United jewish appeal

  • Issue: October 1978
  • Designer: D. Pessah / S. Ketter
  • Stamp size: 25.7 x 40 mm
  • Plate no.: 550
  • Sheet of 15 stamps Tabs: 5
  • Printers: E. Lewin-Epstein
  • Method of printing: Photolithogravure

On January 10, 1939, the United Jewish Appeal was created as an instrument of Jewish unity. The merger of three major American Jewish fundraising organizations was a direct response to the infamous Kristallnacht of November 10, 1938, when the synagogues of Germany were desecrated, Jewish homes were looted and burned and Jews were humiliated, deprived of civil rights, beaten and persecuted.

The leaders of American Jewry realized that only a centralized fundraising body could fully mobilize the resources needed to meet the crisis confronting the Jews of Europe on the eve of World War II.

The UJA thus became 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.

Since the establishment of the State of Israel, UJA funds have been used mainly to transport and resettle more than 1 .6 million Jews in the Jewish homeland. They were instrumental in emptying the post-Holocaust DP camps of Europe by 1950... transferring virtually the entire populations of Yemen and Iraq to Israel, creating more than 500 agricultural settlements and 29 development towns.., constructing more than 100,000 housing units for immigrants... aiding the resettlement of over 110,000 Jews from the Soviet Union seeking freedom in the land of their people.

In all, with over $ 4 billion distributed in four decades to the Jewish Agency, the Joint Distribution Committee and other international resettlement agencies, the UJA has contributed to the rescue and rehabilitation of more than three million men, women and children, about half of them immigrants brought to Israel. This has been accomplished through annual campaigns in more than 800 American Jewish communities, involving one million Jewish families, which are guided by four principal aims:

Symbolizing this vast national effort is the United Jewish Appeal stamp which combines a Magen David, symbolic of the Jewish people; a new young tree, symbolic of the contribution of American Jewry; and a globe featuring the United States which has the shape and color of an orange, symbolic of Israel's best known export product.

In 1978, the UJA celebrates with the people of Israel 30 Years of Partnership. This stamp is a salute to the monumental achievements of Israel's people, aided by American Jewry.

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United jewish appeal