J.D.B. News Letter

San Francisco Jews Lead in Community Chest Campaign (By our San Francisco correspondent)

In the plans for the San Francisco Community Chest’s annual financial campaign next month, Jews of this city again are taking a position of leadership in keeping with the important part they have played for years in local social service and philanthropic work.

Jewish men and women are members of the various committees handling important details incident to the drive which the Chest will make for support of the 104 charitable and welfare organizations of all creeds which it supports.

Back of this fact lies one of far more significance–a fact often pointed to with pride by local Jewish leaders. It is that Jewish charities of San Francisco, fully two decades ago, actually set the example for a Community Chest by combining under the banner of the San Francisco Federation of Jewish Charities.

In the Federation are seven constituent welfare and philanthropic bodies, each performing a widely different function, but operating under a consolidated administrative organization manned by the federation. These are the Eureka Benevolent Society, now the central charity and social service institution, Mount Zion Hospital and Nurses Training School, Pacific Hebrew Orphan Asylum and Home Society, Emanu-El Sisterhood, the Hebrew Home for the Aged Disabled nd the Free Loan Society (Chevra Gemilus Chasodim).

Combining these organizations into the Federation of Jewish Charities set an example for economical and efficient organization and administration which was cited with much emphasis when the plan for merging all of the city’s institutions into the Chest was first broached.

With the institution of the chest six years ago, Federation became a part of it and its leaders participate actively in the financial drives of the chest organization. The Chest allocates between $250,000 and $300,000 vearly to the Federation of Jewish Charities. Of this amount $90,000 goes to the operation of the Eureka Benevolent Society.

The background being as it is, it is only fitting that Jewish leaders should play an important part in the chest campaigns which are headed by men and women leading in every field of the city’s endeavor.

Judge M. C. Sloss, formerly associate justice of the California State Supreme Court, has been one of the leading figures in Chest affairs and now is playing one of the foremost parts in the lineup of organization work for the coming campaign.

Mrs. Sloss is one of the principal women in chest organization, heading a committee which aims at scientific exploitation of the purposes and needs of the Community Chest.

Dr. Samuel C. Kohs, social service director of the Eureka Benevolent Society, likewise is active in Chest affairs, as is Supervisor Jesse C. Colman and Mrs. Leo Clayburgh, who heads a publicity committee of the entire organization.

One of the greatest musical events in the history of San Francisco took place Sunday afternoon, January 22 when 10,000 people jammed the huge Exposition Auditorium to hear Yehudi Menuhin, young violin genius, in a recital arranged on the occasion of his home coming after a sojourn abroad.

From the point of enthusiasm and the artistic triumph of the boy, the affair wrote a new record in San Francisco’s far-famed musical history.

The occasion also was the boy’s eleventh birthday. As the lad, acclaimed for his genius throughout America and Europe, played one difficult selection after another with the finesse of a master, enthusiasm broke all bounds and the spacious auditorium reverberated with the acclaim of a throng of music-lovers gone wild.

Time and again the boy was obliged to come forward and acknowledge the plaudits of an admiring city.