A veteran Seattle minister, pastor of the city’s largest Swedish church, is unfolding the age-old story of the Jew in a series of six lectures-delivered in Swedish-to his congregation because he believes “every good Christian should fight against the menace of paganism, seeping into this country from Nazi Germany.”
He is the Rev. Dr. Emil Friborg, pastor of the First Swedish Church here for the past twenty-three years. Today he delivered his third lecture of the series on “The Character and Destiny of the Jew,” to 300 worshippers.
“So many of my congregation came to me with peculiar notions of the Jew, no doubt fostered by the forces which are now at work fomenting ill-feeling against the Jews in America,” Dr. Friborg explained, “and so many of my flock brought to me the spurious ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion,’ asking me if they were true, that I decided to give a sries of sermons to my people to attempt to clear up some of the evident misunderstanding about this historic race.”
In his first sermon, Dr. Friborg traced the history and origin of the Jewish race and ennumerated the contributions to civilization of the Jewish prophets and heroes of the Old Testament. He reviewed Jewish persecution in Spain and termed the modern persecution of the Jews in Germany “as pagan and anti-Christian.”
In last Sunday’s talk Dr. Friborg read an epic poem by Oscar Levirtine, Swedish patriot, on “The Wandering Jew.”
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.
