A house-to-house fund-raising campaign will be launched by the Jewish National Fund on March 1st throughout the United States, with more than 50,000 volunteers enlisted in the drive which will last a full month, it was announced at a press conference here today by Dr. Harris J. Levine, president of the J.N.F. of America.
The special drive, which will continue throughout “Jewish National Fund Box Month,” will seek to place a J.N.F. box in 750,000 Jewish homes in this country, Dr. Levine explained. There are at present 250,000 J.N.F. blue-white boxes in Jewish homes throughout the United States. Mrs. Israel Goldstein has been named chairman of the committee which will supervise the drive.
A proclamation calling on all American Jews to support “Box Month,” which is signed by the national presidents of all Zionist organizations in the United States, stresses the popular character of the J.N.F. “The Jewish National Fund is the people’s fund,” the proclamation says. “For more than a half-century, it has lived with the masses of the Jewish people and has derived its power for great achievement from the people.” The proclamation ends on the confident note that the Jews of America will respond to the call of the J.N.F.
Dr. Levine said that the 1953 budgetary requirements of the Jewish National Fund total $22,000,000. The principal programs which the J.N.F. is seeking to carry out this year include the drainage of the 60,000 dunam (15,000 acres) marshland in the Huleh region of Israel; the planting of 7,000,000 trees in the Galilee and other parts of the country, in addition to the 6,000,000 trees of the Forest of Martyrs now being planted in the Judean Hills near Jerusalem; the reclamation of 250,000 acres of sandy soil, primarily in the Negev; and the preparation of hundreds of thousands of acres for agricultural production by scores of thousands of immigrant families.
Mrs. Goldstein declared that the drive’s slogan–“a J.N.F. box in every Jewish home”–is “a realizable goal” and stressed that the blue-white box has “become a feature in the Jewish home in America.” The day has arrived “when every Jewish household should make it a point of pride in Jewish tradition and in the State of Israel to display the J.N.F. box,” she stated. Mendel N. Fisher, executive director of the Jewish National Fund, called attention to the educational value of J.N.F. “Box Month” for the State of Israel and the cause of land redemption.
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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.
