Hadassah to Raise $150,000 for Palestine Medical Center

The 22nd annual convention of Hadassah, American women’s Zionist organization, closed tonight with a banquet at the Benjamin Franklin Hotel after deciding to raise $150,000 during the next year to complete the $850,000 building fund for the Medical Center in Jerusalem.

Dr. Stephen S. Wise, president of the Zionist Organization of America, Mrs. Edward Jacobs, president of Hadassah, and Mrs. Samuel W. Halprin were on the speakers’ list at the banquet, with Mrs. David de Sola Pool presiding.

The 2,000 delegates and guests from 45 states cheered the reading of a cable from Jerusalem yesterday describing the breaking of ground on Mount Scopus for the medical center. Mrs. Moses P. Epstein, Hadassah vice-president, said it would be “a Jewish gift to Palestine for all inhabitants, Arabs and Jews alike.”

Eddie Cantor, stage and screen star, in a broadcast from Hollywood, promised to help raise $180,000 for the Youth Aliyah movement by the end of the year.

Every country in Europe has a Jewish problem, declared Mrs. Jacobs. The Jews must have Palestine to survive, she said.

In a symposium on the Arab-Jewish problem, Dr. Abraham Halkin of Columbia University said that Jews and Arabs share many aspirations in common. Jews are eager to teach Arabs an enlightened conception of nationalism, he said.

Criticizing Great Britain for its handling of the League mandate, Charles Edward Russell, president of the Pro-Palestine Federation of America, urged public opinion to press toward fair play for the Jewish community in Palestine.

The convention voted $5,000 to Miss Henrietta Szold for child placement work in Palestine and other funds to carry out an intensive tree purchasing campaign to replace 40,000 trees uprooted in Palestine during the recent Arab attacks.

An education course in the United States to include study of Arab Jewish relations was also voted.