[The purpose of the Digest is informative: Preference is given to papers not generally accessible to our readers. Quotation does not indicate approval.–Editor]
The contributions of the American Jews as compared with that of the Catholics and Protestants toward the maintenance of religion at home and abroad during the year 1925, is shown by statistics published by the United Stewardship Council, representing twenty-five Protestant denominations, and quoted by the Utica (N. Y.) “Press.”
“Last year the American people gave $648,000,000 to maintain religion at home and abroad,” we read. “This figure represents the religious benefactions of Catholic, Jew and Protestant ecclesiastical organizations.
“For example: Twenty-five Protestant denominations gave, in 1925, the sum of $88,845,000 to benevolences, including missions of all kinds; $332,552,000 to congregational expenses, and enough miscellaneous gifts to bring the total to $451,000,000.
“The contributions of the Jews is estimated at $18,500,000. The Catholics gave $168,000,000. Other bodies, not referred to above, gave $10,000,000.
“The Jewish benefactions do not include moneys raised for the restoration of Palestine.”
THE DUTY OF THE ICA
The refusal of the Trustees of the Baron de Hirsch Fund (operating as the Jewish Colonization Association) to meet the request of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency for the publication of the terms of Baron de Hirsch’s will, is regarded as an injustice to the Jewish public by the “New Palestine” of March 19.
“Without in any way reflecting on the good faith of the administrators of the fund, Jews must insist that they have a right to know exactly what the Baron said, and to comment on the way his instructions are being carried out,” the “New Palestine” writes. “The Jewish Colonization Association does wrong to the memory of Baron de Hirsch in continuing its policy of complete silence on so important a public matter. Thirty years ago, with an inchoate Jewish public opinion, unorganized, inarticulate, the publication of the will might not have served any useful purpose. At the present time, however, with Jewish public activity at its height prepared to cope with an unprecedented situation, the publication of the will becomes a public duty.”
CALLS FOR END TO POLISH JEWISH AGREEMENT
Criticism of those Jews in Poland who still expect results from the Polish-Jewish Agreement, is contained in an editorial in the “Day” of March 18, under the caption, “An End to the Agreement.”
“Where people are in the midst of a fight for the very right to existence, to work and occupation, it is impossible to engage successfully in work for real national values without heeding, at the same time, the daily needs which are entirely dependent on politics,” the paper says.
“It is, therefore, not the fact that so much emphasis is laid in Poland on polities that surprises us, but rather the fact that there are still people there who cling to the Agreement, while the other party, the government, ridicules it. And, too, it is to be marvelled at with what firmness and pertinacity these people guard the ‘secret’ of the Agreement and refuse to publish it. They guard it so tenaciously as to arouse the suspicion that the Agreement may really contain something which is too ugly to publish.”
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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.
