The Day · 15 December 1942

CP-1942-004

Lo, the Anti-Zionist Rabbi! A Piece of Irony. How About A Vote? The Value of Jewish Democracy.

News and Views

By Dr. S. Margoshes

Transcribed from the clipping

“It strikes me as a peculiar and remarkably illuminating piece of irony that a few days after the appearance in the Zionist official organ, ‘The New Palestine,’ of an article calling for the domination of American Jewish life by rabbis, there should be organized the American Council for Judaism, an organization of reformed rabbis, with the avowed purpose of fighting a Jewish State, a Jewish flag, and a Jewish army, in short, everything that Zionism stands for. Openly declaring war on Zionism in America, Rabbi Wolsey, in explaining the functions of the new rabbinical organization, said: ‘We have organized for the purpose of combatting nationalistic and secularistic trends in Jewish life. We are definitely opposed to a Jewish state, a Jewish flag or a Jewish army. We are interested in the development of Palestine as a refuge for persecuted Jews, but are opposed to the idea of a political state under Jewish domination in Palestine or anywhere else. We will seek to identify and define the Jew as a member of a religious community and nothing else.’”

Context added by this archive

The American Council for Judaism as it is founded, reported in a New York Yiddish daily by a columnist who thinks it is a piece of irony, with its own chairman quoted on what it is for. The scan is 236 pixels wide, so the transcription here is the headline stack and the opening columns, which were re-read enlarged; the rest of the column has not been.

Cite this item

"Lo, the Anti-Zionist Rabbi! A Piece of Irony. How About A Vote? The Value of Jewish Democracy.," The Day, 15 December 1942. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1942-004. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1942-004

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