Zuckerman Assesses Mood in Israel

Paul Zuckerman, general chairman of the United Jewish Appeal, who recently returned from Jerusalem where he participated in the World Assembly of the Jewish Agency, said “I can only be encouraged by my experience at the Assembly and from traveling around Israel these last few days. No longer is there talk of weariness, or of exhaustion, as there was last winter. This is as it should be, for in fact there is nothing to be tired of.”

Zuckerman stated that if there was ever any weariness in the Jewish community “it has been replaced with a growing sense of solidarity, of oneness with the Jewish people, with Jewish history and with the demands of our common Jewish destiny. With this deepened sense of unity a new vigor and strength is emerging.”

The UJA leader said that at the World Assembly, expression of increased giving from the delegates to this international meeting was sought and obtained for the first time. “There is a quiet but very deep, very powerful determination to rise to the challenges we face in 1975,” Zuckerman said. As a result, at the UJA Executive Committee Retreat last May, which served as the kick-off for the 1975 UJA campaign, “most of our leaders committed themselves to increasing, or at least maintaining, their 1974 giving levels for 1975.”

Zuckerman observed that the challenge of 1975 “is more than just a challenge to our organizational skills or our fund-raising ability. What is being tested is nothing less than our will to survive as a unique people with a special destiny.” The World Assembly of the Jewish Agency, attended by more than 300 leaders of the American and word Jewish communities, blueprinted plans for Jewish Agency humanitarian programs in Israel in 1975 in the areas of housing, immigration and absorption, education and social welfare.