Compiled by San Diego Jewish World staff
United Jewish Fund Board Resumes Activity After Holy Days
Southwestern Jewish Press, September 7, 1956, Page 4
The United Jewish Fund will swing into action for its Fall session immediately after the holidays, Morris W. Douglas, President of the Fund, announced.
Directors of the Fund will meet for their first meeting since June on Tuesday, September 18, at which time matters pertaining to the Jewish community will be discussed and acted upon. The recently completed audit will be studied; requests of the United Jewish Appeal and other agencies will be discussed; plans for the annual meeting will be completed and reports of the various committees will be made.
Highlight of the board meeting is expected to be a report of the 1956 campaign by Milton Y., Roberts, Chairman, and the Emigre Committee, of which Zel Camiel is 1956 chairman.
Roberts will report the campaign results to date are in excess of $200,000 as compared to $163,000 in 1955 and an additional $10,000 is anticipated from contributors before the end of the year.
Over the summer three Emigre families from Germany, Sweden and Greece have arrived in the community under the auspices of the Fund’s committee and several others are anticipated before the
Refugee Relief Act is completed in December, Camiel will report.
The twenty-third annual meeting of the United Jewish Fund has been set, according to Dr. Walter Ornstein, Chairman, for Sunday, December 9, at which time the election of 20 new directors to the Fund Board will take place.
Within the next two months Dr. Joshua Rittoff and his Allocations Committee will function in recommending the distribution of the monies raised in the 1956 campaign. Members of the committee selected to date as announced by Dr. Rittoff, are: From the Board of the Fund … Arthur Goodman, Alex Maisel, Dr. A.P. Nasatir, Mrs. Abe Ratner, Milton Y. Roberts, William Schwartz, Harry Sugarman, Ruben Umansky, with two additional to be selected.
Committee members selected from the community-at-large for their leadership and their efforts on behalf of the Fund campaign are: Bernard Arenson, Mrs. Jack Binderman, Edward Breier, Isaac Domnitz, Mrs. Louis Feller, Stuart Feller, Stanley Foster, Carl Friend, Martin Gleich, Mrs. Mitlon Roberts, Abe Sklar, Mrs. Leo Smollar, Dr. R.M. Stone with two additional to be selected.
Allocations will be announced before the annual meeting.
Douglas also announced that a Year Book for 1956 would be published, listing the names of all contributors to the United Jewish Fund and the amount of their contributions, and would be distributed at the annual meeting.
*
Report From Israel
Southwestern Jewish Press, September 7, 1956, Pages 5, 8
By Albert A. Hutler
Executive Director of United Jewish Fund of San Diego
TEL AVIV, Israel — A legless man who runs a grocery store, a palsied man who does gardening a 70 year old chef who does the cooking for his fellow residents in an old aged home — these are some of the things one can see in Israel.
It is hard at first to think that such a young and vigorous country like Israel has the burden of the aged and physically handicapped. but they are an inescapable part of the history of the country.
When Israel was born, a pent-up wave of immigration was let loose. Hundreds of thousands of Jews from Europe and Africa and Asia poured into the country in an unlimited and unselective immigration. The Europeans included survivors of the death camps whose health had been broken by years of privation and horror. The Africans and Asians included many who were physically handicapped as a result of neglect and or ignorance in the backward areas where they lived.
The wave of immigration was almost overwhelming. Almost to a man the Jews of Bulgaria left for Israel, and the entire population of the old folks home in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia came too.
Some one had to act to help. The State of Israel simply did not have the resources to tackle so huge a problem. And thus the American Joint Distribution Committee, a constituent agency of the Untied Jewish Appeal, stepped in and founded a subsidiary known as Malben, the Hebrew initials for “Institutions for the Care of Handicapped Immigrants.”
I had known all this before I came to Israel as a member of the ten-man study mission of Executive Directors of Community Campaigns affiliated with the UJA. What struck me here was the clear evidence that Malben is operating according to a firmly held principle — neither the aged nor the physically handicapped are expendable, neither the physically handicapped nor the aged can be tossed aside.
