The editors reserve the right to excerpt all letters exceeding 250 words in length. All letters must bear the name and address of the writer, although not necessarily for publication.
To the Editor, Jewish Daily Bulletin:
I am in such thorough accord with the observations made by Rabbi Lazaron, in his article on “Time for Decision,” that I hasten to add my small voice of approval and commendation. But it is more because the article presents the dispassionate view of a great mass of intelligent and yet ardent Jews in this country that I feel that all who are in agreement with this view are duty bound at the present moment to become articulate. The silence of a great mass of Jewry has too often indiscriminately been ascribed to callous indifference. Not a few of those who have remained silent have done so because of a sense of futility in Jewish life due to misguided leadership and a confused, chaotic anarchy where the American Jewish community has a right to expect, in this crisis, what Rabbi Lazaron has described as “concert of action” and discipline for the common welfare of Jewry.
Through the initiative of the Synagogue Council a recent conference of representatives of the various synagogue groups in American ### to consider how they could exert their influence to bring about this “concert of action.” In a resolution, they have made their grave concern manifest to all three organizations, who composed the Joint Council, of whom the well known adage of indestructibility of the threefold cord did not prove to be true, since the strands, from the beginning, were never well bound together.
No conscientious Jew will deny the good that has been accomplished by these organizations. Their leaders err however if they fail to calculate how much disheartenment and lack of confidence in leadership has been produced by division in their midst when enemies threaten our very existence. The morale of a people will not be artificially resuscitated by means of membership campaigns and pseudo-democratic elections.
Whatever the methods which a united body will determine to prosecute, there are thousands of Jews like myself, who stand ready to fall behind leadership that is willing to display among themselves the morale they have a right to demand of every Jew.
Leon S. Lang
Newark, N. J.
October 23, 1934
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.
