Deutsh, Ansvering Ligsky Suggestion, Takes Issue with His Proposal to Postpone World Jewish Congress

Rijecting the suggestion of Louis Lipsky, chairman of the American Palestine Campaign, that the World Jewish Congress be postponed, as published in the Jewish Daily Bulletin of February 7, Bernard S. Deutsch, president of the American Jewish Congress, yesterday issued a statement taking exception to Mr. Lipsky’s views.

Mr. Deutsch’s statementy in its full text follows:

“There are several curious aspects to Mr. Lipsky’s statement counselling postponement of the World Jewish Congress which appeared in the Jewish Daily Bulletin of February 7.

“Forgetting for the monent the arguments which he present in favor of such postponement, we are impressed by the breaching of organizational discipline on the part of one who, in his own organization, has created displinary adherence and has insisted upon its observance.

SUNDAY MEETING

“Next Sunday there is to be a meeting of the National Executive Committee of the Zionist Organization where the World Jewish Congress will be discussed and a decision made on whether or not the Zionist Organization is to participate in the elections.

“With Mr. Lipsky occupying the position he does in the Zionist Organization and the certainty that he wields large influence on the decisions of any of its bodies, his endeavor to place his opinions before the public in advance of the meeting seems dubious, the more to in the light of his position with the American Jewish Congress and his relationshop to the World Jewish Congress project as a member of that body. Mr. Lipsky is a vice president and a member of the Administrative Committee of the America Jewish Congress. The same views presented in his public statement were advanced by him at a meeting of the AdministrativeCommittee of the Jewish Congress on December 14th, where they were voted down by a large majority.

“In view of the foregoing and in view of his known leanings to ward party discipline, his tacties in this connection will be difficult for him to explain satisfactorily.

WHAT HE WANTS

“On the surface apparently he admits he is not opposed to the World Jewish Congress and recognizes its necessity in Jewish life. What he wants, according to his statement, is postponement for better preparation. He presumes that the 1932 World Jewish Conference in Geneva was not sufficiently representative and requests that ‘another representative World Conference he called to take up the matter of a World Jewish Congress.’ We should like to bring to his attention that the call to the World Jewish Congress issued by the Geneva Conference of 1932 was reiterated by a second Conference in 1933, which allowed sufficient time for the idea to penetrate the minds of all those who are able to conceive of the importance of a World Jewish Congress. It may be true that the idea has not yet penefrated the consciousness of the great Jewish masses, and equally is it true that it has not broken down the barriers against the project erected by those elements who, as a matter of course, are opposed to any national Jewish idea of such great {SPAN}#mensions{/SPAN}”Mr. Lipsky has been identified {SPAN}#th{/SPAN} Jewish life and its leadership{SPAN}#g{/SPAN} engough to know that only after years of existence of the World Jewish Congress will those elements who cannot yield their complex of the domination of Jewish life be ready to submit to the rule of a Jewish democracy. Well versed as he is in the history of Zionism, surely he knows the parallel in the Zionist movement itself. He knows how many years were to elapse from the days of Theodore Herzi with his fights against ‘protest Rabbinar’ until the creation of the Jewish Agency by Dr. Weizmann.

SURELY MR. LIPSKY RECALLS

“Yet the idea of Zionism was easier understood by these opposition elements than the idea of a democratic world Jewish body empowered to handle the problem of millions of East European Jews-Jews whom these dominant wealthy elements regard merely as objects of philanthropy or at the most as ‘poor co-religionists of the East.’ Diplomatic negotiations and ‘preparing the ground’ will hardly succeed in themselves in bringing these gentlemen into the fold where the American Jewish Congress is concerned. Surely Mr. Lipsky recalls the negotiations which preceded the convening of the first American Jewish Congress, the overwhelming interest of the American Jewish community in the first American Jewish Congress created the tide that swept these gentlemen along with it.

“We recognize that the financial control of Jewish social work and Jewish national endeavor is still vested in a measure with those elements who are fearful of any representative gathering which monstrates Jewish unity. Theodore Herzl faced a similar situation. He, too, tried first to win to the support of his idea the Jewish ‘barons.’ titled and untitled. The support of the ‘barons’ however did not come until the people themselves, through the Zionist movement, created such substantial national values in Palestine that it was impossible to ignore their reality.

BARONS HARD TO WIN

“With regard to the World Jewish Congress, no one is naive enough to believe that the ‘barons’ will be won over immediately. The great masses of the Jewish people will be the bulwark and the instrument for the creation of this new stronghold of national will. Only the streangth of the stronghold will compel the ‘barons’ to yield to some form of national discipline.

“Thus we are concerned with the attitude of the large masses of the Jewish people. And the masses of the people will have to be educated to support the idea of the World Jewish Congress in the same fashion that they were won over to Zionism. Here too, Mr. Lipsky could well draw a parallel from Zionist history. It was not a great popular movement which created the Zionist Congress. The Zionist Congress, through successive stages and during a period of yeras, created a great popular Zionist movement. The World Jewish Congress will have to be created first. The position which it will win for itself in Jewish life can come only through its existence and the character of its functioning. If mass support is to be won over to the World Jewish Congress idea, does Mr. Lipsky seek greater catastrophes than those of the year 1933 to arouse the people to the need of fashioning their own destiny.

HISTORY MAKES US

“Mr. Lipsky knows that for the most part it is not we who make history but history which makes us. We are only now beginning to learn to use historic events not of our making to mold our national destiny and to prevent future calamities. That is what we are trying to do now. The Jewish masses may not have been ready to answer the call to the World Jewish Congress issued by the Conference of 1932. But the calamities of 1933 have created a willingness to act which it would be culpable to lose by default-through the indefinite postponement of the convening of the World Jewish Congress.

“We earnestly endeavor to believe that what Mr. Lipsky means is only ‘temporary’ postponement. But familiarity with parliamentary procedure leads us to believe that postponement is an ingenious way of consigning the idea to permanent internament. We are losthe to believe that a man of Mr. Lip sky’s stature in Jewish life has succumbed to these partiamentary tacties. So we are to postpone it for a year, or two, or three-until such a time as Mr. Lipsky or his reorganized World Jewish Conference see fit to convene the COngress. We reject this suggestion. We regard it culpable to postpone the effort to impress the great masses of our people with the necessity for action-in order to allow for more deliberations, negotiations and careful preparations. The combating of Nazi propadanda in our own country. the organization of Jewish life here cannot be real and effective unless it is central to the idea of world-wide national organism seeking to protect the existence and the future of the Jewish people throughout the world. Surely Mr. Lipsky does not need any enlightenment on the tremendous educational value of World Jewish Congress propaganda for organization in this country.

ONE OF PRIMARY FUNCTIONS

“Equally culpable is it not to recognize the great spiritual and psychological value of the World Jewish COngress for the Jews of other lands, particularly in Eastern and Central Europe to protect whose interests will be one of the primany functions of the World Jewish Congress at its initiation. Irrespective of what the first session of the World Jewish Congress accomplishes in terms of actural reconstruction; in the finding of new lands of immigration, in the restoration of the civie and the human rights of the Jews-the mere fact of the existence of a central tribuce of a united Jewish people is certain to make life more bearable for the millions of those who await rehabilitation. Delving back into Jewish history, we discover ho much our people have endured solely because of their feeling of cohesiveness and mutual responsibility.

“Were the World Jeish Congress to accomplish nothing else but the creation of a semblance of unity and the implanting of this recognition in the hearts of millions of our brethren in Eastern an Central Europe, it would have lasting historical value.”