The endorsement with the 241 Reform rabbis signed in favor of the Palestine Labor Movement will no doubt meet with a storm of protest on the part of many.
The Palestine Labor Party as a Socialist Party is anti-religious in spirit. Only recently one of its leaders demonstratively refused to take the oath in court on the Bible. The schools maintained by the Labor Party in Palestine are definitely atheistic. The children there are taught that religion is opium for the people.
How can rabbis endorse such a party? Is there a single rabbi in Palestine who would endorse this party? Are the Reform rabbis of America interested in preserving religion or do they want to play socialist by proxy? Do not the rabbis understand that if the viewpoint of the Histadruth should obtain throughout the entire Jewish world there would be no synagogues and rabbis?
The rabbis who signed the endorsement for the Socialist Labor Party of Palestine, if they are consistent, would have to join the Socialist Party of America. One cannot endorse Socialism in one country and refuse to endorse it in another. Or, do these rabbis think that the socialist ideas of the Histadruth in Palestine are different than the ones preached by Norman Thomas in America?
Any impartial Jew, who has visited Palestine recently, was unpleasantly struck by the class warfare now going on between the Histadruth and the other elements of the Yishuv. By endorsing class warfare in Palestine, which no Zionist would like to encourage. Do the rabbis believe that the ideas of social justice are a monopoly of the Histadruth? Did not the Bible thousands of years before Socialism came into existence give profound expression to the ideals of social justice?
Our American rabbis, by injecting themselves into the political struggle which is being waged between various parties in the Zionist Movement, are only acting against the interests of Palestine. To strengthen the group of General Zionists, to make it possible for them to maintain equilibrium between the various contending factions, is today the aim of many Zionists who wish unity within the Zionist Movement.
The ideal of social justice is the ideal of most of the General Zionists as well as the Laborites. To endorse the Laborites alone will result in a widening of the split in the Zionist Movement rather than in consolidating the Movement.
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.
