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U.J.A. National Conference Starts Today; to Decide on Special Fund

December 13, 1957
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Top leaders of Jewish communities throughout the country, convening here at the 20th annual national conference of the United Jewish Appeal, will decide tomorrow on recommendations for raising a special fund over and above the regular goal of the 1958 UJA campaign in order to guarantee the transfer of Jews from tension areas at the greatest and swiftest rate possible and carry forward the crucial immigrant absorption programs which already have swamped the facilities of Israel.

The more than 1,000 delegates will attend the three-day conference which opens tomorrow at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. They are expected to have the recommendation for a special fund placed before them tomorrow by the UJA overseas study mission, which recently returned from a survey of UJA-supported welfare, rescue and resettlement operations abroad. The report of the 100-man study mission made an impressive presentation of the need for a special fund. If approved, it will be the third consecutive extra fund drive to be carried out by the UJA to cope with extraordinary rescue and resettlement needs.

Calling for another special fund effort, the study mission report hailed the “supreme achievement of Israel’s first decade–the taking in of more than 900,000 immigrants, and expressed pride in American Jewry’s massive support which helped make that achievement possible. The report warned, however, that unless the Jews of America” redouble our efforts, not only will tens of thousands of immigrants in Israel be forced to live under impossible conditions, but future immigration will be imperilled.”

Highlighting the conference will be an up-to-the minute report Saturday evening on Israel’s progress and problems in immigrant absorption from one of the 10-year-old State’s founders and leading statesmen, Moshe Sharett, former Prime Minister and Foreign Minister. Israel’s Ambassador Abba S. Eban will introduce Mr. Sharett.

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