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The word “culture” is again being heard in the American Jewish community—after a decade's absence. To be sure, it is a bit early to announce a renascence. But it indicates something when a thousand community delegates turn up to overcrowd a convention hall (when only one hundred and fifty were expected), to hear an informal discussion on the future of American Jewish culture by five “intellectuals,” none of them a celebrity: this happened at that soberest and most practical of Jewish assemblies, that of the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds in Philadelphia early this year. Indeed, during the past winter and spring there have been few national conferences, of whatever organization or tendency, that have not featured a “cultural discussion”; and the air is full of schemes and proposals reflecting the reawakened cultural interest.

Admittedly, most of this is smoke generated under forced draft from the same old rusty publicity stoves. But there is fire beneath; and nothing better attests the genuineness of this new impulse than the community's excited interest in the younger Jewish intellectuals, and in their rumored revived concern with “things Jewish.”

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