New Year Message:

South African Zionists
Raise Flag of Israel

JWF Chief Evaluates Progress
Of Community During Past Year

By IS I DORE SOBELOFF
Executive Director, Detroit Jewish
Welfare Federation
Another year -is drawing to its close, another
year is about to begin—and once more we have
the opportunity to extend good wishes from the
Jewish Welfare Federation of Detroit to the
community which parents it.
Each year, in this message, we
attempt to express in a single
brief statement the significance,
the possible uniqueness, of
everything that has occurred
and developed in the past 12

months.

Jewish history being what it
is—dynamic and yet steady
rather than rapid in movement
—these messages do not differ Sobeloff
greatly from one year to another. If we were
to substitute 5710 for 5709, we might easily use
verbatim some of the ideas expressed last year
at this time.
Why, then, a new message each year? Why
not content ourselves with a simple L'shono
Tovo Tikosevu?
Principally, because the mere fact that this
is a yearly custom, this Federation statement is
in itself an affirmation of our affiliation as a
community, of our joining together to plan and
support the services and activities that are our
common concern. Each year, just as we repeat
the traditional observance of the High Holidays,
we also re-examine our participation in the
local, national and world Jewish communal
scene, to evaluate our progress for the past year
and to determine what we shall do in the future
to keep that progress steady and forward.

*

*

*

WHEN WE PAUSE for this moment in Detroit,
we are again joining spiritually with our fellow
Jews in other communities throughout the coun-
try, for this annual stock-taking is another cus-
tom common to all groups of American Jewry—it
is the time each year when we have an oppor-
tunity to look back over the path we have
traveled and to fix our eyes again on the many
community goals which, like milestones, mark
the way ahead.
Two things, especially, mark the past year in
Detroit, and in our fellow communities. One is
a continuing trend toward broadening the base
of communal activities and the other is a fur-
ther welding of the basic functions of social
planning, budgeting and fund-raising.
The "base" of our Federation activities num-
bers 30,819 people. These are the individuals
who made gifts to the 1949 Allied Jewish Cam-
paign, our primary community drive in behalf
of the health and" welfare, educational and cul-
tural and community relations agencies we have
agreed are important to all of us. The 30,819
are the Jews of Detroit who understood enough,
cared enough and did enough to demonstrate
their personal feeling of belonging to our Jewish
community.
*
*
*
IN ADDITION, we haVe the overlapping group-
ings of people within the community—groupings
that are ever growing in size, as men and women
from within the 30,819 take different ways of
indicating the extent of their community feel-
ing. We have more than 5,000 men, women and
young adults who participate as workers in the
campaign; there are 500 different peOple serving
as members of the boards of our social service

Sole! Boneh to Build
6,000 Worker Homes

TEL AVIV—Histadrut has an-
nounced its decision to erect
6,000 new houses for workers in
Israel in order to help alleviate
the current housing shortage in
the Jewish State.
Plans for the mass construc-
tion of these houses are based
on a cost of six million Israeli
pounds or a thousand Israeli
pounds per house—$3,000 a
house in American currency.
This project will be financed
jointly by Histadrut and the Is-
raeli government.
Histadrut has revealed that
the reason for the low cost of
building these houses is that
Solel Boneh—Histadrut building
cooperative—will cut costs to a
minimum on this project for
which new building methods
will be utilized.

HOLIDAY GREETINGS

WAYNE LAUNDRY
& Dry Cleaning Co.

12641 Woodrow Wilson

TO. 8-2330

BERNARD MILINSKY
Prop.

agencies; more than 100 - representatives of these
agencies and members-at-large make up the
budget and planning divisions of the Federation;
many hundreds of other people serve as leaders,
committee workers, speakers, hostesses, planners
of all kinds. This is what we mean when we say
that our community is broadly based—and on
that broad base are pyramided the smaller
groupings within which each does his best job
as a contributor of time, talent and energy.
The breadth of our community is not con-
fined to the numbers of people who take an
active part in its affairs. Our community is
broad, too, in the scope, range and extent of
our interests and concerns. Just. as we have
taken a community responsibility for the branch
of the Jewish Community Center, around the
corner on Dexter, we have accepted the same
group responsibility for the Jews in the DP
camps of Europe, for the new immigrants into
Israel, for the European Jewish family just
arrived in the United States. The Jewish child
in Europe and Israel has received as much
attention from us as our own children's Jewish
education, summer day camp vacation and rec-
reational activities. We are able to do all of
these things with equal conscientiousness and
devotion because our community is a big com-
munity—big in spirit, in vision, in balance.

*.

*

JOHANNESBURG, So. Africa,
(JTA)—The flag of Israel was
hoisted at the Israel Consulate-
General here. Chief Rabbi I.
Rabinowitz blessed the flag in
the presence of nearly 500 dele-
gates attending the South Afri-
can Zionist Conference here who
recessed their meetings to wit-
ness the flag-raising ceremonies.
As the Jewish state's emblem*
was unftirled, the traditional
blasts of the Shofar resounded
throughout the area and scores
of youths began to dance the
Hdra folk-dance.

THE JEWISH NEWS-57,

Friday, September 23, 1949

Tel Aviv Architect Wins
WJC Building Contest

TEL AVIV, (JTA)—J. R,echter,
an architect of this city, has
won first prize in a contest for
plans for the proposed building
in Jerusalem which will house
the future World Zionist Con-
gress sessions, it was announced
by Rabbi Zeev Gold, member of
the Jewish Agency executive.
The structure will be equally di-
vided between a hall seating 3,-
000 and working headquarters
for the World Zionist Organiza-
tion.

*

WHILE OUR SECOND development—bringing

together the basic functions of planning, bud- ,
geting and campaigning—may at first thought
seem unrelated to the first, actually the two go
hand in hand. At one time, when the Jewish
communities of America were young in exper-
ience, the allocations of funds were handled by
a few, the small group of men who perhaps
gave most of the money, who often exercised
their own judgment, solely, in deciding upon
the extent of support to be given certain services.
Now, those who work and those who give on
all levels have an ever growing voice in how
the campaign funds shall be spent, along with
representatives of the agencies whose programs
are determined by the amount of funds avail-
able to them. So that these campaign workers
and agency representatives shall be solidly
grounded before making their budget decisions,
they serve year-round as members of the three
budget and planning divisions of the Federation,
observing the work of the agencies, reviewing
their programs in relation to other community
needs.
Intelligent . social planning and budgeting are
made possible by this year-round set-up and
the members of these divisions are also in a
position to explain to the community at cam-
paign time why the established quota is required
to cover social service needs.
*
*
THERE ARE OTHER important trends in our
community life, of course, but they all point
toward one desirable objective; Community un-
derstanding and performance through individual
participation. As 'long as the 30.819 continue to
make their voluntary pledge of citizenship in
the Jewish community, as long as the thousands
of workers continue to take part in the cam-
paign, as long as the hundreds of other con-
scientious people continue to perform their
various social service functions, we can be con-
fident that we shall plan and build well as a
community, for the wealth of our community is
drily the sum of the thoughts and feelings of
our individual members.

Ask U. S. Senate to Ratify Genocide Convention

WASHINGTON, (JTA) — The
United States National Commis-
sion for UNESCO has adopted a
resolution urging the Senate to
ratify the UN convention on
genocide, a spokesman for the
State Department announced.

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Extends Greetings

To The Jewish Communities

of Michigan

for a

v0(4 ". M:a f.aa aaaaaaa

HAPPY `JEW YEAR

