The elections to the Representative Jewish Assembly of Palestine (Assefat Hanivcharim), the officially recognized representative organ of Palestine Jewry, will be held in November, it was announced here today in connection with the making public of the number of electors eligible to vote. The latest census figures show that there are 93,000 qualified electors, including 27,000 in Jerusalem, 30,000 in Tel Aviv and 10,000 in Haifa. Every 80 electors return one member to the Assembly which in turn elects the Jewish National Council, its executive organ.
Hitherto, the Representative Jewish Assembly and its executive organ, although acknowledged by the government as the official representatives of Palestine Jewry, have not been formally recognized. The new body to be elected in November will be the first Assembly which will be so recognized in accordance with the Jewish Community Regulations promulgated January 1, 1928, and ratified March 3, 1930, in pursuance of the Religious Communities Ordinance of 1926.
The regulations provide that all registered Jewish men and women 20 years of age or more are entitled to vote and all over 25 knowing how to read and write Hebrew are entitled to be elected. The government has withdrawn the former stipulation regarding citizenship so that any resident in Palestine for more than a year may be a candidate for the Assembly. The Sephardic and Yemenite communities are granted the right of representation in the Assembly according to their proportion of the Jewish population and irrespective of the number of electors.
The Jewish National Council to be elected by the Assembly acts as the representative of the Jewish community in its relations with the government and is responsible for the administration of such affairs and activities as are entrusted to it by the government.
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.
