Calling upon the representatives of American Jewry to attend the National Conference on Palestine that is to be held Sunday, January 15th at the Hotel Astor, Dr. Cyrus Adler, Chairman of the American Council of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, and President of the American Jewish Committee, declares that the maintenance of Jewish reconstruction activities in the Jewish Homeland is a project “for which the Jews have engaged their honor to all the nations.”
The National Conference, summoned under the auspices of the Jewish Agency, will bring together Jewish leaders from all parts of the United States for the purpose of considering the status of rebuilding activities in Palestine and to launch the 1933 fundraising effort for Palestine. Among those who will deliver addresses at the Conference are Felix M. Warburg, Judge Julian W. Mack, Dr. Stephen S. Wise, Judge William M. Lewis, Louis Lipsky, Rabbi Samuel Schulman, Morris Rothenberg, Dr. Cyrus Adler, and Nathan Straus, Jr.
In his statement outlining the present situation of the Jewish Agency, in whose formation three years ago he played a leading part, Dr. Adler says:
“I express the hope that the National Conference on Palestine which is to be held in New York City on January 15th will be widely attended and that its purposes will meet with the support of all those who are interested in the upbuilding of the Holy Land.
“For the past few years the economic situation in Palestine has been more fortunate than most lands. We all hope that it will continue to be so, but the statesman or economist or industrial leader who can make predictions for continued prosperity anywhere in the world is today, if not the forgotten man, at least the unknown man.
“The Jewish Agency for Palestine, which carries on as it were the slender administrative work necessary to continue the upbuilding of the Yishuv, has been cut down to a skeleton organization. We have all realized with the great need of the world that the generous outpourings of years back are not to be expected and the Jewish Agency has for the past several years been increasingly tightening its belt. It has now reached the point where it cannot draw in any more notches and it is for this very slender support that I think Palestine has a right to ask even of America.
“There is a point beyond which an organization that undertakes to look out for educational work, health work, settling immigrants, the necessary machinery for contact with the government, the necessary machinery for the promotion of industry, agriculture, and the marketing of products, etc., cannot be reduced. Here the Jewish people are asked to aid in a policy of construction and, moreover, a piece of constructive work which is flung, as it were, before the yes of the world and for which the Jews have engaged their honor to all the nations.
“I am aware of the fact that there are some who feel that it is unpatriotic for an American to propose even that any money should be sent out of our country at the present time. The small sum which is required on our part to aid in maintaining the Jewish Agency bears an insignificant proportion to our whole balance of trade or even to the luxuries and trifles which American people unthinkingly buy from abroad that have to be paid for out of money sent over from this country.”
The Conference, which will elect national officers for the American Palestine Campaign, and consider plans for revision of fund-raising procedure which have been under discussion for several months, will also hear from Robert M. Bernstein, Philadelphia, Assistant United States Attorney Elihu D. Stone, Boston; Mrs. Archibald Silverman, Providence; Rabbi Solomon Goldman, Chicago.
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