[4.13. Fund raising
competition between Joint and
Zionists]
[Joint Distribution Committee and
American Zionists fund
raising work]
Another aspect of the relationships between JDC and the American
Zionists was the eternal problem of competitive fund raising. Two
problems arose: what proportion of funds raised by the American Jewish
communities for all purposes should be diverted to what was known as
overseas relief; and how these overseas funds would be divided between
Palestine and other areas. As far as the first problem was concerned,
the interests of both Zionists and non-Zionists obviously coincided.
They both wanted a growing proportion of the funds raised to go to help
Jews abroad, including those in Palestine. After the worst of the
depression was over, that is, from 1935 on, the proportion of overseas
relief as compared to local expenditures began growing.
(End note 70: Zosa Szajkowski: Budgeting American Overseas Relief,
1919-1939; In:
American Jewish
Historical Quarterly 59, no. 1 (September 1969): 87 ff., 110)
During the depression an attempt was made to set up a combined
fund-raising agency, the United Jewish Appeal. This body was set up in
March 1934 by JDC and the United Palestine Appeal under Louis Lipsky
and Morris Rothenberg; their aim was to raise $ 3 million, of which
(p.166)
JDC was to get 55 %. However, no more than $ 1,246,000 came to JDC, and
the 1935 results were even less impressive: total JDC income went down
to $ 917,000.
[Quarrel who pays for the
transportation for Palestine]
Disagreement on what the money should be spent for also troubled the
relationship between the two agencies. A case in point was the question
of who should pay for the transportation for immigrants to Palestine,
discussed above. This was a major reason for JDC's terminating the
agreement with UPA [United Palestine Appeal]. The attitude of the
Zionists, so JDC thought, was
to get money from American Jews on the strength of the German emergency
and force JDC to use it for transportation to Palestine, while
themselves refusing to contribute to expenses in Germany or the refugee
countries.
[Jewish Agency has become in fact
a Zionist front organization]
Behind this argument
(End note 71: Ibid. [Zosa Szajkowski: Budgeting American Overseas
Relief, 1919-1939; In:
American
Jewish Historical Quarterly 59, no. 1 (September 1969)] p.88,
quoting from letter of Caroline Flexner (10/29/35 [29 October 1935])
to Herbert H. Lehman. Also: Executive Committee, 10/9/35 [9 October
1935])
lay the feeling of Warburg and his friends that the Jewish Agency, in
which they were supposed to be equal partners, had in fact become a
Zionist front organization.
[October 1935: Breakup between UPA
and JDC]
The breakup of UPA by JDC in October 1935 was probably intended also as
a warning to Weizmann to take the non-Zionists more seriously.
[Joint: Hyman sees Zionism as a
reason for anti-Semitism in Europe]
In 1936 and 1937 relations with American Zionism remained strained
organizationally, despite a growing recognition of a similarity in aims
and objectives. Ideologically, the case for JDC was put very clearly by
Hyman in 1937. Stating that non-Zionists supported a "great Jewish
settlement of refuge and of cultural development in Palestine", he said
that they "decline to regard themselves as actually or potentially
elements of a Jewish nation, with its center in Palestine." Zionism, he
thought, was giving anti-Semites the pretext for evicting Jews from
their countries. To him and his friends, "America, France, Holland,
England is home and homeland."
[That's true: Zionist organizations work with the Hitler regime to
organize pogroms and racist laws so the Jews are driven out. But at the
end the Hitler regime plans to occupy Palestine, so the Jews had lost
all].
[The fund raising quarrel - JDC is
loosing it's position against the Zionists since 1936 appr.]
Hyman was against a "fusion" (that is, a combination for fund-raising
purposes) of Zionists and non-Zionists. He wanted the proponents for
each program to appear before the public separately: "The one that
seeks to make Palestine the Jewish homeland, the core and kernel of
Jewish conscious objective; the other that deems the primary goal the
integration of Jews with the life of their lands of birth or of
adoption."
(End note 72: Joseph C. Hyman: Jewish Problems and Activities Overseas;
In:
Proceedings of the
National Conference of Jewish Social Welfare, 1937)
In actual fact JDC probably was bound to lose by an alliance (p.167)
with the Zionists, simply because alone it could get more funds out of
the richer elements in Jewry, who generally were more inclined toward
Hyman's ideology than toward that of the Zionists. This situation was
to change considerably in the last year before the war, but even before
that, JDC was having more difficulties because local welfare funds
tended to refuse to raise funds separately for UPA and JDC. In a
growing measure they and the professional associations in the large
Jewish communities insisted on united campaigns, the proceeds of which
would be handed over to the overseas relief agencies according to
prearranged percentages.
Slowly but surely this grass-roots attitude left the JDC leadership
isolated in its desire to continue independent fund raising. As the
situation in Europe deteriorated, JDC reluctantly began to come around
to the idea of a more permanent alliance with UPA. This development
itself reflected the shift in emphasis in Jewish leadership: the
welfare funds were increasingly controlled by professionals - social
workers, fund raisers, and the like. The lay leadership was slowly
losing ground.
