Creation of Pacific Coast Z.o. Advanced As San Franciscans Raise Funds for Project

Consolidation of all Zionist interests on the Pacific Coast into one united western organization was brought closer to realization this week when the San Francisco Zionist district reported that it had raised its share of the initial fund needed to bring about the anticipated merger.

As soon as Los Angeles and other coast communities do likewise, the Pacific Coast Zionist Organization will come into official being and a bureau will be established not only to direct coast-wide activities for the Zionists of the West but to work toward the promotion of Zionist interests and the increasing of membership from the Canadian line to Mexico.

Back of this contemplated Pacific Coast organization is a story of unusual interest in the development of Zionist strength along the Pacific that is causing no little comment among those who have been impartial observers on the sidelines of western Jewry in the past twenty years or so.

ALL ELEMENTS DRAWN IN

Running through that story is the spread of Zionist support on the western coast to Jewish men and women of all elements and their participation in Zionist affairs without regard to their respective congregational affiliations.

In San Francisco and other large western centers, Zionist interest some 15 or twenty years ago was confined almost exclusively to the orthodox group. San Francisco, for instance, supported only the Agudath Zion Society, comprising a small but loyal band of orthodox men and women. Later came the formation of the Mizrachi Zionist body under the leadership of Rabbi Wolf Gold.

Then, about 13 years ago, Zionist headquarters in New York sent to San Francisco Marvin Lowenthal, who established headquarters here and interesting results followed. He had not been in San Francisco long before the old Agudath Zion society expanded into the San Francisco Zionist Organization with a greatly swelled membership that included some of the wealthiest and most influential reform Jewish men and women of the community.

Conservatives and more orthodox flocked to the banner of the new body and Zionism went ahead with a burst of enthusiasm and activity. The same thing happened in Los Angeles and the larger communities of the Northwest.

WOMEN’S ORGANIZATIONS FORMED

With influential men and women now back of Zionist activities, there came the need for women’s organizations and to the Hadassah branches—senior and junior—came women of the reform, orthodox and conservative groups.

The intervening years have seen a steady growth in membership and strength until last summer leaders here and elsewhere suggested a merging of all Zionist groups along the entire Pacific Coast into a coast-wide organization that would function as a unit and have the added advantage of greater numbers and, of course, greater influence.

Judge Isadore M. Golden of San Francisco was elected chairman. It was agreed to raise an initial $5,000 on the coast to open the bureau, which is to serve as headquarters and a central clearing house for the coast.