Expressing the conviction the America will never go Fascis Rabbi Barnett R. Brickner of the Euclid Avenue Temple in Cleverland declared that the country # head for a new social order # an address at the Congregation Redeph Sholom yesterday morning.
Dr. Brickner, an infiuential religious leader, sociologist, and labomediator, pointed out that there are two human tendencies, to build and to destroy. He said Fascian# in Germany is “the youth of the country misled and morally brutalized trying to rebuild the social order.”
The speaker prophesied that democratic means will be used in this country to attain an econmic utopia.
“In democratic countries we do not find a tendency to go from one extreme to another. There is an attempt to steer a middle course between Communism and Fascism. This is the philosophy of President Roosevelt’s New Deal.
‘The alarmists who say that America is going Fascist and point to dictatorships in Europe to prove their point, fail to notice that every country that has a dictatorship now was accustomed to baving liberty denied its people. In Russia–and I have been in Russia–the people regard the Bolshevisi dictatorship as liberty compared with Tzarism.
“In countries which have tasted liberty, Fascism is impossible. This accounts for the French general strike of a few weeks ago which was really warning that they would never tolerate Fascism. So is it with the United States and England.
” Fascism is always the last ditch in the fight of capitalism to maintain, itself. In the United States, capitalism is going to change rapidly in the next few years, but the changes will be made by American democratic methods.
” We will have a redistribution of wealth and government control of industry, but not government ownership. Government of by and for the corporate interests must cease.
“We need a new deal within ourselves. We must get religion”
In the afternoon, Rabbi Brichner addressed the Metropilitan Hebrew Teachers’ Conference on ” Jewish Ceremonies and Customs.”
Dr. Louis I.Newman, rabbi of Temple Rodeph Sholom, presided during the morning sessin and Jacob B. Pollak, regional rabbi of the Greater New York Committee of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, at the Afternoon conference.
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.
