Pinhas Sapir, chairman of the World Zionist Organization and Jewish Agency Executives, declared here last night, in an appeal for aliya, that Israel’s greatest deficit was not money but people. Speaking at the closing session of a four-day economic conference of the Israel Histadrut Foundation, Sapir said, “to us, the Jewish people, there is no price tag on Jewish life.” He said “We need to double” the not quite three million Jews in Israel.
Sapir, who was lauded in cabled messages from Israeli President Ephraim Katzir and Prem- ier Yitzhak Rabin, received an award symbolizing the $36 million raised by the Foundation since its establishment 15 years ago. The conference launched the 1975 drive for deferred gifts and annuities to benefit Histadrut’s health, educational and welfare programs in Israel. During the conference, $1.76 million was raised as the first step toward the $50 million plateau to be reached within the next year or two, officials said.
In accepting the award, Sapir said help from the Histadrut annuity fund “provides not only the necessary hard currency which Israel requires at this time, but, more important, in the specific area of Histadrut, it helps provide the $25 million that Histadrut pledged to mobilize for mortgage money for newlyweds and army veterans who have returned to civilian life” so that they can “begin a new life.”
MAJOR COMMITMENTS ANNOUNCED
Among major commitments announced at the conference were gifts of $100,000 from Mr. and Mrs. George Schaefer of Miami for expansion of a Histadrut Youth Village at Tivon near Haifa; $75,000 from Mr. and Mrs. Simon Dietch of Chicago, in celebration of Dietch’s 70th birthday at Maalot, for construction of a cultural center there; and $50,000 from Izzie Bressler of Miami for a cancer research center at the Beersheba Kupat Holim Hospital.
Dr. Sol Stein, who established the Foundation, was re-elected president. Rabbi Leon Kronish of Miami was continued as chairman of the board of directors.
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