The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany announced today that 226 needy refugee rabbis in the United States and Canada have received from it this year grants totaling $117,000. This allocation was a continuation of the program initiated by the Conference in 1954 to aid the surviving religious leadership of the destroyed Jewish communities of Europe. Approximately 1,000 persons comprising the families of the refugee rabbis were beneficiaries of the Conference grants.
Grants were made for relief aid and for individual rabbinical research projects. The relief grants were extended, in keeping with the urgency of financial need, to victims of Nazi persecution who had functioned as rabbis in their communities prior to their displacement by the Nazis. Furthermore, Individual rabbinical research grants were given for projects considered outstanding in terms of originality and usefulness to rabbis and rabbinical students. The projects for which grants were made covered practically every phase of rabbinical literature.
The program was carried out under the general supervision of a special committee under the chairmanship of Rabbi Joseph H. Lookstein. Among the prominent rabbinical personalities who served on this committee were Rabbi Leo Jung, Rabbi Max Kirshblum, Rabbi Isaac Lewin, Dr. Samuel Sar and Rabbi Harry I. Wohlberg. In the implementation of the program the Claims Conference also had the benefit of the views of leading rabbis of pre-war European Jewish communities.
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