B’nai B’rith Adopts Record Budget of over $13 Million; Youth Items Up Nearly 45%

B’nai B’rith announced today a record $13,261,656 budget for 1968, including $5,927,168–44,7 percent–for its youth programs for Jewish teenagers and college students. The total budget, adopted by the organization’s board of governors at its annual meeting here, represents a 5.5 percent increase over allocations for the present year.

Dr. William Wexler, B’nai B’rith president, reported it as the largest single increase in the organization’s 124-year history, “reflecting the growth in B’nai B’rith affairs and in the Jewish community itself.” The budget includes a combined increase of $352,790 for B’nai B’rith Hillel Foundations, now on 266 campuses with the addition of two new schools approved today; and expenditures for the B’nai B’rith Youth Organization, which has 50,000 teenagers enrolled in 1,617 chapters, and B’nai B’rith vocational service in 20 metropolitan cities. These items also represented the largest single increase for B’nai B’rith youth work. Dr. Wexler said. The two new campuses approved for Hillel programs were East Carolina College, Greenville, N.C., and the University of Louisville.

The board also authorized architectural studies on proposals to build a $1 million extension to its headquarters building here, and to construct a B’nai B’rith building in Jerusalem; and voted to participate in federally-regulated sponsorship of low-rent, nonprofit housing projects for senior citizens under a Department of Housing and Urban Development program. A senior citizens housing committee, which includes a number of housing specialists, was named to conduct site selections and market and feasibility studies for the construction of several pilot housing units for persons 62 years and older who live on limited incomes. The program is financed by Federal mortgage loans to organizations that qualify for the non-profit program.

In other actions, the board declared in a resolution that the “greatest service to the cause of peace” by Gunnar Jarring, the special United Nations emissary to the Middle East, would be to promote direct Arab-Israel peace negotiations. The resolution warned that “makeshift, indirect armistices” such as those agreed on in 1948 and 1956″ will not work. Another resolution expressed concern over a renewed Middle East arms race, but warned that an embargo among Western nations of the sale of arms, particularly aircraft, to Israel, in light of the Soviet Union’s massive replenishment of Arab arms, raised the threat of further military conflict.

A seminar of B’nai B’rith relationships with Israel concluded with recommendations for intensifying the organization’s Israel programs and included, among other proposals, the promotion of Jewish immigration to Israel through work and study scholarships for Jewish youth, and integrated investment projects to assist Israel’s economy with both capital and technicians.