The twenty-fifth anniversary dinner and ball of the Brooklyn Federation of Jewish Charities, held last night in the grand ballroom of the Hotel St. George, netted $87,000 for the twenty-five agencies affiliated with the Federation. With an attendance of 1,754 persons, all records for the affair was broken.
The affair was termed by Supreme Court Justice Mitchell May, president of Federation, “the most successful of any we have ever held.”
“The dinner, he said, “is a fitting climax to our twenty-five years of activity, and a fitting beginning for our second quarter century.”
After paying tribute to Harry Zeitz, charman of the dinner committee, Justice May briefly traced the history of the Federation from an organization with nine affiliates in 1909 to its status as financial clearing house for twenty-five Jewish charities today.
TRACES HISTORY
“I remember the day the Federation was founded,” Justice May said. “We felt we were doing something of a progressive nature. That was in 1909. At that time the Community Chest idea had not yet spread very widely. Only here and there, in some isolated communities, were there central finance clearing houses through which funds were raised for the agencies which perform the work of administering relief and caring for the poor. Nathan S. Jonas—we call him Father of Federation—drew about him a small group of communal leaders and said, in effect: ‘Let us see if this business of raising and dispensing funds for charity cannot be reorganized.’ Federation was born. We had nine affiliated agencies, and we were on our way.
ITS GROWTH
“Now the Brooklyn Federation of Jewish Charities, bigger, more sure of itself, more efficient, is an institution that has grown to maturity. Its affiliated agencies have grown to the number of twenty-five. Its duties, its responsibilities, have increased; but so have its abilities and its consciousness. I like to think of the Federation having a consciousness that it derives from the moral consciousness of the community which gave it birth and which it serves. But I should like, also, to remind that community that the Federation can never be more conscious than the men and women who support it. The Federation needs that support. It is your community chest.”
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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.
