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THE JEWISH NEWS
Friday, March I S, 1946
Broadening Base of Our Community Structure
Federation's Fund-Raising and Central Planning
Functions Meet Greatest Challenge of Our Time
President Makes Annual Report to Jewish Wel-
fare Federation on ifs 20th Anniversary;
Outlines Activities for Crucial Year
Says Community Is Organized to Meet Greatest
Challenge in History; Views Need Now
for Greater Fund-Raising
By HON. WILLIAM FRIEDMAN
Looking now to the year ahead, we must face
two inescapable facts—one, the dissoultion this last De-
cember of the Metropolitan War Chest, and, two, the
state of catastrophe in which the Jews of Europe find
themselves today. Both lead to one conclusion—the
resumption of our independent Allied Jewish Cam-
paign at once and on a level of giving, unprecedented
in American Jewish and Detroit Jewish history. Do we
have the human stature required to do what our hearts,
our reason, and our dignity tell us we have to do? The
situation is all too clear.
*
*
The Joint Distribution Committee, as our agent in
behalf of the Jews of Europe, faces the greatest chal-
lenge in its entire history. The race against death
has entered its most critical stage. When we could not
reach the Jews of Europe and millions died, it was
tragic and hopeless. Now that we can reach so many
of those who remain, it would be worse than tragic
if we were to fail to do everything that is humanly
possible to help them. They are' destitute, they are
sick, they are without clothing, they are homeless.
Restoration of the mental, spiritual and economic life
of the 1,250,000 Jews of Europe is a task unprecedented
in scope. If we do not help them, they, too, will die.
Upon us rests the great responsibility of rescue.
So, also, the United Palestine Appeal is entering
upon the most vital phase of its history. A new era
of intensified effort must be launched to speed the
entry and absorption into Palestine of a maximum
number of the homeless and destitute survivors of
European Jewry who look to Palestine as their only
hope for the future. For housing, our land, for agri-
culture, for industry, for a total peace-time economy,
our increased and intensified help is urgently needed. •
Political obstacles may delay the complete fulfillment
of the Jewish National Home, but certainly we shall
do everything that we can, as a united American
community, to strengthen Palestine and to make it
flourish. The wonderful progress that already has
been made is a credit that we shall cherish.
To do these things and to care for refugees corn-
ing to the United States we, in Detroit, must raise
$2,000,000 'as our share of the $100,000,000 national
goal of the United Jewish Appeal.
I say "must"—
for our self respect—for our own sake here in America,
as well as for our Jews overseas. For let us make
no mistake about the meaning of any weakness in us.
I do not know whether we Jews can hope to be loved,
and certainly we do riot wish to be hated or feared.
But I do know—and every minority group knows—
that in time of weakness and disaster we are attacked,
not less, but more. Respect by the non-Jew for our
dignity and our courage is a fundametnal condition of
our survival, and there can be no respect for the
Jew anywhere unless in this, our year of greatest trial,
American Jewry, the strongest and richest Jewish
community left in the world, shoWs the decency, the
humanity, and the self-respect to do its job.
President, Jewish Welfare Federation of Detroit
In reporting to you as your president, I feel a • deep
sense of gratitude and responsibility. Gratitude because
this occasion, the twentieth anniversary of the Jewish
Welfare Federation, and our first peace-time annual
meeting in five years, finds our community strong,
prosperous, and surely more Mature than ever before
in its understanding of the duties that lie before us.
Responsibility, because all of . our strength, prosperity
and understanding, and a boundless measure of divine
inspiration, will not be too much to enable us to fulfill
the role that history has assigned to us for 1946.
. At the very outset, I desire to express my sincere
appreciation for the fine cooperation and assistance that
I received from our able executive director, Mr. Isidore
Sobeloff, and his assistants, Mr. Abe Sudran and Miss
Esther Prussian, and the rest of our staff. I am also
grateful for the splendid support that I received from
Mr. Fred M. Butzel, chairman. of our Executive Com-
mittee, Mr. Abe Srere, chairman of the Board, and all
the other members of the Board. which helped so
much to ease my duties as.President of the Federation.
For 20 years the Jewish Welfare Federation
has been the instrument through -which the Jews
. of Detroit have fulfilled their central community
obligations toward the needs of Jewish life at
home, nationally, and overseas. It has developed
slowly, gradually but surely and now has attain-
ed full manhood. What,. in essence, is this fed-.
eration. which in its 21st year will be called upon
not merely to accept the increased responsibilities
of adulthood, but to decide literally, in the name
of the Jews of Detroit, whether our brethren
abroad are to survive or perish. It is in the first
instance, a logical, practical instrument of the
community. Founded- in 1926, along with the
Detroit Service Group, upon the doubled-bar-
reled plan of .fund-raising combined with central
planning, coordination- and budgeting,. it func-
tions on - die tried and tested assumption that
• there are fundamental needs in Jewish life which
Jews can and should meet together to discuss and
plan fOr.
