U.J.A. National Parley Raises $12,900,000; Opens 1954 Drive

The sum of $12,900,000 was pledged here yesterday for the United Jewish Appeal in contributions from more than 600 top Jewish community leaders at the closing session of the three-day UJA national conference which marked the official opening of the UJA campaign for 1954. Many of the contributions represented substantial increases over gifts made a year ago at a similar campaign launching.

Edward M.M. Warburg, general chairman of the UJA, hailed today’s response as an “assurance to Israel’s people that the friends of freedom do not intend to let them stand alone in this time of sustained tension and danger.”

In the principal address before the gathering, Dr. Abba Hillel Silver called on American Jewry to support Israel. He said the new state wants peace with its Arab neighbors, wants to cooperate with the Arab world in the economic development of the Middle East, seeks to achieve the highest standards of social justice and public welfare, desires to strengthen its free institutions, seeks friendship with the free world, wishes to be economically self-sustaining, wants to maintain freedom for its foreign policy, desires to remain a haven for the oppressed, seeks to develop a high level of Hebrew culture and is determined to “make good.”

Dr. Silver noted that these aims “correspond fully with the ideals which we, free citizens of America, treasure.” On the issue of peace with its Arab neighbors, Dr. Silver stressed that Israel is ready to settle “all outstanding problems, including problems of reparations and refugees.” He pointed out, however, that “the Arabs have rebuffed every approach to such a peace settlement.”

Commenting on Israel’s desire for friendship with the free world, Dr. Silver declared: “Israel wishes it to be known that its sympathies are with the West. By every fibre of its intellectual and spiritual being Israel is tied up with the free world.” He emphasized that the fulfillment of the other points of the program was necessary to assure that Israel could continue to be “a home for all who may wish to go there or who may have to go there.”

CAMPAIGN FOR $75,000, 000 LOAN WILL BE COMPLETED IN MARCH

Dr. Joseph J. Schwartz, executive vice-chairman of the UJA, termed the action of contributors here yesterday “the kind of response that must be emulated in all communities throughout the country if the United Jewish Appeal is to raise its goal of $119,921,150,” He cited also the separate drive which the Appeal is now making to float a five-year loan of $75,000,000 from the country’s Jewish communities for the special financing of refugee settlement and absorption programs in Israel and described the running of two campaigns in a single year “without precedent in American philanthropic history.”

The UJA executive head noted that some 70 communities have pledged upwards of $65,000,000 toward the loan project and that the full $75, 000,000 “is expected to be in hand by March 30th.” He stressed that the impending successful conclusion of the loan project “will clear the way for the supreme effort that still must be made to mobilize great funds that are required by the UJA constituent agencies for the saving of lives, and the economic strengthening of Israel.”

Prominent among those who participated in yesterday’s final session were Morris W. Berinstein of Syracuse, N. Y., Joseph Holtzman of Detroit, and William Rosenwald and Jack D, Weiler of New York, all national chairmen of the UJA, Samuel H. Daroff of Philadelphia, chairman of the UJA campaign Cabinet, and Joseph Shulman of Patterson, N. J., a cabinet member. More than a third of the total contributions which came forward here today came from donors in the New York metropolitan area.