A History of the United Jewish Appeal 1939–1982 Marc Lee Raphael A HISTORY OF THE UNITED JEWISH APPEAL 1939-1982 BROWN UNIVERSITY BROWN JUDAIC STUDIES Edited by Jacob Neusner Wendell S. Dietrich, Ernest S. Frerichs, Alan Zuckerman Board of Editors David Altshuler, George Washington University David R. Blumenthal, Emory University Baruch M. Bokser, University of California, Berkeley Joel Gereboff, Arizona State University David Goldenberg, Dropsie University Robert Goldenberg, State University of New York, Stony Brook David Goodblatt, Haifa University William Scott Green, University of Rochester Peter Haas, Vanderbilt University Martin Jaffee, University of Virginia Shamai Kanter, Temple Beth El, Rochester, New York Jack L. Lightstone, Concordia University Irving Mandelbaum, University of Texas Alan Mintz, University of Maryland Alan J. Peck, Tulane University Gary G. Porton, University of Illinois Marc L. Raphael, Ohio State University Richard S. Sarason, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion Tzvee Zahavy, University of Minnesota Editorial Committee: Roger Brooks Louis Newman Number 34 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED JEWISH APPEAL 1939-1982 by Marc Lee Raphael A HISTORY OF THE UNITED JEWISH APPEAL 1939-1982 by Marc Lee Raphael Scholars Press A HISTORY OF THE UNITED JEWISH APPEAL 1839–1982 by Marc Lee Raphael Copyright © 2020 by Brown University Library of Congress Control Number: 2019953438 Publication of this book is made possible, in part, by Mr. Lyman Bloomingdale and by The Max Richter Foundation of Rhode Island. Open access edition funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities/Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Humanities Open Book Program. The text of this book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- NoDerivatives 4.0 International License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. To use this book, or parts of this book, in any way not covered by the license, please contact Brown Judaic Studies, Brown University, Box 1826, Providence, RI 02912. For Gary Reichard colleague, scholar, and friend ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The idea for a history of the United Jewish Appeal was first suggested to me on 9 September 1977, in New York City, by Moshe Davis (Hebrew University) and Henry Feingold (CUNY). Subsequently, my research was aided by Evyatar Friesel (Jerusalem), Col. S. J. Pomrenze (New York), Henry Montor (Rome), Al Rosen (Boston), Herbert Friedman (New York), and Nathan Kaganoff (Waltham), as well as by a Small Research Grant from The Ohio State University Graduate School and a grant from the American Philosophical Society. Early encouragement came from Amnon Hadary (Jerusalem), who published a slightly different version of Chapter 2 in Forum, and continual support was provided by Stephen Whitfield (Brandeis University), Stanley Chyet (Hebrew Union College), and Jacob Neusner (Brown University). I wish to especially acknowledge the scholarly and collegial support of Gary Reichard, chairman of the OSU history department (1977-1981) during the research and writing of this volume. His commitment to the project made my overseas and out-of-state travel possible, and he worked hard to provide me the environment so necessary for productive scholarship. Finally, a technical matter. All archival material not specifically cited from the Central Zionist Archives (Jerusalem), the American Jewish Historical Society (Waltham), the Combined Jewish Philanthropies (Boston), or the Columbus Jewish Federation is to be found in the United Jewish Appeal archives (New York). TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vii CHAPTERS 1. FROM SEPARATISM TO COMMUNITY: THE ORIGINS OF THE UNITED JEWISH APPEAL 1 2. THE WAR YEARS: 1939-1945 13 3. THE FIRST $100,000,000 CAMPAIGN: 1946 21 4. AMERICAN JEWRY'S CAMPAIGN OF SACRIFICE: 1947 AND CAMPAIGN OF DESTINY: 1948: 29 5. HENRY MONTOR'S FINAL TWO CAMPAIGNS: 1949-1950 AND THE JOSEPH H. SCHWARTZ YEARS: 1951-1955 39 6. THE "BIG GIVER" 47 7. THE VIEW FROM THE TOP: HERBERT FRIEDMAN'S REIGN: 1956-1969 63 8. THE AMERICAN JEWISH PHILANTHROPIC RESPONSE TO THE SIX DAY AND YOM KIPPUR WARS a. COLUMBUS, OHIO—MAY/JUNE 1967: A CASE STUDY 77 b. BOSTON, MASS.