U.s., Canadian Jewish Leaders Stress Commitment to Israel

The commitment of the North American Jewish community to Israel’s social and human needs was stressed by four American and Canadian Jewish community leaders at a dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria Saturday night. Israeli Premier Yitzhak Rabin addressed the dinner which was jointly sponsored by the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds in conjunction with its regular quarterly board meeting, and the United Jewish Appeal. (See the Sept. 16 issue of the Daily Bulletin.)

Raymond Epstein, CJF president, reported to the 750 Jewish leaders at the event that the four day quarterly board meeting had been “largely devoted to an exploration of the needs and potentials of the 1974-75 campaigns.” He said that the community leaders had “pledged themselves to make it the most successful in the history of fund-raising in the United States and Canada.”

American aid to Israel, Epstein observed, “has been unfailing and we reiterate our pledge to see that it continues in this troublesome era, when the needs are so great and at a time when we hope to effect the rescue and immigration to Israel of tens of thousands of Jews from Soviet Russia and other countries of oppression and need.”

Stating that “the union between the people of Israel and the American Jewish community is unbreakable and indivisible,” Paul Zuckerman, UJA general chairman, said that “as we go into 1975, we remember the tragedies that took place in 1974. And we look forward to a year in which we, the Jews of the world, shall be the masters of our destiny. But this can be so, only if our unity survives and becomes even stronger.”

Rabbi Israel Miller, chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, pledged “the economic, military and diplomatic support not only of the Jewish community, but of the entire American community, until we achieve the firm and durable peace for which we all aspire.” Speaking for the Canadian Jewish community, Thomas O. Hecht, of Montreal, president of the United Israel Appeal of Canada, said that it is “not only arms, not only disengagement, but peace to which we all aspire.”