Spiraling Cost of Immigration Absorption Takes Bite out of 1973 Jewish Agency Budget

The Jewish Agency, with a 1973 budget of $470 million, may find itself $60 million short by the end of this year due to the spiraling cost of immigrant absorption, Leon Dulzin, acting chairman and treasurer of the Jewish Agency, said here. He addressed a press conference following a meeting of the Jewish Agency Executive yesterday. “We shall make a great effort to mobilize the money and to avoid cuts,” he said, adding that the Agency’s 1974 budget will have to be larger.

Max Fisher, chairman of the Jewish Agency’s Board of Governors, told the press conference: “We have not yet reached our potential in fund-raising, even though the United States yielded in 1973 the best results ever, in spite of a business recession–$260 million.”

Dulzin said he was confident that 70,000 new immigrants would arrive in Israel in 1974: 40,000 from the Soviet Union and 10,000 from other countries of distress. He said the absorption of a new immigrant now costs $10,000 but will cost $12,000 next year because of inflation.

He stated that in compliance with a Board of Governors resolution, the London meeting set up a committee of experts on rural industrialization along the lines of the successful housing committee of experts under the direction of Jack D. Weiler, prominent New York realtor and outstanding leader in Jewish communal affairs. Dulzin said he was leaving for New York to attend the conference of the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds which he will address next Friday. He told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that while in the U.S. he would try to persuade the Zionist Organization of America to re-join the American Zionist Federation.

Others attending the Jewish Agency Executive meeting here included Paul Zuckerman, general chairman of the United Jewish Appeal; Edward Ginsberg, chairman of the Joint Distribution Committee, Rabbi Mordechai Kirshbaum and Joseph Klarman, members of the Jewish Agency Executive; Michael Sacher, chairman of the Joint Palestine Appeal; and Moshe Rivlin, director general of the Jewish Agency.