UAHC Launches Nationwide Effort to Aid Starvation Victims in Ethiopia

The leaders of American Reform Judaism have launched a nationwide appeal to provide emergency shelter and medical care for victims of starvation in Ethiopia.

While no campaign goal has been set, Rabbi Alexander Schindler, president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (UAHC), told the UAHC’s policy-making Board of Trustees meeting here that the UAHC hoped to raise an inital sum of $250,000, which he said was enough to construct and supply a village of 600 tents sheltering 6,000 refugees.

He cited reports that tens of thousands of Ethiopians have uprooted themselves from their homes in search of sustenance, making the need for shelter “almost as desperate as the need for food.”

Schindler said the proceeds of the campaign would help build and supply a series of tent cities in Ethiopia being coordinated by a privated Israeli citizen, Abie Nathan, Individual Israelis have raised $100,000 for a tent city project so far, and some 60 Israeli physicians have volunteered to provide medical services to the refugees, Schindler said. Charles Rothschild of Teaneck, N.J., UAHC Board chairman, said funds would be sought from members of Reform synagogues and also from other members of the Jewish community “to add a Jewish dimension to the task of helping to save hundreds of thousands of lives. This is a Jewish effort, in America and in Israel, to confront a human crisis,” he said.

The UAHC will also prepare a register of volunteer physicians, nurses and other medical personnel from among its Reform synagogues’ members available to serve in Ethiopia, he said.

Two physicians active in the Reform movement in Seattle — Dr. Joseph Schuster and Dr. Jonathan Ostrow — returned to the U.S. last week after spending one month in Jewish villages in Ethiopia under the UAHC’s Project REAP (Relief for Ethiopia Aid Project) (See separate story, P.3.)

The program was undertaken earlier this year to provide emergency assistance for Ethiopian Jews. The program announced at the UAHC’s Board meeting was designed to help all victims of the famine in Ethiopia, not only the Jews, Rothschild emphasized.

Schindler said that Nathan has chartered a cargo plane to fly to Ethiopia with the first shipment of tents and medical supplies later this month. The plane is expected to arrive on or about the first day of Chanukah, on which Jews traditionally exchange gifts. “Our gift will be the most precious of all — the gift of life,” Schindler told the UAHC trustees.