff, Mr. and Mrs. Felix Warburg, $500,000; from Julius Rosenwald $500,000 if the fund reaches $4,000,000 by July 1. Other gifts were from New York's Lieutenant-Governor Herbert H. Lehman; from Simon Lazarus, Benjamin Altheimer. . . . Mr. Ochs, modest, had no intention of mentioning his own gift but Chairman of the Executive Committee Ludwig Vogelstein interrupted, announced an Ochs gift of $200,000.

As the names and donations were read, the 600 people in the temple became excited, enthusiastic. Soon they were calling out pledges. By the time Mr. Ochs finished his report, $65,000 more had been added to the fund.

In 1873 Dr. Isaac Mayer Wise called the first council of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations in Cincinnati. Its prime purpose was to found Hebrew Union College. Two years later, with a faculty of two, and 16 students, the college started. The library consisted of a few Bibles. The class rooms were the vestry rooms of B'nai Israel and B'nai Yeshuruh in Cincinnati. Today the college has four large Tudor buildings, has graduated 289 Rabbis. The library now has 70,000 volumes and the largest collection of Spinoziana in the world. The librarian is Adolph S. Oko.

*Moses Mendelssohn, grandfather of Composer Felix, was the founder of the Jewish cultural movement from which the present "reformed" Jewish faith derives. The "reformed" Jews are more liberal, less esoterically scholastic than those who hold with the antique concepts of Judaism. /-U. S. Jewry's chief secular, cultural institution is the new Yeshiva College, Manhattan.