The United Jewish Appeal of Greater New York formally inaugurated its 22nd annual campaign tonight with a $10,000,000 dinner at the Hotel Roosevelt. Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller and Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt were among the 800 persons prominent in business, civic affairs and philanthropic endeavor who gathered to launch the drive. Israel’s Ambassador Avraham Harman was among the principal speakers.
Contributions announced at the dinner, added to gifts obtained in other activity preliminary to the campaign’s start, brought to $10,000,000 the amount with which the United Jewish Appeal of Greater New York officially begins its 1960 campaign. Among the outstanding gifts announced were two bequests for the housing of immigrants to Israel. They totaled $750,000. One, amounting to $450,000, came from the estate of the late Adolf Leon. The other, a bequest of $300,000 from the estate of S. Grenberg, was made for the same purpose.
In urging increased support of this year’s UJA campaign, Ambassador Harman cited an estimate that one in three of the nearly one million immigrants who have entered Israel since it became independent in 1948 still needs some form of aid provided by the UJA. The help to be given includes institutional and rehabilitative care for the relatively high percentage of aged, chronically ill and handicapped among the immigrants; additional investment in agricultural villages where 32,000 families have been settled but are not yet fully self-sustaining; vocational training and housing.
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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.