Jewish Communities in U.S. Called on to Raise $50,000,000 for U.J.A. Within 12 Days

A call to Jewish communities throughout the United States to raise $50,000,000 within the next twelve days to meet the “critically urgent” needs of the agencies of the $250,000,000 United Jewish Appeal was issued to-?ay by Henry Morgenthau, Jr., general chairman of the U.J.A., in the course of an extraordinary national telephone conference in which over 150 communities participated.

Morgenthau urged the approximately 15,000 Jewish leaders who heard his appeal ### the telephone hook-up to bring the maximum amount of cash to the U.J.A. Emergency National Conference which will be held at the Hotel Shoreham in Washington, D.C. on March 19th and 20th. “At the present moment the agencies of the U.J.A. are faced with financial breakdown as a result of the unprecedented demands upon them arising from tremendous influx of immigration into Israel,” Morgenthau said.

Berl Locker, chairman of the Jewish Agency executive in Jerusalem, and one of the participants in the telephone conference, revealed that more than 50,000 new immigrants are now living in reception centers and that many of them do not have a roof over their heads. “The Jews cannot merely be brought to the shores of Israel and dumped there,” he said. “They must be helped to earn their own living. They must be helped quickly to stand on their own feet so that they may be removed forever from the budget of Jewish fund-raising.”

Others who participated in the telephone parley included Edward M.M. Warburg, chairman of the Joint Distribution Committee; Judge Morris Rothenberg, acting national chairman of the United Palestine Appeal and a national chairman of the United Jewish Appeal; and William Rosenwald, honorary president of the United Service for New Americans and a national chairman of the U.J.A.