Sen. Humphrey Lauds U.J.A. at Three-day Parley of Young Leaders

Senator Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota, a ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, hailed the United Jewish Appeal last night as “one of the greatest voluntary instruments for life saving and life building ever created by Americans.”

In a deeply moving address that was the highlight of a three-day gathering of 400 Young Jewish leaders attending the Third UJA Annual National Young Leadership Conference at the New York Hilton Hotel, Senator Humphrey called the UJA “a supreme expression of man’s acceptance of the concept that he is, and must be, his brother’s keeper.”

Speaking at the banquet session of the Conference, which was presided over by Alan Sagner, of Newark, N.J., chairman of the UJA Young Leadership Cabinet and the Conference, the Minnesota Senator called on the young Jewish leaders, most of them between 25 and 40, to complete the tasks of Jewish rescue and reconstruction “begun by your elders,” and also to “fight constantly for human rights and peace.”

The three-day gathering of young leaders, drawn from major communities across the country, and members of a Young Leadership Council of 6,500, also heard major addresses by Avraham Harman, Israel Ambassador to the United States, Rabbi Herbert A. Friedman, UJA executive vice-chairman, and Mr. Sagner. At the same time detailed presentations of Middle East problems, along with immigrant absorption needs in Israel and urgent refugee requirements in Europe and elsewhere were made by authoritative speakers at various conference sessions.

AMBASSADOR HARMAN CALLS TO AID JEWS ABROAD MAINTAIN THEIR FREEDOM

Ambassador Harman told the young Jewish leaders at the closing session today that it is their task “to help maintain the freedom for Jews overseas already won by their elders and the people of Israel. ” He spoke on the gains that had been made by Jews since the founding of the State of Israel 15 years ago and the establishment of the UJA a quarter of a century ago.

Rabbi Friedman, UJA executive vice-chairman, speaking last night, declared that “over the last quarter of a century, the UJA has been the great unifier of the American Jewish community. “Since its inception at the time of the Hitler menace, ” the Appeals executive head noted, “the UJA has brought together under one banner virtually all elements in American Jewish life–religious and non-religious, Zionist and non-Zionist, labor and capital. The UJA has enabled the American Jewish community to transcend all ideological differences, thus creating a common will for the saving of Jewish lives and the resettlement and rehabilitation of uprooted Jews in Israel and other havens of freedom, including our own country.”

Moses A. Leavitt, JDC executive vice-chairman, reporting on the tasks of his organization, said France has recently become the scene of a most pressing Jewish refugee problem. “In the last two months, ” he said, “requests for relief by Jewish refugees from Algeria have doubled and will probably quadruple by October. As of now, one in every six repatriated Algerian Jewish families is registered with Jewish welfare agencies, 3, 000 families in the Paris region alone.”

UJA funds are not keeping pace with the third successive year of a high rate of immigration to Israel, and this is adversely affecting the program for transporting, receiving, resettling and absorbing these immigrants, the young leaders were told by Gottlieb Hammer, executive-vice-chairman of the Jewish Agency, Inc., which benefits from UJA funds. Another factor complicating the situation, Mr. Hammer said, is the fact that immigration costs today are much higher than those of the first years of Israel’s statehood.

In opening the conference, Mr. Sanger told the assembled young leaders: “It is our generation’s responsibility to carry forward the great rescue and life renewing work of the United Jewish Appeal begun by our fathers in the Hitler era. ” Mr. Sagner, a member of UJA’s policy making executive committee, who is serving his second term as general chairman of the United Jewish Appeal of Essex County, New Jersey, told the young leaders “we must be pragmatic as well as idealistic. It is not enough for us to want a better world, we have to go out and work for it.”

At the concluding session today Rabbi Isidore Preslau, UJA national chairman, urged the 400 young communal leaders “to carry forward with vigor and with imagination of youth” the work of helping millions of Jews “which your fathers have so well done. ” Other speakers at the conference included I.L. Kenen, executive director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee; Philip Soskis, executive director of the New York Association for New Americans: James P. Rice, executive director of the United Hias Service; Paul Bernick, executive director of the American ORT Federation, and Zvi Kolitz, Israel author.