— Leon Dulzin, chairman of the Jewish Agency and the World Zionist Organization Executives, hailed 500 delegates to the first national convention of TELEM, the Movement for Zionist Fulfillment, as a “much-needed breath of fresh air in the Zionist movement” which is “renewing the great tradition of Zionism in the United States.”
Noting that each member of TELEM makes “a personal commitment to go on aliya,” Dulzin added that “I believe the next 25 years of Israel’s existence will be in good measure determined by you. We prepared the ground. Your task is to come and to take over and to continue what we have begun so that the future of Israel and its people will be secure.”
Dulzin praised the commitment of the delegates to aliya because “you are coming from a free land, not from compulsion, but from idealism. One day the majority of Jews will live in Israel but Israel will have to be an attractive place. To make it so is your unique historical opportunity.”
PROPOSES PLAN FOR PROSPECTIVE OLIM
Charlotte Jacobson, chairman of the WZO-American Section, proposed a program of two years of life in Israel for prospective settlers. She said that length of time would enable the potential candidate for aliya “to weather the myriad of details, inconvenience and frustrations that are an inevitable part of setting up a new home at the same time” that the candidate “is involved with adjustment and absorption into Israeli life and society.”
A total of 156 TELEM members have made aliya in the first two years of the movement’s existence, a spokesperson said, adding that 49 TELEM members made aliya in TELEM’s first year and 107 in the second year.
Ephraim Evron, Israel’s Ambassador to the United States, told the delegates that “the excitement created by TELEM has instilled hope among all Zionists that has not been felt for years.” President Yitzhak Navon of Israel told the delegrates by telephone today from Israel that “you are our future.”
Rick Fishbine, TELEM outgoing chairperson, who plans to make aliya in June, told the delegates that the Zionist movement “must commit itself to active support for aliya.” Mike Rosenberg of Berkeley Calif., the new TELEM chairperson, who plans to settle in Israel in 1982, urged the delegates to “reach out to American Jewish youth on the campuses of North America to go to Israel for a summer, for a year, and, once they come to know the country, they will make aliya.”
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.
