[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.