—OCTOBER 1973: A CASE STUDY 81 9. THE "MANAGEMENT TEAM:" THE INCREASED ROLE OF LAY LEADERS AND PROFESSIONAL STAFF IN THE 1970s 85 10. PROJECT RENEWAL 101 11. PROBLEMS AND PROSPECTS Ill NOTES 117 LIST OF TABLES 135 TABLES 136 INDEX 159 PUBLISHERS’ PREFACE Brown Judaic Studies has been publishing scholarly books in all areas of Judaic studies for forty years. Our books, many of which contain groundbreaking scholarship, were typically printed in small runs and are not easily accessible outside of major research librar- ies. We are delighted that with the support of a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities/Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Humanities Open Book Program, we are now able to make available, in digital, open-access, format, fifty titles from our backlist. We are pleased to be able to reissue Marc Lee Raphael’s, A His- tory of the United Jewish Appeal, 1939-1982 (1982). The United Jew- ish Appeal was the major Jewish philanthropic umbrella organization in the United States until it was folded into a successor organiza- tion in 1999. Drawing on original archival research, Raphael’s book charts the boon years of the organization. This edition contains some corrections of the original text. Michael L. Satlow Managing Editor October, 2019 CHAPTER 1 FROM SEPARATISM TO COMMUNITY: THE ORIGINS OF THE UNITED JEWISH APPEAL The United Jewish Appeal is a voluntary organization of American Jewry specializing in the collection of funds. Well known in the United States, even outside of Jewish circles, its fame extends beyond America and is by no means limited to the State of Israel, its principal beneficiary. From modest beginnings before and during World War II, when annual drives produced $15,000,000 or $20,000,000, the UJA had succeeded, by the mid-seventies, in coordinating the raising of nearly a half-billion dollars. On 10 January 1939 three American Jewish leaders met in New York and signed a document creating the "reconstituted" UJA. The three signatories were Rabbi Jonah B. Wise (1881-1959), Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver (1893-1963), and William Rosenwald (b. 1903). They represented, respectively, two competing organizations with opposing purposes: the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) and the United Palestine Appeal (UPA), as well as a beneficiary agency established in 1938, the National Coordinating Committee for Aid to Refugees and Emigrants Coming from Germany (NCCR). This agreement made the UJA the single American Jewish fundraising organization for the work of relief and rehabilitation in Europe, for immigration and settlement in Palestine, and for refugee aid in the United States. And despite the complexities of priorities and allocations, this 1939 agreement has functioned continuously (except for part of one year, 1941) ever since. The JDC, one of the two UJA "partners," was founded in 1914 to meet "overseas" needs; those of the small Jewish settlement in Palestine and those of the Jews of east Europe, as their homelands were transformed into battlegrounds by World War I. The leaders of the JDC opposed the claim of the Zionists that Palestine provided the only solution to the Jewish problem. The Joint's philosophy consisted in giving aid to all Jews—wherever they might be--including those in Palestine and those in countries both friendly and hostile to the United States. The JDC also funded diverse projects in many lands which promised to aid Jews; these included medical stations, loan cooperatives, 1 2 / UJA History vocational training schools, and agricultural settlements. This philosophy of the JDC was supported by the explicit optimism that Jewish life in Europe, despite the hardships of the twenties and thirties, would not only merely endure, but regain vitality. Such optimism enabled the Joint to raise and distribute hundreds of millions of dollars; but it, together with the implicit non-Zionism of some of its leaders, also 2 accounted for the clashes with the Zionist organizations. The United Palestine Appeal, on the other hand, was focused exclusively upon Zionism. Created in 1925 at the urging of American Zionist leaders who wished to coordinate previously independent fundraising efforts in America devoted to the upbuilding of Jewish life in Palestine (especially those of the Jewish National Fund, the Palestine Foundation Fund, Mizrachi, and Hadassah), it was also a response to the launching of the ambitious fundraising campaign by the JDC. The latter sought to provide funds, jointly with the Soviet government, to establish thousands of Soviet Jewish families in agricultural enterprises in the Crimean region; eventually, the Joint hoped, 250,000 Jews would occupy 3,000,000 acres of land in colonies in the Ukraine and Crimea. In response to this and other Joint efforts, the Zionists waged prolonged campaigns, throughout the twenties and thirties, to demonstrate that support for Palestine was a more worthwhile investment than a diaspora agricultural settlement, to increase the proportion given to Palestine from the welfare fund drives conducted in most cities, and to convince communities, whenever possible, to combine JDC and UPA drives and increase the latter's take. The Zionists, generally speaking, met steady opposition from the controlling oligarchy of large givers who generally favored European relief and 3 distrusted Zionist projects. After several years of bitter and tough negotiations between