Central Conference of American Rabbis Defers Action on World Congress

After much heated discussion regarding the question of a World Jewish Congress, the Central Conference of American Rabbis finally adopted the resolution contained in the president’s message. The message recommended that “the conference take this matter under careful consideration and instruct the executive board to place it on the agenda for the conference meeting in 1933 for definite action.”

Substitute resolutions by Rabbi Jacob Marcus and Rabbi James Heller, were voted down. Rabbi Stephen S. Wise branded the resolution as mild and tepid and urged the conference to take immediate action which will help formulate united Jewish action. During the discussion Rabbi Harry Ettelson of Memphis, Tenn., took exception to “efforts to force hasty action by charges of timidity on a movement not scheduled to take place before 1934.” Others were equally as vigorous in their opposition to any action that would be more binding than the one to which the conference committed itself.

Rabbi Wise was the chief speaker at last night’s session and scored American Jewry for its un-Jewish assimilation in its effort at adaptation.

“American Israel,” Dr. Wise said, “developed too deep a passion to be like unto the majority of people in the midst of which it lived. Too much that was Jewish was foresworn; and under the aegis of liberation or emancipation, too much that was un-Jewish was assimilated. The most grievous effect of this was that we, as a people, made a minimal effort to effect and to influence, to pervade and to transform the people among whom we had come to find home and freedom and asylum.

“The time is come for us to behold the truth that we are not to suffer ourselves to be consumed and devoured, overborne and assimilated. Rather are we to be a constitutive and creative factor, a transforming force in American life. We must cease to think of finding shelter in America and begin to think of our people as enrichers and not beneficiaries of America. As a people, we have been too docile and acquiescent instead of being inflexibly self-insistent as Jews.

“The time has come for us to take to heart the truth that we may not be sure of a common faith, viewing the infinite varieties within the full circles of the Jewish creed; but, whether or not sure of our common faith, we as a people must insist upon a common fate, whether that fate be good or evil.

“We must no longer be ready to be liberalized into a Semitic version of Unitarianism, nor yet to be Jewish humanists with a Jewish accent, whether that Jewish accent be imported from Pinsk or Posen, whether from Bambach or Altkunstadt. Never was there less valid figure or illustration than the figure of ‘The Melting Pot’ applied to America. To accept it were treason to our capacity for contribution to the treasures of American life. We would be more than Jewish clay in the hands of alien potters. We would be potters shaping the vessel of our fate.”