Dr. Abba Hillel Silver, of Cleveland, outstanding American Jewish leader, returned Thursday after a seven months’ study-tour of Europe and Palestine. He had originally planned to remain abroad a year, but cut short his trip in order to return to participate in American relief efforts in behalf of German Jewry.
During his tour he spent considerable time in Berlin, Paris, Prague, Rome and Geneva, was received by Premier Mussolini of Italy and President Masaryk of Czechoslovakia and interviewed many other political leaders in Europe.
Dr. Silver prepared the following statement, based on his observations abroad, exclusively for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and the Jewish Daily Bulletin.
BY DR. ABBA HILLEL SILVER
In the past, Jews went to Palestine to build up the land. Today they must go there to make a living. The finger of history is pointing to Palestine today as the haven of Jewish mass immigration as unmistakingly as it pointed to America at the close of the 19th and the opening of the 20th centuries. Never did the conjunction of economic and political conditions in the diaspora tend to make Palestine as central and inevitable in Jewish life as it is today. The real “aliyah” is only about to begin, and it will assume vast proportions provided the economic development of the country can be geared up to the required speed in order to absorb the masses who wish to come.
We must begin to think rapidly in tems of a “great” Palestine capable of maintaining a large Jewish population; for everywhere the doors are being closed against the Jewish immigrant, and almost everywhere the Jew is being forced to emigrate. What is indicated is a “Palestine Integrale”, a union of the two mandates of Palestine and Transjordania and the opening up of the empty and potentially rich country of Transjordania for Jewish settlement. Transjordania is three times as large as Palestine and has less than one-third of Palestine’s population. Many of the Arab leaders of Transjordania are no longer hostile to such a development. They have seen the contrast which exists between the improved condition of the Palestine Arab brought about by Jewish immigration and enterprise, and the thoroughly abject and poverty-stricken conditions of their own people. A friendly and cooperative policy on the part of the Mandatory Government at this time would hasten the process and would avert many of the tragic mistakes of the past which were caused mainly by the Government’s uncertain and vacillating attitude.
INDUSTRIAL PROGRAM
Indicated, too, is a large-scale industrial development. Agriculture must always remain the backbone of the Palestine program, but not the total program. Palestine will be able to absorb a large Jewish population only if it becomes intensively industrialized. Public support should be given to industry, trade and commerce in Palestine in the same way as it has been given to agriculture and colonization.
The people of Palestine are happy and confident. They are working hard and hopefully. There is an eagerness and a buoyancy in the air. In all my travels I found it the one place where men are not depressed. The colonies are more prosperous-looking and tidier. They have lost much of their drabness. They are building better homes now and better-looking homes. The children of Palestine, especially those of the colonies, gladden the heart. A Jewish colony in the Emek or the Sharon is the nearest thing to a paradise for children that I know of. The cities of Tel-Aviv and Haifa are advancing at a remarkable tempo. One feels that their foundations are much stronger and more securely laid than they were a few years ago. The present High Commissioner and his staff have been friendly and cooperative, although the small number of certificates for new settlers announced last month was, in view of the great demand which exists for labor in Palestine, both unexpected and disappointing.
THE GLOWING FUTURE
Generally speaking, one carries away the impression that, given another decade or two of uninterrupted development, continued immigration and, above all, political security, Palestine will become the most important country of the Near East and will stimulate the awakening of the entire Eastern Mediterranean world.
On the other hand one finds much room for improvement in the educational system of the country. It seems to be in need of a thoroughgoing revamping and modernization. The Hebew University, too, which has been doing very useful work as a research laboratory and a small post-graduate school, must now become a university in the real sense of the term. It must open its doors wide to the thousands of Jewish undergraduate-students in all parts of the world who are denied educational opportunities in their own countries. On such a program, the Hebrew University may well command a larger measure of financial support from world Jewry.
There is also much room for improvement in the relationship between the various political parties in Palestine. They have not yet learned the hard lesson of tolerance. The labor and revisionist groups have in recent weeks made sorry spectacles of themselves and of Jewish Palestine through their bitter party strife which has led to labor troubles and miserable street brawls.
GERMAN JEWRY’S TRIAL
My visit to Germany was a sad experience. It coincided with the rise of the Nazis to power. I found German Jewry passing through a vast economic and spiritual tribulation. They are on the rack. Thousands have fled. Thousands more will continue to flee. There seems to be absolutely no future for the young generation of Jews in Germany. They are definitely excluded from public life, severely restricted in the professions, and as industry, trade and banking come more and more under state auspices, they will be starved out economically as well.
Many of the young German Jews will have to emigrate, principally to Palestine. Every assistance should be given them to establish themselves in Palestine. Those who must remain will taste the bitterness of discrimination and oppression which their fellow-Jews tasted in Czarist Russia, and like them they will become a centre of political disaffection and unrest, and, like them, they will augment the ranks of radicals and revolutionaries who will ultimately overthrow Nazism in the same manner as Czarism was overthrown. A country cannot, to all intents and purposes, disenfranchise 600,000 of its ablest and intellectually most alert citizens and expect them to remain either loyal or submissive.
REVIVAL OF CONSCIOUSNESS
Spiritually German Jewry can save itself through revival of its Jewish national consciousness and through a thoroughgoing Judaizing of its life and thought. It must save its youth from demoralization by restoring to them their racial heritage and their own Hebraic culture, now that they have been brutally reminded that there is no room for them in German Kultur and in a racially purged and purified Germany. There are signs. that the leaders of German Jewry are fully alert to the situation.
I am of the opinion that German Jewry should demand when the question of the revision of the Versailles Treaties, called for by Germany, comes up before the League of Nations, or any other international body, the recognition of its status as a distinct minority-nationality within the German Reich. This will give them at least the right of public appeal to the tribunal of the world, and a minimum of political protection which their own Fatherland has now denied them.
If Germany is to remain a racial state, as the Nazis maintain, then the German Jews, must logically become either helots and outcasts, or members of a legally recognized minority-nationality within the state. The Hitler Government has scornfully rejected the contention of the German Jews that they are and mean to be an integral part of Germany, and has insisted that they constitute a distinct, unassimilable element requiring special political and economic treatment—in other words a distinct racial and cultural minority.
Official recognition ought to be taken of this fact by the League of Nations or any other world conference where treaty revision will be discussed. German Jewry has an opportunity to convert what is meant to be an insult and a degradation into a welcomed opportunity for a proud national renaissance.
The German situation as well as the general world situation affecting Jewry calls for an early conference of the representatives of all organized Jewish bodies throughout the world. The less pretentious and excessively ambitious such a conference will be, the better.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
