Ezras Torah 1941 Passover Fundraising Appeal Letter

1941

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EZRAS TORAH
673 BROADWAY (Room 891)
New York, N. Y.
Telephone: ALgonquin 4-4565
 
Rabbi ISRAEL ROSENBERG, Pres.
Rabbi CH. BLOCH, Treas.
Rabbi Y. E. HENKIN, Sec'y
 
Ezras Torah aids thousands of poor rabbis and widows and orphans of rabbis in Europe and Eretz Israel. It has helped them with a million dollars until 1940. It is directed by fifty of the most prominent rabbis of the United States and Canada. Its main-tenance expenses are very little. Ap-peals and collections are made by volunteers.
 
 
Fellow Jews:
 
The plight of our brethren overseas is common knowledge. It is well known too that their rabbis and religious leaders endure even greater hardship, since it is more difficult for them to establish fin-ancially. To these, the Ezras Torah Fund is veritably the staff of life. During the past calendar year Ezras Torah distributed more than fifty thousand dollars among more than two thousand families abroad. To Palestine alone was sent more than thirteen thousand dollars, largely to refugees from the ghastly brutalities of totalitarianism. Sums in excess of ten thousand were received by those who found temporary refuge in Lithuania, and other monies in large amounts went to Russia, Roumania, Hungary, Slovakia and others of the countries in blood-soaked, starvation-ridden Europe. Some of these sums served to aid about eighty great scholars to emigrate to whatever havens were accessible. And for refugees in this country more than four thousand dollars from Ezras Torah provided the means wherewith to bring wives and children to America to re-establish families and homes.
 
Now Passover approaches. The heart-rending pleas of our great men must be answered with tens of thousands of dollars, if these scholars and their families are to be provided with even bare sustenance. The urgency of the present situation and the prospect of things to come creates a res-ponsibility you can meet only by giving to this great cause even far beyond your means.
 
Devote SABBATH SHKOLIM, THE AN-NUAL, EZRAS TORAH DAY, to appeals in your synagogues, and meet your personal obligations to this great cause. All rabbis and leaders of syna-gogues are urgently requested to redouble their efforts in helping make these Ezras Torah appeals more successful than ever, and to turn in the col-lected monies until the SEVENTH OF ADAR (Yahrzeit of Moshe Rabeinu) which ends the tra-ditional Ezras Torah Campaign.
 
With best wishes for a Joyous Pourim and Happy Passover.
 
Ezras Torah Committee