An appeal to welfare fund communities not to accept the proposal for the establishment of a national budgeting committee on the ground that it would standardize Jewish life and bring about a form of centralization which would affect the growth of communal responsibility has been issued by the Committee on the Referendum for Budgeting, it was announced today.
Among the members on the committee are Judge Samuel Barnet of New Bedford, Rabbi Isadore Breslau of Washington, Albert K. Epstein of Chicago, Rabbi Leon Fram of Detroit Gustave L. Goldstein of Los Angeles, Rabbi James G. Heller of Cincinnati, D. Beryl Manischewitz of Cincinnati, Charles J. Rosembloom of Pittsburgh and Dr. Abba Hillel Silver of Cleveland.
The committee, which was established in order to clarify the arguments against setting up a committee to recommend tactics for all national and overseas agencies, issued a statement of principles adopted by some of the delegates who attended the Atlanta General Assembly of the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds.
Declaring that the proposal to establish a national budgeting committee represented a radical departure from the fact-finding functions of the Council, the committee emphasized that the establishment of the new body would vest in a small group of men the power and authority over the distribution of funds in which were involved not merely the financial support of institutions and agencies, but “principles and ideals, aims and aspirations that would be more property and more equitably evaluated in the councils of the local communities in which these ideals, principles and aspirations come in more direct contact with those who give and who decide.”
If welfare funds surrender the right to determine how the funds which they raise are to be distributed, they will give up prerogatives and responsibilities which go far beyond the mere task of fund-raising and which form the basis for fully developed communal thinking and action, the statement said.
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