B’nai B’rith Votes $2,920,000 for Youth Activities; 47% of Total Budget

B’nai B’rith today voted a record-breaking $2,920,000 for its youth activities. The allocation for youth work represents a 47 percent allocation of its total national budget of $6,389,034 which the organization’s board of governors approved today. (See page 3 for earlier news on the B’nai B’rith parley.)

A recommendation by B’nai B’rith’s International Council for construction of a regional headquarters in Tel Aviv, Israel, was also voted by delegates representing the organization’s 470,000 members. Philip M. Klutznick, chairman of the International Council of the organization, said that the construction would be financed in part by Israeli members of B’nai B’rith and by funds received by B’nai B’rith from the sale of its prewar German headquarters building in West Berlin. The city of Tel Aviv had donated land for the building.

Reporting on the budget–the largest for Jewish youth programming in the nation–Maurice Bisgyer of Washington, D. C., executive vice president of B’nai B’rith, said that the Jewish community “has not yet come to grips with the problem of providing sufficient facilities for an expanding youth population.” He told the organization’s 116th annual meeting at the Waldorf Astoria that Jewish youth activities “which have any cultural content are cruelly under staffed and undernourished financially.”