WILLIAM FRIEDMAN
In the field of education, recreation, and culture,
our Detroit Self-Study was completed during the past
year, with the aid of a citizen's committee which has
formulated a set of recommendations looking toward
enrichment and increased coordination of our local pro-
grams. A more logical and adequate system of Fed-
eration allocations to Jewish educational agencies has
already resulted, and planning to meet other recom-
mendations is now in process of fulfillment.
*
In the area of service to veterans, Federation has
appointed a Veterans' Service Committee, which is
representative of the major Jewish veteran-serving
agencies and organizations in the community and is
available whenever a problem of community planning
for veterans arises. In serving veterans, Federation
agencies are mindful of the basic governmental respon-
sibility for many types of aid. At the same time they
are aware that what veterans want of a Jewish agency,
is a special service of high quality meeting special
Jewish needs—which is, after all, what any Jew, vet-
eran or not, asks of us. In recent months, the number
of veterans coming to our agencies has been mounting
rapidly, as might be expected, with an especially heavy
demand for service at the Jewish Community Center,
which offers them a six months free membership,
and at the Jewish Vocational Service, which is meeting
many of the more difficult and specialized problems of
vacational readjustment.
It goes without saying that for all of our Federa-
tion expenditures—on overseas and national as well as
on local causes—sound budgeting procedures are fol-
lowed, and in keeping with good business practice, our
books are carefully audited. The reports of the audit,
performed 'by the firm of Isenberg, Purdy & Donovan,
are available for information and inspection at all
times at the Federation offices.
And what are these needs? They are, to begin
with, our requirements for a secure and dignified life in
. oUr own community. We have learned over the years
that all of us, rich and poor alike, have needs we must
meet as a Jewish community. Family and child wel-
fare, care of the aged, health, recreation, Jewish edu-
cation, economic adjustment, relationships with the
non-Jewish community, defense and protection of Jew-
ish life and Jewish rights—these are the local Federa-
tion services which, as a community, we first plan,
then support, and then utilize.
But the local community is only part of the story.
Dramatically and overwhelmingly in times like the
present, but insistently and deservingly even in so-
called normal times, the Jews of the world have ap-
pealed to us, not only for financial aid, but also for our
considered judgment as a community on national and
overseas Jewish problems.
The Jews of Europe and Palestine cannot come
individually to each Jew of Detroit to discuss how
much Detroit should give. Through their organizations,
they can and do speak to us in Detroit through our
organization—the Federation. And then, we, the Jews
of Detroit,_ can go out—and do go out—in their behalf
to bring their story to the community.
•
* . * -
Let us remember that without effective provision
for the raising of the funds necessary to carry out our
responsibilities. none of these needs—local, national or
overseas—could be met, and without it, all of the think-
ing, talking, and planning of which the community is
capable would be an insult and a mockery to our-
selves and our brothers. With the aid of the Detroit
_Service Group, the Jews of Detroit meet this problem,
in Federation. Through the Allied Jewish Campaign,
they have year after year, demonstrated their agree-
ment that it is more economical in cost and manpower,
and more effective and profitable socially, to present
a story, conduct a campaign, and raise and distribute
fUnds through one, over-all organization and in one,
.over-all drive.
Mr. Sobeloff, our executive director, is reporting
on our operation of the past year in detail, but I should
like to make particular mention tonight of three areas
of local service or rather special interest—health, ed-
ucation, and veterans.
*
*
Federation, Agencies
Elect Their Directors
At the annual Federation meeting on Monday, the
following directors were elected by the Federation and
those agencies which met simultaneously with Federa-
tion:
JEWISH WELFARE FEDERATION: For three
year term: William Friedman, Dr. B. Benedict Glazer,
Julian H. Krolik, Mrs. Melville Welt, Maurice A.
Aronsson, Mrs. H. C. Broder, Fred M. Butzel, Theodore
Levin, Harry Yudkoff. For two-year term: Joseph
Bernstein and Rabbi Leon Fram. For one year term:
Rabbi Morris Adler.
Others now serving on the Federation board are:
Clarence H. Enggass, Harry Frank, Morris Garvett,
Henry Meyers, Mrs. Robert J. Newman, Joseph M.
Welt, Rabbi Max J. Wohlgelernter, Mrs. Samuel R.
Glogowe•, Sidney L. Alexander, Eugene J. Arnfeld, •
Mrs. Maurice A:Landau, Lawrence J. Michelson, Max
Osnos, Dr. Harry C. Saltzstein, Alex Schreiber, Irving
W. Blumberg, David A. Goldman, Harry E. Jacobson,
Mrs. Joseph H. Ehrlich, Milton M. Maddin, Samuel H.
