Koge I wo
JEWISH   WESTERN BULLETIN
Friday, Morch 29, 1957
Editorial topics
Goiigrafittlatiofis B'liai S'rith Hillel Foundation at UBG
IT is with much satisfaction that we extend congratulations to the B'nai B'rith family in Vancouver on the celebration of the tenth anniversary of Hillel House on the campus at the University of British Columbia.
For the past ten years Hillel House has served the special needs of Jewish students at UBC for a social and cultural centre where they could preserve and expand their ties with their Jewish background. Hillel House has served as a Jewish home on the campus for the 130 to 160 Jewish students who have attended UBC each year during the past 10 years.
Congratulations are indeed due to the entire B'nai B'rith family because this is one project for which both the men's and women's groups have worked consistently together.
We do not propose to relate here the history of Hillel at UBC since David Youngson, a former student president of Hillel, has undertaken this assignment for the Pasi^over issue.
It is sufficient for us to take note that the Hillel Foundation at UBC has made a definite contribution towards the corps of leadership in the Jewish community. It has also made a positive contribution to the cultural life of the campus as a whole.
Next Wednesday, the anniversary of Hillel will be officially celebrated with a gaia dinner program at the Schara Tzedeck Auditorium. This celebration is not oiily for the purpose of duly recording the achievements to date but to make possible the continuation and expansion of the laudable aims and activities of the Hillel Foundation.
Dates, campaign quotas and community growth
IN the past, two issues the Bulletin has carried brief matter-of-fac announcements that the 1957 United Jewish Appeal drive in Vancouver would open some time in June, with the women launching their yJA effort on May 29. Since the campaign was still three months off, i was felt that'matter-of-fact announcements would dp for the moment On reconsideration however we have decided that an immediate discussion of the special significance of this year's drive would be in order.
First of all the May-June opening dates for the Vancouver drive are worthy of comment. Some years ago the local UJA leadership decided to postpone the drive from the Spring to the Fall. It was later concluded that the drive should be returned to its' earlier Spring date.
While it is very easy to postpone the' carrying out of any task or assignment, it is of course much more difficult to return such an assign^ ment to its original date after it has once been postponed. It is therefore to the special credit of the local UJA leadership that in the past couple of years they have been setting the campaign date earlier by one month each year so that now we will be back to a May-June opening.
This has-been done at the same time as the campaign quota has been raised substantially each year. The Jewish community as a whole therefore also deserves special commendation not only for backing up the UJA leadership in advancing the campaign date, but in meeting the higher quota each year in generous measure.
There has been a very definite and urgent reason for raising the campaign quota in each of the past two years. Nevertheless we fee free to say that the leadership felt some concern each time, as to whether these reasons would be understood in the community. Fortunately the community did understand and, by and large, responded commensurate-ly. .
Once again the campaign quota will have to be increased substantially this year and the reasons are move obvious than ever.
In last week's issue the Bulletin carried an announcement by Dr. Doy Joseph, treasurer of the Jewish Agency, that 100,000 Jewish refugees would be admitted to Israel during the balance of this year. This will be the largest wave of immigration to Israel in any single year since 1949.
For this purpose an Emergency Rescue Fund is being established. In United States the Emergency Rescue goal has been set by the UJA at $100,000,000. This is in addition to the regular U.S. campaign goal of $105,000,000 for welfare and rehabilitation assistance to about 525,000 new settlers already in Israel, and to Jews in distress in 20 other countries. At the opening of the American UJA campaign earlier this month 900 American Jewish leaders contributed $35,100,000, setting a new record ^hich compares with $26,500,000 raised at last year's opening.
Throughout United States and Canada local Jewish communities are following the example by boosting their quotas to fulfill the need of the Emergency Rescue Fuiid and answer the* call of tens of thousands of Jews now fleeing Egypt, Hungary, Poland and other countries!
In Toronto, where the campaign opens this week, the goal has been set at $2,500,000, an increase of half a million. In Winnipeg the UJA campaign opens in April with a 50 percent increase in quota.
William Rosenwald, U.S. general chairman of the UJA, has described this year's drive as the "most critical campaign in a decade." The UJA campaign quota in Vancouver should be set in the full knowledge of this situation, as well as with the realization that ours is a growing Jewish community which should, as a matter of natural progress, be making a greater contribution towards all Jewish causes, both local and non-local, from year to year.
