Ncli Launches Fund-raising Campaigns

Leon H. Keyserling, Washington economist and president of the National Committee for Labor Israel, told his organization’s concluding convention session yesterday that fund raising for Israel by Jewish organizations must be accompanied by better understanding of the social purposes and human achievements of Israel. “Without this,” he told the 1500 delegates, “mere fund raising would in time lose both its appeal and its ultimate moral justification.”

Keyserling, who was re-elected president of the NCLI by the group’s National Board of Directors, and who is former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors under President Truman, also called for a shift in emphasis in the NCLI’s educational and informational effort, “Without surrendering or downgrading the traditional appeal of Israel to Jews, we must increasingly stress the worth of the individual as practiced and upheld in Israel and in Histadrut,” he said.

The convention adopted a resolution authorizing its fund raising arms, the Israel Histadrut Campaign whose executive director if Bernard B. Jacobson, and the Israel Histadrut Foundation, whose president is Dr. Sol Stein, to raise more money for the various health, educational and welfare programs of Histadrut in Israel.

The resolution called upon the Israel Histadrut Campaign to reach a goal of $5 million in 1972-73. The NCLI pledged “all necessary help” to the Israel Histadrut Foundation to reach its new goal of 86 million worth of deferred gifts in the form of wills, bequests and annuities to close the social-economic gap in Israeli life, and to help the continuing influx of immigrants from many lands, primarily from the Soviet Union.

Dr. Stein announced a new program for helping Histadrut to finance a $25 million mortgage fund for low-cost housing for young couples and army veterans. He said young married couples “are now victims of Israel’s housing shortage, the result of a generation of tragically necessary spending.”