Jewish Agency Board of Governors Adopts Record $775m Budget

The Board of Governors of the Jewish Agency adopted a record $775 million budget recommended by the Jewish Agency Executive here last night. Max M. Fisher of Detroit, chairman of the Board of Governors, summed up the meeting at a press conference this morning. “We adopted a budget and we planned in detail how to translate this budget of needs into actual income and expenditure and we hope to achieve our goal,” Fisher said.

Louis Pincus, chairman of the Jewish Agency Executive, broke the budget down into its main categories for newsmen. The largest single item–nearly half the total–is $30C million earmarked for housing in Israel. Pincus observed that $25 million of the total budget will be raised by Israelis in Israel. The balance will depend on contributions by Jews all over the world. More than half the budget is expected to be raised in the United States.

Fisher, who is also president of the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds in the US and a former general chairman of the United Jewish Appeal, noted that the meeting which ended last night was the first ever held by the Board of Governors outside of Israel. “These last five days were days of diligent work and not ideological discussion,” he said, “We had no differences of opinion as to aims and purposes.”

CLOSE GAP BETWEEN RICH AND POOR

Asked why he is usually described as a non-Zionist, Fisher said “there might have been differences in the past between organized Zionists and the rest of us but they do not exist any longer and even in the past it was not a matter of heart but of organizational framework.” He said he regarded the meeting of the Board of Governors as “a group of fellow-Jews working on behalf of Israel and on behalf of Jewry.”

Discussing the budget, Pincus said “It was not in our minds to decide in favor of one need against another. This budget aims to help close the gap between rich and poor within Israeli society and at the same time provide for the absorption and integration of a mass aliya of something like 70,000 this year, perhaps even more.”

He observed that “The internal problems of Israel have not been blotted out by the aliya from the Soviet Union.” In addition to the sum for housing, the budget allocates $88 million for higher education; $84 million for health; $75 million for immigration and absorption; $68 million for basic education; and $55 million for social welfare.

Pincus said that the immigration from the Soviet Union had a powerful impact on the budgetary considerations. “We would like to involve in this historic development all Jews and not only large donors,” he said. “We don’t want groups of Jews, one of which is demonstrating and the other two providing funds. We want those who demonstrate (for Soviet Jews) also to be involved in helping to meet the needs of the immigration and absorption of Soviet Jews, even if it is through small contributions.” Pincus said.