The Board of Directors of the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds called on the Soviet government to rescind the ransom imposed on Jews seeking to emigrate. The Council gave its unstinting support to the recent “initiatives taken by Senators and Representatives to secure the elimination of this tax before there could be Congressional approval of most favored nation status for the Soviet Union.”
This unprecedented action on the part of the CJF Board, the central organization for more than 235 local Jewish Federations, Welfare Funds and Community Councils throughout North America, was taken last Friday at its three-days of Board and committee meetings here, which began Wednesday. More than 200 communal leaders and Federation executives from the United States and Canada attended the day and evening sessions which focussed on American Jewish commitment and concern at home and abroad, with special emphasis on the deteriorating situation of Soviet Jewry.
In its resolution on Soviet Jewry, the CJF Board called upon all fair-minded people and upon the US government to do everything within their power to obtain the rescinding of the new Soviet tax. “We do this in the name of human decency and in accordance with the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations, to which the Soviet Union is committed,” the resolution stated.
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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.
