Twenty-four hundred volunteer workers are in the field today raising $2,221,000 to complete the 1930 budget of $5,499,000 of the Federation for the Support of Jewish Philanthropic Societies. Twenty-two thousand prospects are on the solicitors’ lists.
The campaign was formally opened Sunday night with a dinner-meeting at the Hotel Commodore, at which two thousand men and women leaders in Jewry in New York were present.
On the speakers’ dias at the dinner were Dudley D. Sicher, president of the Federation; Mortimer L. Schiff, chairman of the dinner committee, who presided; Mrs. Sidney C. Borg, chairman of the Women’s Division; Dr. Solomon Lowenstein, executive director of the Federation; George Blumenthal, chairman of the campaign, and Rabbi Louis I. Newman, of Congregation Rodeph Sholom.
A talking picture, filmed especially for the dinner-meeting, featured Prof. Albert Einstein; Dr. Abraham Flexner, director of the Institute for Advanced Learning; Felix M. Warburg, chairman of the Federation Board; Adolph S. Ochs, publisher of the New York Times, and Eddie Cantor, comedian, who has long been interested in Federation activities.
Mr. Sicher told his hearers that the slogan for the campaign is “They Need You Now As Never Before,” and gave encouragement to the workers. Rabbi Newman, in his address, declared that social service needs continue unabated this year and the claims of charity are more deserving than ever
Dr. Lowenstein declared that the institutions dare not, because of hard times, say that they will not care for those who cannot afford to pay. “They dare not,” he said, “refuse admission to children crying for education and nurture. The institutions must do their jobs. Such a period as that through which we are now passing, with its particular burdens, especially in the need for very greatly increased service, without expansion of staff, involves a danger of a demoralization of standards such as we have never before faced.”
In his talking picture introduction of the speakers who followed him in the screen presentation, Mr. Warburg reviewed the growth of the Federation from 1917, when in his initial year it raised $2,354,900, to this year when the budget has reached $5,499,000. Dr. Flexner described the advantages accruing from unified fund-raising, as against the old-fashioned method prior to Federation’s founding, when each of the agencies conducted its own campaign independently, with consequent overlapping of effort and increased overhead.
Describing the management of the Federation as “forward-looking, scientific and businesslike, while at the same time idealistic and humanitarian,” Mr. Ochs expressed hope for “your enthusiasm and generous support of the noble and most deserving enterprise, the Federation. Now, more than ever, it needs your help to relieve pain, sorrow and hunger.”
Eddie Cantor, who as an East Side orphan years ago was given his first trip to the country at Surprise Lake Camp, one of the Federation’s agencies, told his hearers they would be told that this will be a “tough year” to get money. Mr. Cantor said that when persons caught short in the market crash received telegrams from their brokers, “they hustled around mighty quickly and dug up some margin. Go back and tell your prospects now,” he said, “that this call from the Federation is a margin call from God.”
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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.
