Israel Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett, addressing the closing session of the General Assembly of the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds here, emphasized that he welcomes constructive criticism of Israel affairs by American Jewry and that such criticism is considered by the Israel Government an indication of the great interest which Jews in the United States take in the Jewish state.
However, he made it clear that control of policies must remain “in the hands of those directly responsible”–the Israel Government. He said that withholding of criticism would do Israel a disservice. Things are bound to go wrong in any new pioneering state, he declared.
Mr. Sharett appealed to American Jewry to give maximum aid to Israel by concentrating on the implementation of the four-point program adopted at the recent conference of Jewish leaders in Washington. The program provides for the strengthening of the United Jewish Appeal, sale of Israel bonds, securing of U.S. Government grants-in-aid to Israel and stimulating of private investments in Israel’s industry. He was especially emphatic in his call to American Jewish capitalists to invest in Israel.
Dr. Joseph J. Schwartz, European director of the Joint Distribution Committee, told the C.J.F.W.F. delegates that “if Hitler and the Nazis, with all the resources at their command, could devote themselves to ten–and more–years of destroying Jewish life, surely we can dedicate ourselves to an equivalent period of restoring and rebuilding.” He predicted the effort “presently expressed by the United Jewish Appeal will represent the dominant note in American Jewish affairs for at least an-other five years.”
Dr. Schwartz said the aid American Jews extended overseas in the last five years through the U.J.A. has benefited between “a million-and-a-half and two million Jews” and that “it has literally saved hundreds of thousands of them.” He reported that in Europe and Moslem areas the J.D.C., with U.J.A. funds, aided more than a million persons. The J.D.C., he said, transported 450,000 of the half-million persons who entered Israel since its establishment. He estimated that “fully 400,000 Jews in European and Moslem lands must have the sort of relief and constructive help which the J.D.C. has provided until now and that there are certainly 600,000 Jews in these areas who need to be brought to Israel in the next three years.”
Stanley C. Myers asserted that the best hope for success in 1951 is the cooperation and unity of all forces in Jewish life. Out of the necessities of the force of world and domestic events, American Jewry had built “a great and powerful network” of community organizations “unparalleled in Jewish history,” he declared. “It had made possible the collection of a billion of a billion dollars by welfare funds for hundreds of services during the past decade.”
Isidore Sobeloff, executive director of the Detroit Jewish Welfare Federation, speaking at the Assembly on how Jewish welfare funds can raise maximum funds in 1951, drew an optimistic picture, but emphasized that for the coming year the task of the welfare funds must be “seeing the whole picture” and maintaining a balanced approach to national and overseas Jewish needs. “It is our task as communities to insist on machinery within our cities and in relation to national agencies that will insure fair dealing all around,” he insisted. “Allocation of funds by ‘blitz’ must be resisted.”
Jerome N. Curtis, of Cleveland, speaking on domestic Jewish needs and directions, emphasized the importance of central planning to meet local Jewish needs and charted the development of this trend during the first half of this century. Central community organizations, Mr. Curtis said, are increasingly breadening their scope, both in financing and planning of local services.
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.
