U.J.A. Launches Nationwide Israel Emergency Fund; Expects to Raise Vast Amounts

The United Jewish Appeal has launched a nationwide Israel Emergency Fund drive “to mobilize the greatest and swiftest outpouring of millions of dollars in UJA’s history,” it was announced today by Edward Ginsberg of Cleveland, UJA Associate General Chairman.”No set goal has been laid down for this emergency fund.” Mr. Ginsberg said,”but we are completely confident that the American Jewish community will bring in a sum which will far outstrip all previous campaigns, because we think people understand the dimensions of the present problem.”

Plans to establish the Israel Emergency Fund were set in a continuous series of tension-packed meetings of the UJA national executive committee and other key leaders of the entire American Jewish community who streamed into New York from all parts of the nation during the past week. Even as the formal structure of the emergency drive was being formulated, the leaders were taking time out to send wires and make personal telephone calls to other top Jewish philanthropists to solicit scores of individual gifts ranging in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. “A massive total of individual contributions will be brought in,” Mr. Ginsberg declared, “at an initial National big Gifts Meeting to be held at the Americana Hotel here on Monday evening, June 12.”

Mr. Ginsberg stressed that the UJA Israel Emergency Fund drive will seek funds over and above the regular 1967 campaign, which has been concluded in most communities. The Emergency Fund proceeds, he emphasized, would be used exclusively for the aid programs in Israel. “We are asking the Jews of America to do two things at once,” Mr. Ginsberg emphasized. “We call upon them to turn their past pledges to their regular community campaigns into immediately usable cash. And then we ask that they give again — in amounts commensurate with the over — whelming need — to the UJA Israel Emergency Fund. We have complete confidence that the Jews of America will respond in fullest measure to the emergency drive.”

JEWISH FEDERATIONS AND WELFARE FUNDS BACK CALL FOR EMERGENCY FUND

The UJA announcement of the Israel Emergency Fund was issued with the approval of the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds whose national Board met in an electric gathering in New York this morning at the New York Hilton. The Council is the national coordinating body for some 230 community campaigns which raise funds both for local Jewish communal needs, and for overseas aid through allocations to the UJA.

“The presidents and executive directors of Jewish Welfare Federations from every part of the nation who attended today’s Council meeting,” Mr. Ginsberg said, not only voted unanimous approval of the UJA’s Israel Emergency Fund, but the also are going home to lead their communities in an immediate, all-out effort to raise the unprecedented amounts required to meet this historic and humanitarian responsibility of the American Jewish community.”

“Nearly one-and-a-half million Jews found refuge in Israel in the past two decades,” Mr. Ginsberg noted, “The UJA helped finance this largest refugee exodus in history, and the UJA took a major role in financing the vast programs of resettlement, rehabilitation, housing, medical aid and social welfare services that the immigrants desperately required.”

“After the first few years of the establishment of Statehood,” Mr. Ginsberg stated. “Israel’s people themselves have carried two-thirds of the multi-million dollar burden of the immigrant assistance and absorption programs, with the Jews of the rest of the free world contributing the other third. It is obvious that Israel’s people cannot continue with this imbalanced financial situation.”

“Nearly 500,000 immigrants — the unabsorbed, the aged, the ill, the handicapped, the orphaned — are still dependent in varying degrees on the humanitarian welfare, educational, medical and rehabilitation services provided by UJA-supported agencies in Israel,” Mr. Ginsberg said. “The current crisis has dislocated the entire social service structure and bitter human suffering will mount unless UJA acts quickly.”