Over 14,000 Egyptian Jews have
from Nasser's
-(WJA)—A' Jews
total from
THE JEWISH WESTERN BULLETIN
Published Weekly Every Friday at 2675 Ook Street, Vancouver 9, B.C. ABRAHAM J. ARNOLD, Publisher ond Editor BERTHA ARNOLD, Advertising and Circulation
Official Organ of the Jewish Community Council  of Vancouver
MORRIS SALTZMAN, President S. B. GERVIN, PublicoHons Choirmon LOUIS ZIMMERMAN, ExecuHve Director
PHONES: Bulletin Office, BA. 3125; Evenings, BA. 3098 Community Centre Office, CE. 1168
LOCAL DEADLINE: EVERY MONDAY, 5:00 P.M.
Business Hours: 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., except Saturdays, Jewish ond Legol Holidoys. Authorized Second Class Moil, Post Office Dept., Ottawa
FRIDAY, MARCH 29
Candle-lighting Time Sobboth Eve., March 29, 6:21; April 5, 6:31
LONDON of 14,102 refugee Egypt-—more than one third of Egypt's Jewish population—arrived in European countries between November 22, 1956, and March 6, 1957. This is disclosed in an up-to-date World Jewish Congress survey on 'The Persecution of Jews in Egypt,' just published in London.
10,^49, of the Jewish refugee arrivals from Egypt came by boat. Principal disembarkation points >Yere Naples, Genoa, Piraeus and Marseilles. Up to March 6, -4,292 landings were registered in Italy, 3,427 in Greece and 3,228 in France. Arrivals by air totalled 2,153, including 1,403 refugee Jews who landed in Greece. In addition, it is carefully estimated by reliable sources that another 1,000 persons landed in various European countries before registration of refugee Jews from Egypt had started.
Some 300 of the one thousand Jews imprisoned or interned after the start of the Sinai move were still believed to be deprived of their liberty in January. The systematic campaign of persecution and discrimination which aims at the elimination of Jews from the life of Egypt has not been abandoned, although" the Egyption Government has taken special care not to
issue any civil or military decrees providing for automatic expulsion, except with regard to persons 'endangering the security of the State.' Harsh police pressure and.continuous harassment have proved adequate in many cases to compel Jews to leave Egypt 'voluntarily.'
ECONOMIC WARFARE
Assets of some 500 Jewish-owned firms or families have been sequestrated and their bank accounts frozen, the World Jewish Congress survey reveals. They are operated by Egyptian trustees. In some cases, measuires of sequestration were recently relaxed; but if Jews whose property was sequestrated wish to leave Egypt they are coerced to relinquish formally any claim, to their property.
In anoAer 800 cases, Jewish owned firms, have been pot on,an economic blacklist and their assets frozen. Their property is not sequestrated, but cannot be disposed of, nor are these establishments permitted to draw, at will on their bank accounts. The blacklist is in the possessidnf of every bank and is checked against every Jew coming in to draw on his account.
Even more critical is the position of Jewish wage and salary earners, who are severely affected by the 'Egyptianisation' of all foreign banks.
insurance companies and import-export firms. Jews have been rejdaced by Muslims at. all levels. If they cannot be dismissed owing to their special •qualifications, Muslims are 'assigned' to them to be trained in their jobs.
New economic provisions also bar all Jews who are not Egyptians by birth from acting as representatives, of foreign companies and exclude Jews from a sector of eidonbmic life which until now has been essen^y theirs. These and other measures have made it practically impossible for Jews to find employment. Jewish shopkeepers and tradesmen are officially permitted to continue,trading, but applications for import and other licenses, bank credits and other facilities, arb mostly turned down. Most of the Jewish lawyers are prevented from practising. Jews have also been expelled from clubs and professional associations.
The greatest anxiety, says the World Jewish Congress survey, is caused by the fact that resources of the Jewish community, severely affected by the anti-Jewish economic measures and by emigration, are dwindling at high speed. The income of Jewish communal organizations from ■ donations and taxes has, for all practical purposes, disappeared, and communal welfare and relief work stands deprived of adequate financial support.
Israeli Jews have higher rate of natural increase than any other Jewish commisnity
NEW YORK natural increase
— The annual among Israel's
1,526,000 Jews is proportionately almost twice as high as that of the 5,200,000 Jews of the United States. The Israeli increase is 30,000 per annum, as compared with the 55,000 to 60,000 shown by American Jewry, according to statistics published by the World Jewish Congress in New York.
