A new standing committee on the Jewish Agency, under the chairmanship of Edgar Cadden of Chicago, was created at the recent 61st annual meeting of United Israel Appeal, it was announced by UIA chairman Henry Taub of Englewood, NJ. Taub appointed the new committee, whose chairman and members were approved by UIA’s Board of Directors.
Taub said the committee had been created in response to rising interest, on the part of Jewish communities throughout the U.S. in the activities and operations of the Jewish Agency for Israel (JAFI). He said that over the last four years, some 28 local Jewish Federation committees on the Jewish Agency were formed and that more were in the process of being established.
Recent Reform movement demands, coupled with greater participation in Jewish Agency affairs, helped to vitalize local committees, whose official institutionalization was encouraged by the chairman of the Agency’s Board of Governors and the Council of Jewish Federations, Taub said.
He said that the local Federations now select UIA’s 119 delegates to the annual Jewish Agency Assembly in Jerusalem, which is the Agency’s constituent voting body. Local Federation committees on JAFI review current issues before the Agency and discuss resolutions to be presented at the Assembly.
In 1986, 18 such resolutions were passed by the Assembly for implementation by the Agency’s Board of Governors. A report on implementation will be presented at the 1987 Assembly in June. Some 25 pre-Assembly briefing sessions will be held throughout the country this month. Local Jewish Agency committee chairpersons will be consulted with a view toward local involvement in the allocation of funds process.
Taub said the new standing committee will be responsible for providing information, planning missions to Israel and helping to involve local JAFI committees in decision-making on allocations. CORRECTION
In the May 4 Bulletin, the JTA inadvertently reported that members of Congress videotaped messages from Soviet Jews and smuggled them out of the country. In fact, members of the Coalition to Free Soviet Jewry and private individuals made the tapes and smuggled them out in April on the occasion of U.S. Congressmen’s visit to Moscow.
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