American Jewry’s ‘fair Share’ Zuckerman Reports UJA Goal for 1973 Set at $505 Million

Paul Zuckerman of Detroit, general chairman of the United Jewish Appeal, reported here today that the goal for the 1973 UJA campaign in the United States has been set at $505 million, which he described as American Jewry’s “fair share” of the minimum 1973 budget of the Jewish Agency of $758 million.

Speaking at a press conference, he also said that “all early indications” are that the 1973 drive for more than half a billion dollars, which is 75 percent more than the 1972 total of $270 million, would top the 1972 contributions. In support of that prediction he cited results at the recent Prime Minister’s Mission to Israel, which inaugurated the 1973 campaign. He said that 132 Jewish leaders pledged, in Prime Minister Golda Meir’s presence, $14.355 million, compared with $11.64 million pledged during the 1972 Prime Minister’s Mission.

The 1973 goal of $505 million, which Zuckerman described as “enormous,” will be presented at the UJA annual national conference in New York Dec. 7-9. He said the conference would “define the critical needs of the 1973 campaign and explore various avenues of response to them.” He said the overall international financing effort in 1973 is designed “to help absorb and integrate more than 70,000 new immigrants in 1973, and provide ongoing vital social services to Jews in Israel and all over the world.”

SOVIET ‘HEAD TAX’ DENOUNCED

Zuckerman said the Jewish Agency 1973 budget was a “bare needs” budget, arrived at after “much paring and cutting from essential programs.” He said failure of world Jewry to raise that sum would “cause distress and human suffering. He said that in addition to the anticipated immigration needs, in Israel “there are still 60,000 families of between 7 and 12 members living in one or one and one and a half rooms and much remains to be done.”

In response to a question as to what precise plans the Jewish Agency had for ending the housing pinch for those families, Irving Bernstein, UJA executive vice-chairman, said that would depend on how close the 1973 campaign internationally came to meeting the Jewish Agency budget. If cuts must be made in outlays, he said, they would be made only after essential immigration costs had been met.

Zuckerman denounced the “head tax” imposed on Aug. 3 on university-educated Soviet Jews. He said that the “explanations” being given by Soviet spokesmen on the need to prevent a brain drain were “hypocrisy.” He said that as soon as any Russian Jew applies for an exit visa, he is fired from his job, which includes the Jewish scientists and academicians.

He said that if the “destructive forces” in the world had “concocted” such infamies as the new high exit fees for educated Russian Jews and such terrorist outrages as the Sept. 5 murder of 11 Israeli athletes in Munich, in the expectation that “our support of Israel will somehow falter, then they face the painful discovery that they have achieved precisely the opposite.” He said “events such as these serve to further unite the Jewish people, to draw them closer together rather than divide them.”