Loyalty year after year on the part of the Jews of New York to philanthropic causes, regardless of outside factors, was cited by speakers at the thirteenth annual meeting of the Federation for the Support of Jewish Philanthropic Societies yesterday afternoon at the Community House of Congregation Emanu-El, as the prime factor in the success of last year’s campaign for funds by the local Jewish community chest in behalf of its ninety-one constituent agencies.
Visioning the amalgamation within the next twelve months of the organized Jewish charities of greater New York as constituted in the New York and Brooklyn Federations and expressing confidence that the greatest Jewish community in the world will subscribe the vast funds necessary for the enlarged enterprise, Dudley D. Sicher, as president of the New York Federation, rendered his report before the annual meeting of the New York organization, which now serves Manhattan and the Bronx.
Other speakers at the meeting included Lieutenant-Governor Herbert H. Lehman, a director of the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society, one of the constituent agencies of the Federation; and Sam A. Levisohn, chairman of the Business Men’s Council of the Federation.
Citing the growth of the organization from 12,000 supporters when it was founded in 1917 to 32,000 during the year just ended, Mr. Sicher pointed out that the 1929 budget prepared by the Distribution Committee agreed on a $9,958,000 gross expenditure for its ninety-one affiliated societies, $5,278,706 of which was to be supplied by the Federation, and that the voting of these sums created at the beginning of 1929 a cash deficit of $2,047,000, a shortage which was wiped out by the recent successful completion of the organization’s campaign.
Walter E. Beer, treasurer of the Federation, reported that the organization had receipts in 1929 of $5,337,192 and expenditures in that year of $5,336,701.
In spite of the difficulties encountered by the Federation during its 1929 campaign, the organization’s income for the year was actually larger than that of any other year in its history, according to Sam A. Lewisohn, who as chairman of the Business Men’s Council, reported on the fund-raising activities of the local Jewish charities during 1929. At the same time 7,200 new members were secured and more than 5,000 people contributed in amounts less than ten dollars, which constitutes the membership charge of the Federation, Mr. Lewisohn stated.
Pointing out that the Jewish Communal Survey of Greater New York was completed after three years work in the fall of 1929, the report stated a special committee under the chairmanship of Judge Joseph M. Proskauer has been giving consideration to such problems arising from the shift of the Jewish population from one section of the city to another, or indicating the consolidation and amalgamation of societies in similar fields of work and the possible elimination of duplication of effort.
In line with this tendency, Mr. Sicher cited the recent merger of the Beth Israel hospital, completed early in 1929, and the old Jewish Maternity Hospital and stated that plans are under way to proceed with the erection on East Seventeenth Street, adjoining the present site of the new Beth Israel Hospital of a new modern maternity hospital building.
In addition to the opening of the new Beth Israel Hospital, the Montefiore Hospital for Chronic Diseases likewise completed its $2,000,000 model country sanatorium for incipient tuberculosis at Bedford Hills, Westchester. The Hebrew Orphan Asylum, whose main buildings are at Amsterdam Avenue and 138th Street, also is building on its property known as Edenwald in the Bronx, where it is already conducting experiments in the more intensive training of mentally subnormal girls. In the spring of the present year the new building of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association at Lexington Avenue and 92nd Street, of which Judge Proskauer is president, will be opened. During 1930 Mount Sinai Hospital will also erect an additional
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
