Hundreds of the New York Jewish community’s leading volunteer fund-raisers, concerned with financing the resettlement of emigrating Soviet Jews and other urgent humanitarian programs and institutions in Israel, in distress zones overseas and in the Metropolitan area, rallied today at the Winter Garden Theater in Times Square, Manhattan.
They started organizing the most widespread mass solicitation effort ever undertaken among Jewish residents of the five boroughs, Westchester and Long Island. Carol Channing, Herschel Bernardi, Elly Stone and Cantor David Kusevitsky starred in “We Are One,” a dramatic and musical spectacle expressing the theme of the mass campaign initiated at today’s gathering.
Extending through April, May and June, the drive will involve 25,000 volunteers aiming at achieving in full the $280 million-goal of the Metropolitan area’s Israel Emergency Fund and coordinated campaigns of the United Jewish Appeal of Greater New York and Federation of Jewish Philanthropies. Some $160 million has been raised since the joint effort to meet overseas and local needs began in the wake of the Yom Kippur War.
The mass solicitation effort is headed by former Congressman Herbert Tenzer, a co-chairman of the coordinated UJA-Federation campaigns. He said its objective is to reach every one of more than 750,000 Jewish families believed to be living in New York City and Westchester. Nassau and Suffolk Counties. He estimated that as many as 200,000 families have contributed towards the amount already raised.
“We are deeply conscious,” Tenzer told an audience of 1500 at the Winter Garden, “that this mass effort must represent a significant step forward in our continuing struggle to assure the survival of the Jewish people. It will go forward in every industry and profession, in every neighbor-hood and every community, until we can be certain that everyone who is able is given the opportunity to add his contribution to our coordinated campaign.” Tenzer said the cost of transportation, housing, aid on arrival and other necessary assistance for Soviet Jews has risen to $40,250 per family from $35,000 a year ago.
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