Spain Should Promote Sephardic Union As France Promotes Alliance Israelite to Reunite Sephardic Inte

The Minister of Education, Don Fernando de los Rios, who has been on an official visit to Morocco, where he addressed the Sephardic Jews of Tetuan (as reported in the J.T.A. Bulletin of Dec. 30th. urging them to forget the past and expressing the regret of the Spanish Government for the injustice of the Jewish expulsion from Spain in 1492, and its hope that the Sephardic Jews would join in the common work of developing Spanish civilisation, publishes a statement now in the Spanish press in which he stresses the importance of reuniting the Sephardic Jews in Morocco with Spanish interests, declaring that these Jews are of immense value to Spanish financial and commercial interests in its Moroccan zone.

The Spanish Government should promote the Sephardic Alliance, the Minister says, in the same way in which the French Government is favouring the work of the Alliance Israelite Universelle, and in that way it should endeavour to bring the Moroccan Jews back into the sphere of Spanish culture.

There is a Sephardic World Union in existence which came into being at the first International Congress of Sephardic Jews opened in Vienna in August 1925 during the time of the Fourteenth Zionist Congress which was held there. 300 delegates were reported present from Morocco, Asia-Minor, Turkey, Palestine, Egypt and other countries, and Mr. Nahum Sokolov, now President of the Zionist World Organisation and the Jewish Agency, greeted the Congress in the name of the Zionist Organisation. Rabbi Uziel, of Palestine, who was one of the principal speakers, said that the aim of the Sephardic World Union was to renew the glorious traditions of Sephardic Jewry.

The Organisation has taken a considerable part in the Palestine activities and several prominent personages in Sephardic Communities in various countries are interested in its work. Dr. Alkalay, President of the Sephardic Community of Belgrade, urged about 1929 that Sephardim are better suited for colonisation work in Palestine than Ashkenazim and should therefore be given at least as much consideration in this regard. They are accustomed to hard work, he said, and their needs are few, and coming as they do, many of them, from Arabic centres, they are also better able to live together with the Arabs than are the Ashkenazim. We Sephardim, he added, number 1½ million souls, and we represent a considerable part of the Jewish people.