Special Interview JNF Head Satisfied with First Official Visit to North America

At the conclusion of a two-week working tour of the United States and Canada, Mashe Rivlin, the Jewish National Fund’s new world chairman said that he is encouraged and satisfied with the responses he encountered to the new projects and plans of the JNF.

In an interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency at the JNF headquarters here, Rivlin said that the purpose of his visit, his first to the United States and Canada since he was elected to the new post in January of this year, was to raise money for the new projects of the JNF and explain its work. The JNF, Rivlin said, is embarking on a series of new projects and they were presented toand enthusiastically received by JNF leaders and activists in Canada and the U.S.

In his meetings and talks in Canada and the United States, Rivlin said he discussed the idea of creating The Forest of the Jewish Child near the city of Beersheba in the south of Israel. “The idea is that next year, which is the 30th anniversary of the State of Israel, Jewish children from all over the world will participate in planting a new forest,” Rivlin said. According to the plan, Israeli school children will write letters to Jewish children across the world asking them to take part in this special project. Special trees, Rivlin said, will be planted in this forest, in the memory of the Jewish children who perished in the Holocaust.

During his visit