2 JEWISH AGENCIES MAY BOLT COUNCIL; Threaten to Quit Community Relations Unit If Proposal to Revise Functions Is Voted

ATLANTIC CITY, Sept. 7- Leaders of the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-defamation League of B'nai B'rith indicated here today they would withdraw from the National Community Relations Advisory Council if a special report that proposes a division of responsibilities among Jewish groups and the community relations field was approved. The threat of a bolt came in the midst of an animated debate on the subject of reallocations of functions as the council—the advisory body of six major national Jewish organizations and twenty-seven local groups—continued its tenth annual plenum. The report was submitted to the delegates last night by the council's evaluative studies committee. If approved by a majority vote, it would curb sharply the programs of the American Jewish Committee and the league in fields such as civil rights, labor, veterans, inter-religious and intercultural activities. Seventy-seven votes are involved in the balloting. In presenting counter proposals, Jacob Blaustein of Baltimore, president of the American Jewish Committee, asserted that his suggestions, the joint effort of his group and the league, represented “the farthest we can go without violating the principles which we consider basic and which, indeed, justify our very existence as an agency."

Frank Goldman of Lowell, Mass., president of B'nai B'rith, held that the proposals “contain the maximum to which we can go and retain membership in the N. C. R. A. C."

The council was formed in 1944 as an advisory and co-ordinating body for Jewish defense groups engaged in combating bigotry and anti-semitism and in promoting better human relations. The Anti-defamation League is the educational arm of the B'nai B'rith, whose membership includes 350,000.

-The special report an outgrowth of a study made by Prof. Robert M. MacIver of Columbia University last year, in which he proposed a series of recommendations to eliminate duplication of effort by Jewish groups in the community relations field, The report recommended that the American Jewish Committee and the league relinquish to the American Jewish Congress their legal work in combating discrimination. The American Jewish Committee and the league countered with recommendations for the establishment of joint operating committees, composed of representatives of those agencies "which have a record of activity and a continuing program in each specific field of Community relations activity."

Making a strong appeal for approval of the report, Dr. Maurice Eisendrath criticized the leaders of the American Jewish Committee and the Anti - defamation League for "attempting to scare the Jewish community with their threats of leaving” the council. Also calling for approval of the report, Isaac Toubin, associate director of the American Jewish Congress, asserted that "what is (now at issue is the continued existence and expansion of forms of community organization which we Jews have come to accept as the norm in our communal life in America."

The controversial problems involved in the reallocation of functions brings into sharp focus the question of fund raising. Both the league and the American Jewish Committee conduct annual campaigns through their fund raising arm, the Joint Defense Appeal.