When the IWO was about to be liquidated during the Red Scare in 1954 by the Department of Insurance of New York State (IWO was a fiscally sound fraternal benefit insurance company with close 200,000 members in its peak years, 1946–47), Itche withdrew the Yiddish shules from the JPFO in order to preserve them, creating the independent Service Bureau for Jewish Education so that the schools could continue to function. In the anti-left atmosphere of the period, this effort was only partially successful.