More than 1,000 Jewish leaders from 40 states today wrote a stirring climax to two days of deliberations at the Extraordinary National Action Conference of the United Jewish Appeal as they presented checks totaling more than $15,000,000 to place the cash income of the U.J.A. at $44,000,000 since the start of the 1951 campaign.
Prime Minister David Ben Gurion of Israel was deeply moved as he witnessed this spectacular action that produced sorely needed funds for the settlement and absorption in the Jewish State of tens of thousands of recent immigrants from Eastern European and Moslem countries.
Edward M.M. Warburg, general chairman of the United Jewish Appeal who received the parade of checks as a major installment on pledges in communities to this year’s U.J.A. campaign, told Mr. Ben Gurion, “what you have witnessed is another striking demonstration of the partnership which exists between your people and American Jewry for the rescue of hundreds of thousands of men, women and children living in lands where they cannot be free.” He assured Mr. Ben Gurion that American Jews will contribute many more millions of dollars to the United Jewish Appeal before its current nationwide campaign ends on December 31.
Mr. Warburg said that “by June 30 alone, I confidently expect the cash income of the 1951 United Jewish Appeal to exceed $50,000,000.” He announced at the same time that many communities have registered and are upholding campaign gains of from 10 to 20 percent over last year’s drive. This report on the status of this year’s United Jewish Appeal campaign took on added color as Mr. Warburg read a national knoll-call of “over the top” communities which showed that 103 campaigns in the first five months of 1951 have exceeded the total amounts they raised during 1950.
CONFERENCE REAFFIRMS WASHINGTON FOUR-POINT DECISION ON AID TO ISRAEL
The conference adopted a special resolution re-affirming the four-point billion-dollar aid to Israel program voted last October in Washington, at the National Planning Conference for Israel and Jewish Rehabilitation. This re-affirmation at the conference of the four-point program called upon American Jews to close ranks behind efforts to: 1. Accelerate the United Jewish Appeal campaign; 2. Speed the sale of Israel bends; 3. Stimulate private investment in Israel, and 4. Encourage United States loans and grants-in-aid to Israel.
To give firm meaning to its deliberations on the role of the U.J.A. in the coming months the Conference voted adoption of an extraordinary campaign action program aimed at raising additional large-scale funds during the balance of the year. The action program, which emerged from discussions led by Morris W. Berinstein, chairman of the U.J.A. ‘s National Campaign Cabinet, calls for: 1. The immediate acceleration of 1,100 local campaigns to assure their maximum success and completion at the earliest possible time; 2. The immediate organization of campaigns which normally begin in September, with emphasis on the solicitation now of pace-setting gifts so that the encouraging trend established in the Spring may be maintained through the year.
In a special ceremony preceding other events at the final session of the Conference, leaders of the National Women’s Division of the United Jewish Appeal presented a silver “Liberty Bowl” to the wife of the Israel Prime Minister as a memento of the distinguished couple’s American tour. Mrs. Alexander Brailove of Elizabeth, N.J. in presenting the gift to Mrs. Ben Gurion told her that “this is a reproduction of the historic Liberty Bowl created by Paul Revere to commemorate the first unified stand for liberty seven years before the American Revolution of 1776. A courageous action that marked one of the first steps toward a United States of America.”
“In the same way,” Mrs. Brailove declared, “history has already recorded that the Prime Minister of Israel, years before the establishment of his state, called together a group of liberty-loving men who were, as the inscription on the bowl has it, “acting from a strict regard to conscience and the liberties of their constituents’ in the move for the formation of a Jewish state.”
VICE-PRESIDENT BARKLEY CALLS FOR UNITED JEWISH APPEAL SUPPORT
Vice-President Alben Barkley, in an address last night at the opening session of the Conference, told 1,000 delegates from 40 states, it is “natural and right that the people of this nation should encourage and aid the democracy of Israel.” At the same time he urged American of all faiths to extend support to Israel through the U.J.A.
“We people of America and the people of Israel inherited and live in a common tradition-a tradition of essential dignity of man, “Mr. Barkley told the conference delegates meeting at Palmer House. “We are working toward a common goal–independence and democracy,” he added.
The Vice-President asserted that Israel cannot be permitted “to lag, or fail to perform its mission either, because of economic weakness within, or because of opposition from without.” Accordingly, he urged continued large-scale support of the U.J.A. as a means of “fostering and upbuilding democratic ideals in that part of the world as an example to all other peoples.”
Rabbi Jonah Wise, national chairman of the U.J.A., told the opening session that in the first five months of this year more than 109,000 Jews had been brought to Israel through U.J.A. funds. In the past 60 days alone, U.J.A. helped transfer 6,000 Jews to Israel, principally from Iraq, Rabbi Wise said. He told the delegates that plans must be made for the additional rescue of 90,000 Jews from “Rumania, Iraq, Iran, Libya and other points of danger.” Rabbi Wise reported that in the last 14 months, funds provided by U.J.A. transferred to Israel 90,000 of the 114,000 Iraqi Jews who registered for emigration.
Dr. Nahum Goldmann, chairman of the American section of the Jewish Agency, in an address on the four-point economic aid program for Israel, asserted that the U.J.A. “must play a decisive role in the development” of the state of Israel. U.J.A. gift dollars, he said, are the “basis” of the four-point program. Decrying the “creation in some quarters of certain doubts as to the continued necessity and the significance of the so-called gift dollars, ” Dr. Goldmann stated: “No greater tragedy could befall Israel, or Israel’s relations with Jews outside her borders, than the disappearance or even the weakening of the United Jewish Appeal, or any similar pro-Israel campaign in any part of the world.”
Israel Labor Minister Golda Meyerson, who was to have addressed the National Action Conference of the United Jewish Appeal in Chicago tonight, cancelled her appearance there and left for Israel last night on receipt of word that her husband, Mei-Meyerson, had died suddenly yesterday following a heart attack. She was accompanied on her return home by her son Menachem, a student of the cello at the Manhattan School of Music.
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.