Containing a survey of world Jewish affairs, the WJC's "Institute An-
nual -1956" shows that the birth-rate for the Jews of Israel is "generally somewhat higher"than that of the general (Jewish and non-Jewish) population in' three other countries in which thfere are major Jewish cotn-munities^the United States, Canada and Argentina.
The survey attributes the Israeli increase to "the particular bran^ of recent immigrants"—the Sephardic aiiid Oriental Jews from North Africa and the Moslem lands, and the Eur-
'WORLD JEWRY FIRMLY BEHIND ISRAEL' SAYS DR.
TEL AVIV — (WJA) World
Jewry rallied firmly behind Israel in her crucial fight at the United Nations for her rights and security. Dr. N. Goldmahn, President of the World Jewish Congress, declared at a meeting of he Israel Executive of Congress lere. Every Jewish community had contributed its share in its own country and with its own Government, and every Jewish eader had been eager to live up o live up to the great task which ;he decisive turn of events had Dlaced upon him.
The struggle for world recognition of Israel's claims was not yet over. Dr. Goldmann declared, and the necessity of creating a unified Jewish international organizatioii had become more urgent than ever before. There was good reason to believe. Dr. Goldmann said, that Jewish organizations such as the B'nai B'rith, the Jewish abour Committee, the Board of Deputies of British Jews and others would join hands with the' World ewish Congress in an effort to build an international Jewish body, first for a trial period of two years. The World Executive of the World Jewish Congress, which was to meet in London at the end of April, would have to agree upon lines of policy and functions of such a new world organization.
REFERRING TO EASTERN tJROPE, Dr. Goldmann expressed the view that the time might now be propitious for close co-operation of ewish communities in Eastern Eur^ ope with world Jewry and for tteif eventual re-affiliation with the World ewish (Congress.
Dr. Goldmann said press reports of a cancellation of an invitation to the World Jewish Congress by the Chief Rabbi of Moscow to send a delegation to the USSR had no foundation. Chief Rabbi Schlieffer's invitation to the World Jewish Congress still stood. The question whether and when a Congress delegation should
go to the Soviet Union, however, would have to be considered in the light of recent developments.
opean "siiirvivors of the Nazi holocaust." Among the survivors of Nazism—many of whom immigrated to Israel—the birth rate was very high in the years following the war.
The report places the ^'approxi-mate rate of increase of the Jews in the world*' at 110,000 to 115,000 per annum, apart from the Soviet Union. This conasts of toeFs 30,-000; the United States, ^5,000 to 60,000; Canada and Latin America, 10,000; Africa, 8,000 to 10,000; and from 4,000 to 5,000 annually in Poland, Hnngaiy and Rumania. The 110,000 to 115,000 annual increase is called-relaftively hfeher" than in the years immediately preceding World War H. The global Jewish population is 11,810,000. The report has no details of the birth rate of the Jews of the Soyiet Union "because of the prevalence of intermarriage and assimilation which makes it impossible to discuss properly the natural increase in the community." B^ritish Jewry, the largest community in Western Europe, is "faced with a biological deficit," the (Continued on page 9)
Security of Israel and the JNF
ISRAEL, surrounded as it is on three sides by enemies, * must give first place to security considerations. The fact that the surest strategic protection of the plains and valleys is a strong chain of settlements along the hills was proved during Israel's War of Independence.
Then, a number of key settlements barred the paths of advance of invading armies. The land of those villages had been acquired by the JNF with -an eye to security years before the necessity arose. The JNF policy of buying and occupying land which had strategic value is continuing today—^with the Five Year. Plan for hill settlement. The hills which form the boundaries with three Arab countries are sparsely settled, only one third being worked by Jews.
Under the Five Year Plan the Fund will acquire, from non-Jewish owners 50,000 dunams of land in border areas. Reclamation of 300,000 dunams in the hills with the view to settling 12,000 families of newcomers and expanding eighty existing settlements will create bases for a strong defense.
Wherever setdement is not feasible, natural barriers in the form of forests are to be planted. Forests are an asset to defense—^they can serve as an effective check to the advance of armored columns, conceal fortified positions and camouflage the size of units and the extent of moveihents and preparations. The JNF Five Year Plan which will afforest 150,000 dunams of hill lands strengthens an important link in the security chaih along Israel's elongated borders.