Gompers. In 1912, Lyons was a founding member of the Eastern Council of Reform Rabbis, an organization of Reform rabbis from the Eastern United States that was created despite opposition from the Central Conference of Reform Rabbis. In 1919 he withdrew from the Brooklyn Victory Celebration Committee (celebrating the Allied victory in World War I) and asked that his contributed funds be donated instead to the Red Cross; many committee members eventually resigned in protest over the overt politicization of the event, and its control by William Randolph Hearst. 1930s: Landman joins, Great Depression, Lyons dies Isaac Landman, a graduate of Hebrew Union College, joined Lyons as rabbi of Beth Elohim in 1931. Born in Russia in 1880, Landman had come to the United States in 1890. In 1911, with the assistance of Jacob Schiff, Julius Rosenwald, and Simon Bamberger, he founded a Jewish farm colony in Utah, and during World War I he was "said to be the first Jewish chaplain in the United States Army to serve on foreign soil". A leader in Jewish–Christian ecumenism, he was editor of American Hebrew Magazine from 1918, served as the delegate of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (now Union for Reform Judaism) to the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, and in the late 1930s and early 1940s was editor of the new ten volume Universal Jewish Encyclopedia. Landman had also been a prominent opponent of Zionism: when, in 1922, the United States Congress was considering the Lodge–Fish resolution in support of the Balfour Declaration, Landman and Rabbi David Philipson had presented the Reform movement's (then) anti-Zionist position to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. Landman also printed many opinions against the resolution and Zionism in his American Hebrew Magazine. The bill was eventually unanimously supported by both houses of Congress, and approved by President Harding. During the Great Depression synagogue membership decreased significantly; experiencing financial difficulties, the congregation stopped paying its mortgage. Nevertheless, Beth Elohim was not completely moribund; in 1931 it opened its Academy of Adult Jewish Education, which "offered courses in Bible, religion and contemporary Jewish life", and operated throughout the Depression. By 1937 the congregation had elected Lyons "rabbi for life". In 1938 Lyons made common cause with Thomas Harten, the black pastor of Holy Trinity Baptist Church. Speaking to a mixed black–Jewish audience at the church, Lyons informed the listeners that he was planning to attend the