Begin Assures UJA Conference That Project Renewal Will Proceed

A message from Premier Menachem Begin of Israel declaring that “Project Renewal will proceed actively and energetically in the context of the government’s new economy measures” highlighted the United Jewish Appeal’s national conference here this weekend.

The message was delivered at a leadership dinner at which UJA national chairman Irwin Field reported that the 1980 regular campaign total to date of $115 million represented “the largest amount of money raised, in the most communities, at the earliest date since the 1974 campaign, which began immediately following the Yom Kippur War.” The 1980 drive seeks a regular campaign increase of some $100 million, Field said, with maximum additional pledges for Project Renewal, the social rehabilitation program designed to rejuvenate the lives of 300,000 immigrants living in Israel’s distressed urban areas.

Buoyed by these developments, conference delegates listened with concern the next morning as Jewish Agency treasurer Akiva Lewinsky described a serious shortage in cash receipts which, combined with the eroding effect of near-run-away inflation, is threatening drastic cutbacks in many of the Agency’s human support programs.

Settlement plans in the Galilee and Negev will be curtailed, and the youth aliya program will accept 2,000 fewer underprivileged children this year unless there is a significant quickening of cash flow, Lewinsky indicated. The emergency has developed, he noted, at a time when the high cost of carrying out Israel’s peace treaty obligations was increasing the Jewish: Agency’s share of responsibility for immigrant absorption and social progress.

AWARDS AND TRIBUTES

The first UJA Humanitarian Award was presented to Henry Ford 11 at the leadership dinner by Max Fisher, chairman of the Jewish Agency Board of Governors and past UJA national chairman.

At a “Convocation of Solidarity” at Lincoln” Center’s Avery Fisher Hall, UJA president Frank Lautenberg presented the 1979 UJA David Ben-Gurion Award for excellence and valor to Argentinian Jewish editor Jacobo Timerman, and offered a warm tribute to Boris Penson, the Soviet Jewish artist who was among the Prisoners of Zion chosen in absentia for last year’s Ben-Gurion Award. The Organization for Rehabilitation through Training (ORT) was honored on the occasion of entering its 100th year.

In presenting the Humanitarian Award, Fisher cited Ford’s refusal to succumb to the Arab boycott of Israel despite the business losses involved, as well as the auto magnate’s efforts to alleviate unemployment and urban crisis in Detroit. In his response, Ford focused on the nature of philanthropic responsibility.

“As people concerned with others,” he told the UJA campaign leaders, “part of your responsibility will be keeping alive the spirit of generosity, the spirit of caring. Perhaps all of us can draw strength from one of the heroines of World War 11 … Anne Frank died believing in the goodness of people. What you are doing in UJA brings us closer to the world Anne Frank deserved to have.”

Timerman, who has resumed his career as a journalist in Israel, told an audience of more than 1000 at the Avery Fisher Hall event that he found strength to survive severe torture during his imprisonment through his Jewishness.

Penson, denied painting materials during his nine years in Soviet prison camps, has achieved international recognition for his etchings and watercolors since reaching Israel. In appreciation of American Jewry’s support of his struggle for freedom, he presented the UJA with a book of his poignant series of etchings entitled “Prison Views”. He called on American Jews to continue their efforts “to free Russian Jewry from spiritual slavery.”

The audience at the “Convocation of Solidarity” also heard an impassioned plea by Falasha liberation leader Baruch Tegegne, asking for immediate action on behalf of the Jewish community in Ethiopia.” Jewish people are dying now in Ethiopia,” he declared. “They cannot wait years until help will come one day. We have reliable information that the Ethiopian government is now ready to let our people go to Israel. Won’t you save 28,000 Jews from sure death? The time is now.”