U. J. A. Reports Rise in Fund-raising; $32,100,000 Collected in Cash

Jewish community central fund-raising campaigns in 1965 in support of both local and overseas needs are running at 7,4 percent increase over last year’s campaigns and already have remitted $32,100,000 in cash to the United Jewish Appeal for its 1965 aid programs.

That was the current picture reported to 150 key community leaders attending the meeting of the UJA National Campaign Cabinet at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel here today by Edward Ginsberg of Cleveland, Cabinet chairman. Speakers at the all-day sessions included Avraham Harman, Israel’s Ambassador to the United States; Rabbi Herbert A. Friedman, executive vice-chairman, and Philip Zinman, a UJA national chairman who heads the National Cash Committee.

Mr. Harman told the leaders that by keeping its doors open to all Jews who wish or need to go there, and diverting such a huge percentage to its national resources to absorb them, Israel was protecting the most vital interests of the Jewish people in this century. He urged the leaders to remember that Israel is the only country which has as its central purpose Jewish immigration.

Rabbi Friedman warned the leaders that the fund-raising results reported to them, while showing an encouraging upswing, would fall far short of meeting the total needs this year for the UJA-sponsored programs in Israel, Europe and other areas of distress. He pointed out that the principal source of contributions to the Jewish Agency for Israel, which is responsible for the transfer, resettlement and economic absorption of Jewish immigrants coming to Israel, was the United Jewish Appeal.

Mr. Zirman, leading the UJA’s National Cash drive, said the $32,100,000 realized by the UJA thus far “was a heartening response from the Jews of America to meet a financial emergency confronting overseas welfare agencies.” This financial emergency, he noted, was created partially by the termination beginning this year of the West German Reparations Agreement which had provided more than $7,000,000 annually, for the past 12 years, for the Joint Distribution’s global welfare and reconstruction programs.

A eulogy for Moses A. Leavitt, the executive vice-chairman of the Joint Distribution Committee, and national secretary of the United Jewish Appeal, who died Monday, in Geneva, Switzerland, was given by Mr. Ginsberg. He praised Mr. Leavitt as “a man whose wisdom counseled us in our hours of trial, whose strength helped us to undertake great tasks and responsibilities, and whose leadership enabled us to assume and meet the historic responsibilities of our generation.”