A resolution calling on the United Palestine Appeal to assume responsibility for clearing and checking on all groups established since 1945 which operate outside the United Jewish Appeal and which attempt to gather funds, food or materials of any kind for Israel was adopted here today at a conference of leaders of the 30 largest Jewish communities in the United States and Canada.
In addition to representatives of local Jewish federations, welfare funds and community councils, representatives of the United Jewish Appeal, major overseas agencies and the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds participated in the gathering.
Several speakers at the meeting stated that there are already more than 50 new agencies registered with the State Department whose functions are to assemble funds, foodstuffs and other materials for the Jewish state.
PLANS FOR COMMUNAL BUILDING CALL FOR SPENDING $160,000,000
Stanley C. Myers, president of the C.J.F.W.F., asserted that the present year was the first in which planning could be lifted from an emergency to a long-range basis. Touching on the problems of Jewish communities in the United States, Mr. Myers declared that many communities are now moving ahead in their plans to expand and improve existing communal buildings.
“With the end of the war in 1947,” Myers declared, “the nation could again direct its attention on a practical basis to the long delayed needs for construction and building in many fields of individual interest and community welfare. Postwar prosperity gave assurance that the country’s needs and desires for adequate housing, industrial, commercial and institutional development and public works, which were impossible of fulfillment during the period of depression and again delayed during the war years, because of military priorities, could now be achieved.”
A panel of consultants, consisting of architects and social service experts, aided the delegates in the discussion of the domestic building program and domestic problems generally. The panel included Milton Weill, of New York, associate chairman of the New York Federation of Jewish Philanthropies, Elkan Myers, of the Baltimore Jewish Welfare Fund, Francis Harrison, director of the Philadelphia Federation of Jewish Charities and Joseph Willen, executive vice-president of the New York Federation.
It was estimated at the conference that plans now under way for Jewish communal building in America call for the expenditure of more than $160,000,000. Delegares stressed the continuing overseas emergencies and the high costs and shortage of building materials in the U.S. as major factors in hampering construction.
Dr. Israel Goldstein, chairman of the United Palestine Appeal, addressing the conference this morning, said that immigrants are now entering Palestine at the rate of 10,000 a month and that special concern is being given to those coming from nearby Arab countries. A special bureau has been established to facilitate this immigration from Moslem countries, he added.
Large numbers of refugees from Arab countries are entering western European countries and time far Jewish philanthropical organizations have been able to deal only with the emergency cases, he stated. Not much has been done for the relief of those Jews too poor to flee from the Arab countries in which they reside, Dr. Goldstein said.
The conference delegates heard several speakers assert that insofar as the Jews still residing in the DP camps in Europe were concerned, their goal in the forthcoming year was to leave these centers under all circumstances.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
