A resolution calling on Jewish communities in the Middle West to make “an extraordinary effort” to meet “our obligations to our fellow. Jews in need and to enable the heroic people of Israel to maintain their land as a true haven for distressed Jews everywhere,” was adopted yesterday at the closing session here of a three-day meeting of Jewish communal leaders from 12 Midwest states.
Speakers at the United Jewish Appeal’s Midwest Leadership Institute included Avraham Harman, Israel’s Ambassador to Washington; Edward M. M. Warburg, chairman of the Joint Distribution Committee; Philip M. Klutznick, a national chairman of the UJA; Rabbi Herbert A. Friedman, UJA executive vice-chairman, Moses A. Leavitt, JDC executive vice-chairman; Charles Jordan, director general of overseas operations of the JDC; I. D. Fink, president of the Minneapolis Federation for Jewish Service and others.
The meeting, which was called to launch the 22nd annual campaign of the United Jewish Appeal, was attended by 300 community representatives from Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota and Wisconsin.
The resolution adopted by the delegates also noted that “Jews are still coming in to Israel in substantial numbers. We must make sure that when these new immigrants reach their destination, their absorption into the life of the country is completed with a minimum of delay.”
Ambassador Avraham Harman told the Jewish communal leaders that American Jews, in the last 15 years, had helped to accomplish a revolution in world Jewish life. Since the end of the second World War, he declared, “a million and a quarter Jews, almost 12 percent of all Jews of the world, have been helped to migrate to lands where they enjoy the dignity of equal and rooted citizenship.” Of this, he noted, a million had gone to Israel.
Philip Klutznick described the urgent need to provide modest, but decent housing for some 90, 000 newcomers to Israel. Some 20, 000 housing units must be built, he stressed, if shanty-town dwellers and other immigrants in alum areas, are to be properly housed.
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