At the pleasant, tree-shaded Malben home for the aged at Givat Hashlosha, I saw old people peeling potatoes, waiting on tables, planting flowers. The postman was a white-haired 75 year old, the librarian was a great-grandfather.
I spoke to some of these aged folk, and I learned that no one forces them to work. And they are paid for their work, not much but a token payment. What’s the idea? Malben believes in making the aged feel useful, feel that there is still something to do in life, and the only way to do that is to give a man something worthwhile to do.
Of course it goes without saying that only those with a physician’s permission are allowed to work. And they work usually no more than four hours a day. But almost everyone wants to work.
Whenever possible, Malben tries to utilize the training and vocational backgrounds of the residents of the old age homes. Thus, a former professor of chemistry at Budapest now runs the laboratory attached to the clinic at one of the old aged homes. An ex-businessman from Bucharest is the storekeeper in another home.
A man may be 80 years old, but that’s no reason why he can’t learn a new language. In every one of the Malben homes there are classes in Hebrew. In fact cultural life in all its aspects is vigorous. One home for the aged has a choir whose average age is close to 70. several of the homes have monthly newspaper with contributions from the residents. And once a year Malben has a bazaar in Tel Aviv where products of the handicraft shops run by the aged are sold — by salesladies who are white-haired and stooped but who have a wonderful time selling the products of their friends.
Altogether Malben shelters 4,400 immigrant aged in 18 homes. But the problem of the immigrant aged in Israel is still not fully solved. There is a waiting list of 1,929, many of them waiting in canvas-walled huts of reception centers. Malben is building new homes as fast as possible, but the wait is long and cruel.
What is true of the aged is true of the physically handicapped–whether crippled, blind, post-TB, chronically ill. A network of Malben institutions, using a variety of techniques attempts to give these people hope, to help them live as normal a life as possible.
Thus, Malben operates 22 sheltered workshops where the lame, the blind and the halt make everything from mattresses to cosmetics, from shoes to handbags, from candles to bookbindings. These shops, designed for immigrants whose handicaps prevent them from competing in the normal work market, are under constant medical supervision, and each work day includes two compulsory rest periods in cheerfully furnished lounges. The workers are entitled to annual vacations in inexpensive Malben-run rest homes.
The workshops also produce. One of Israel’s newest and swankiest tourist hotels is partially furnished with lovely, hand-worked furniture items made in a Malben carpentry sheltered workshop. Some of the sheltered workshops have helped Israel’s drive for dollars by developing tourist items.
Many of the physically handicapped among the immigrants are now self-employed entrepreneurs — thanks to Malben’s construction loan program. In five years Malben has loaned out IL ,000,000 to five thousand family heads through this program, benefitting a total of 25,000 people, if members of the families are counted.
In this program, Malben does more than give money; it provides expert aid. Thus, if a man with one leg is being given a loan to open a small grocery, he is first trained in marketing, bookkeeping and other aspects of his trade. Malben helps him find a location and for the first year or so Malben experts help him from time to time and discuss his problems with him. The encouraging thing is that hundreds of those who have received constructive loans are beginning to pay them back.
I cannot hope to cover every aspect of Malben’s programs. What touched me most was that this organization, financed by UJA funds and staffed largely by Israelis, does not even abandon those who are doomed to a slow death. Among the patients at Malben chronic disease hospital are men and women suffering from muscular diseases for which there is no cure, men and women who in the course of time must inevitably waste away. Still, Malben’s patient doctors and physical therapists take advantage of whatever muscular activities the patient still has and teach him skills so that he can spend his limited days creatively and thus get some satisfaction from life.
*
Adventures in San Diego Jewish History” is sponsored by Inland Industries Group LP in memory of long-time San Diego Jewish community leader Marie (Mrs. Gabriel) Berg. Our “Adventures in San Diego Jewish History” series will be a regular feature until we run out of history. To find stories on specific individuals or organizations, type their names in our search box, located just above the masthead on the right hand side of the screen.