Jewish Welfare Board Parley Recommends $2,759,883 Budget for 1953

A 1953 budget of $2,759,883 to provide for worldwide religious, welfare and morale services to 150,000 Jewish men and women serving in the Armed Forces and to strengthen home front morale through service to Jewish Community Centers was recommended today to the National Jewish Welfare Board. The recommendation was made by delegates to the Leadership Mobilization for G.I. and Community Services at the close of its three-day gathering here.

Leading officials of the government and the Armed Services, including President Truman, had stressed the importance of the J.W.B.’s operations to national security and the maintenance of home front welfare and morale. Tomorrow J.W.B. leaders are scheduled to gather at the Pentagon for an all-morning briefing on world conditions that will determine the scope of J.W.B. programs and services for the Armed Forces. Secretary of Defense Robert A. Lovett will head the panel of leaders which will address the briefing session.

J.W.B.’s 1953 budget, to be raised through allocations and grants from local Jewish federations and welfare funds throughout the country, provides $1,170,200 for services to the Armed Forces. It also includes $717,575 for services to the communities of America through J.W.B. programs for Jewish Community Centers; $64,600 for training and recruiting and placement of personnel in centers and Armed Forces work; and $20,000 for the World Federation of YMHA’s and Jewish Community Centers of which J.W.B. is the American member. The 1953 budget provides $531,033 to make up for the accumulated deficit incurred by J.W.B. in 1951 and 1952 in meeting emergency and unforeseen costs growing out of the expanded need for service to the Armed Forces.

SECRETARY OF ARMY LAUDS J.W.B. ACTIVITIES

Secretary of the Army Frank Pace, Jr., expressed to the conference “the Army’s deep appreciation for the assistance we are receiving from the Jewish Welfare Board.” His first thanks, he said, “is for your efforts to make certain that the Army receives the required number of Jewish chaplains. We appreciate, too, the role played by all of the rabbis and other Jewish leaders who devote part of their time to religious services on nearby military posts.”

Federal Security Administrator Oscar R. Ewing told the J.W.B. that Jewish community centers affiliated with and served by the National Jewish Welfare Board “are performing a service for our American democracy which is pre-eminent” in achieving community harmony. Mr. Ewing said he considered the centers “among the finest developments of civic life in America.” He said he hoped they “continue and multiply” because of their function of “increasing good will and community harmony.”

A plea to the public to bring more of the home life, religion and ethics of the American community to men in uniform, wherever they may be serving, was expressed by Col. Raymond Stone, Jr., Army Chief of Special Services. Major Charles Carpenter, chairman of the Armed Forces chaplains board, told the J.W.B. leaders that “the Jewish community responded splendidly” through the work of the Division of Religious Activities of the National Jewish Welfare Board. “In so doing,” he said, “J.W.B. has strengthened the cause of freedom and justice and righteousness across the earth. For this response the Armed Forces are deeply grateful to the Jewish citizens of the United States.”