Jewish federations and welfare funds have raised close to two billion dollars for social service and health needs since World War II, Irving Kane of Cleveland, president of the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds, declared at the 30th annual meeting of the Federation for Jewish Services of Minneapolis yesterday.
Addressing several hundred leaders of the Minneapolis Jewish community, Mr, Kane stated that “this is a magnificent achievement for five and a quarter million Jews in America–an achievement that would have been utterly impossible without united fund raising.”
The sum raised by central communal organizations–$1,885,000,000–does not represent the total of Jewish fund raising, Mr. Kane observed. It represents only what federated fund raising has accomplished, These federations, pioneered in Boston and Cincinnati in the 1890’s have grown Through the decades to include, at the present counting, over 800 communities throughout the United States and Canada.
Through these united agencies, the communities have been able to break down “the wall of separation between fund raisers and social planners, ” he said, “Around one conference table instead of two, we now talk with each other instead of about each other. We are forgetting about those who are Just overseas minded and those who are Just ‘locally minded’ and we are growing together as communities which are ‘humanitarian minded’ and as people who are ‘community minded.’
C. J. F. W. F, PRESIDENT CITES GAINS IN AMERICAN JEWISH LIFE
Looking at community responsibilities in 1960 and the years ahead–at home and overseas–Mr. Kane noted the “dramatic and revolutionary” changes that have taken place in the past decade:
1. Family welfare agencies are not basically relief agencies any more. They are concerned with overcoming emotional strains and tensions that threaten the unity of families. In many cities they are stressing family life education to prevent broken homes and divorce.
2. Child care services are now geared to treatment of emotionally disturbed youngsters rather than care of orphans.
3. There must be a rethinking in programs for the aged. Their problem is no longer financial in most cases, “Their problem is loneliness as and uselessness. These people want to do something, to remain in the stream of life, ” he said.
4. Medical care must cope with the growing problem of the chronically ill. They require complex equipment and greater nursing services. In addition, “the character of our hospitals is changing, with greater priority to research and the recognition that patients are people and often require casework and even psychiatry, as well as physical care, ” he said.
5. The Jewish community centers are no longer Just schools where immigrants may learn English, or places to keep children off the streets for a few hours. “They are becoming genuine community centers, a meeting ground for the entire family, to give wholesome recreational and cultural balance to our lives.”
6. The entire community must bear responsibility for the program of Jewish education it offers. “No one can be complacent about the quality of what we now offer, the virtual vacuum in the education of our high school youth and the crucial and critical shortage of teachers. This concern must be high on our community agenda,” he declared.
Another stride forward in American Jewish life, Mr. Kane reported, was the establishment of the National Foundation for Jewish Culture by the CJFWF. “Here for the first time we shall be concerned with the total Jewish cultural product of America, with our research, our scholarship, our archives and libraries and our publications, ” he said. “We shall bring to the concern for Jewish culture the same imagination, resources and vision that we have brought to our health and welfare programs, “
Pointing to the overseas picture, Mr. Kane observed that the task of reconstructing the “shattered Jewish communities” of Europe was largely completed. “We are helping them as they move toward their final goal of self support, ” he said. “In Israel, he said, “we have the extraordinary opportunity to break the backlog of needs which have piled up from the immigration of previous years. We have the massive Job of building houses, of providing vocational training, of giving the farmers the tools they were promised years ago, and of providing the health and welfare services to the sick and infirm, whom no other country on earth, except Israel, would take.”
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.
