More than 800 key leaders of local community campaigns affiliated with the nationwide United Jewish Appeal met here tonight at the annual inaugural dinner preceding the official opening of the UJA’s three-day annual national conference here tomorrow. Some 2,500 Jewish communal representatives will chart the UJA’s 1968 fund-raising drive, during the conference, to aid immigrants in Israel and needy Jews throughout the world.
Baron Elie de Rothschild, general chairman of the Fonds Social Juif Unifie, the central welfare agency of the French Jewish Community, told the dinner guests that American Jewish aid, through the UJA, re-kindled Jewish life in Europe, “a light that almost went out in the wake of the Hitler era.” Max M, Fisher, UJA general chairman, another speaker, called the outcome of the Israel-Arab six-day June war a miracle, the sequel to which would be the establishment of peace in the Middle East. Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller lauded the life-saving work of the UJA.
Baron Rothschild told the UJA leaders that “you have not only been our saviors, you have been our teachers,” explaining that the French Jewish community, in particular, was now using the philanthropic fund-raising techniques pioneered by the UJA. He emphasized that the French Jewish community faced much greater internal problems than those of the United States or any other European Jewish community. At the end of World War II, a shrunken remnant of 175,000 Jews remained in France. Then came a series of newcomers from French North Africa, which swelled French Jewry to its present 500,000.
The flood of immigrants overwhelmed the social welfare organization of the French Jewish community, he reported, adding that even this year, in the aftermath of the June war, 15,000 Jews from Moslem countries fled to France, French Jewry, like that of other free countries, made an unprecedented response to aid Israel during the May-June crisis. With that momentum, Baron Rothschild said, the French Jewish community organized its own UJA to conduct annual campaigns.
ROCKEFELLER SAYS ISRAEL MUST SURVIVE AS PROOF OF DEMOCRACY’S VITALITY
Gov. Rockefeller also said that the UJA was needed more today “than at any time since you first helped to establish the State of Israel 20 years ago.” He declared Israel “must” and “will” survive as “fresh proof of the vitality and superiority of democratic life.”
Mr. Fisher stressed that “the second part of the miracle” of the June victory, the establishment of Middle East peace’ “may be very long” in coming. A half year after that victory, he pointed out, Israel still was standing guard in a forced mobilization which is very costly and which has disrupted Israel’s economy and forced curtailment of progressive programs. He said these programs had helped raise the standard of living of Israel’s 250,000 Arab citizens to the highest of any Arab population. Under these circumstances, he said, Israel could not continue its aid program for 500,000 still unabsorbed Jewish immigrants and for 1,250,000 Arabs now within the occupied territories. To guarantee advancement of such humanitarian purposes, the 1968 UJA campaign must achieve even greater results than the 1967 drive, he said.
When the national conference opens tomorrow, the 2,500 delegates will hear leaders of the UJA beneficiary agencies – the Jewish Agency for Israel and the Joint Distribution Committee – report on the needs they must meet in Israel and in 30 other countries, At the banquet session Saturday evening, the principal speakers will be Gen. Yitzhak Rabin, Israel’s chief of staff, and Aryeh L. Pincus, chairman of the Jewish Agency.
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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.
