J.D.C. Spent $4,00,000 Since Founding to Aid Religious Institutions

The spiritual life of Jews overseas is being maintained by the Joint Distribution Committee, in conjunction with its programs of relief and rehabilitation, Joseph C. Hyman, executive vice-chairman, announced today. Despite the tremendous task of relieving Jewish distress in more than 50 overseas countries, Hyman emphasized, the J.D.C. has also made a special effort to provide substantial assistance to Jewish schools, educational projects, chedarim, yeshivoth and other institutions of learning.

“The J.D.C. extends assistance to more than 100 school organizations, yeshivoth and other educational institutions in 40 overseas countries, including Latin America,” Hyman said. “In Palestine alone, 60 schools and yeshivoth, accommodating 20,000 students, receive assistance from the J.D.C. For the past several years, the J.D.C. has granted to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem $12,500 annually. This was to help maintain refugee professors and scholars at the university. In the five months from January through May of this year, the J.D.C. has spent $30,000 for religious and cultural aid work. During 1940, when the J.D.C. was providing the necessities of life to a million men, women and children, it allotted $102,000 for religious and cultural institutions. More than half of the total went to Palestinian institutions and groups. Eighty-five per cent of the institutions thus supported are orthodox.”

“On Jan. 1, 1941,” he reported, “the authorities in Lithuania decreed that all refugees in that country must file, by Jan. 25, their intention to receive Soviet citizenship or be declared stateless. The great bulk of the refugees in Lithuania accepted Soviet citizenship. Most of the rabbis and yeshiva students, numbering 3,000 to 4,000, feared to do so. Urgent cables were received by the J.D.C. to evacuate them by furnishing transportation to Japan. The J.D.C. bent every effort to effect this evacuation. Thus far the J.D.C. has helped 500 of this group to emigrate. Of these about 100 have reached countries of permanent asylum and 400 are in Japan awaiting emigration. The J.D.C. is now carrying the burden of feeding, sheltering, granting medical aid and other forms of assistance to those in Japan.”

Since its establishment, Hyman revealed, the J.D.C. has expended a total of $4,400,000, both through the Cultural Committee and directly, for the rescue, support, establishment and encouragement of Jewish religious institutions. This amount, he pointed out, is over and above the assistance extended to the religious leaders, teachers, and students as part of the general relief work of the J.D.C.