Rubiner, Aaron Droock, Myron A. Keys, Benjamin E.
Jaffe, Harvey H. Goldman, David Wilkus, Abe Kasle.
NORTH END CLINIC: For three-year terms: Hoke
Levin, Mrs. Julius Gilbert, Mrs. Abraham Cooper,
Sylvan Grosner.
FRESH AIR SOCIETY: For three-year term: Mrs.
Aaron DeRoy, Mrs. Isaac Gilbert, Mrs. Julian H. Krolik,
Harry Yudkoff, Lewis B. Daniels; for two-year term:
Charles E. Brown, Mrs. Joseph G. Fenton, Max C.
Handler. Milton M. Maddin, Nathan Milstein, Saul
Rose, Alvin Skelly, Mrs. Gerald Spero.
JEWISH VOCATIONAL SERVICE: For three-year
term: Fred 111: Butzel, Aaron Droock, Morris Garvett,
Prof. Samuel. M. Levin, Hoke Levin, Dr. Maurice
Meyers.
JEWISH SOCIAL SERVICE BUREAU: For three-
year term: Benjamin E. Jaffe, Daniel Mendelsohn, Mrs.
Ralph Shroder„Jacob Weissman, Dr. Louis Schwartz,
Mtgs. Joseph Geschelin, Louis H. Schostak, Martin
Butzel; for two-year term; Dr. David Seligson,
*
In the field of health, our Jewish Hospital Associa-
tion has taken important steps forward in the realiza-
tion of a top-flight Jewish medical institution for De-
troit. Since our last annual meeting, the Association
has completed its initial campaign for funds, with re-
sults totalling nearly $2,400,000 in pledges, over two-
thirds of which have already been paid. A site of
thirty-five acres ,in the new northwest area, bounded
by McNichols Road, Outer Drive, Whitcomb, and
Lauder, has been purchased, and the Detroit Common
Council has re-zoned it to make possible the erection
of the hospital. The Albert Kahn organization as
architects and Dr. J. J. Golub of New York as hospital
consultant, are now actively at work designing an
institution which should ultimately become much more
than merely the usual hospital for short-term diseases.
We look forward to "a complete medical center which
will offer service to the acute, chronically and neuro l
psychiatricaly ill, and the convalescent, as well as an
extensive program of medical research and education.
Through the new hospital, as well as our developing
Jewish Home for Aged, and our North End Clinic, we
shall. in the years to come, he in a position at last to
fulfill our medical obligations.
P.+
*
*
*
Our community is organizing today to meet the
greatest challenge in our history. Throughout the
city, Jews in the trade and professional divisions of
the. Detroit Service Group, in the Junior Service Group,
in the Women's Division, and in the hundreds of
organizations in the community, are preparing them-
selves for the great campaign ahead. And this time
their sights go beyond campaign, for we envisage a
NtW kind of Service Group, a new kind of Women's
Division, consecrated to a task even greater than rais-
ing funds and distributing them.
For our workers and our contributors have dem-
onstrated an interest in community welfare that de-
serves a greater return than the pleasure of having
worked in a campaign, or the satisfaction of having
given their assistance to those who require it. They
are entitled to more than invitations to occasional lec-
tures on the work of the agencies, to more than an
invitation to an annual meeting. They have indicated
by their work and by their gifts that they want to
belong. It is simple fairness to them, and added com-
munity strength to all or us to make them, every last
individual, an integral part of our great and thriv-
ing organization.
We talk, all too glibly sometimes, of educa-
tion. Education cannot be delegated. It is a
living experience that grows out of participa-
tion; and only to the extent that we provide op-
portunity for the worker and giver, as an in-
dividual, to take a hand in setting up our
organization, to know what is going on, to have
his say, to bring his knowledge to bear on the
problems that are close to him, can we hope to
have the kind of Service Group and Women's
Division that will ultimately win the whole-
hearted and enthusiastic support of every Jew
in Detroit.
We plan, too, to strengthen our community for
the years to come, by broadening the base of Feder-
ation's Board structure through added representation
from the service groupings and Women's Division, and
from organizational groupings in the community—a
project upon which Mr. Morris Garvett, as chairman
of the By-Laws Committee, is reporting in greater
detail.
In the last analysis, ladies and gentlemen,
Federation is the expression of our collective
Jewish conscience, of our collective wish to
do what is intelligent, humane and right.
We have learned over the years, that there
is a partnership between the individual and
community, which we have expressed
with increasing effectiveness and satisfaction
through Federation. In the year to come,
us make it a partnership to which we at
home and the Jews of all the world can turn,
for strength and inspiration.