Combined Reform Jewish Campaign Raised $1,901,000 in Year’s Drive

The Combined Campaign for American Reform Judaism has raised the record sum of $1,901,000 during its 1956-57 fiscal year, which is $130,000 more than was raised in the previous year, it was reported by Irving S. Schneider, executive vice-chairman of the drive.

‘Despite the record $1,901,000 in Campaign income, the Reform community’s national religious institutions are confronted today by serious and even critical financial deficits as they seek to meet the needs of the fastest growing religious denomination in American Jewry, the Reform branch of Judaism, “Mr. Schneider reported.

The institutions benefitting from the Combined Campaign are the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, parent body of Reform Jewish houses of worship in the United States and Canada now numbering close to 550 temples, and the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, the oldest Jewish divinity school in the western hemisphere. Funds raised through the Combined Campaign are divided equally between the central congregational body and the rabbinical school.

The two institutions, “Mr. Schneider reported,” which head a religious movement numbering over 1,000,000 men, women and children but will be seriously hampered in meeting their educational, youth, social service and worship obligations as a result of a fund shortage amounting to some $250,000.” Although the Combined Campaign had a greater number of contributors in 1956-57 than in any other year, and produced more than any other campaign for Jewish religious institutions of national scope.’ he declared, “the growth of the Reform movement is so fast that the present rate of income is insufficient to keep pace with spiralling needs.”