Council for Judaism Official Says U.S. Jews Must Choose Between Faith and Nationality

Emphasizing the concern of the American Council for Judaism with Jewish nationalism in the United States, executive director Elmer Berger declared that the choice facing all Jews in this country, now that the Jews of Israel have elected a national status for themselves, is between being Americans of the Jewish faith or Americans of Jewish nationality.

“Living by our philosophy,” said Berger, “we have all of the concern for the people who are Jews in Israel that we have for people who are Jews in England, France, the Near East or anywhere else. But they are humanitarian sentiments based on religion. They are not national sentiments.” In a special article in the current issue of the official publication of the Council, Berger contends that the Zionist answer to the problem of the relationship of Jews outside of Israel to the new state is that Zionists will continue to look upon American Jews as “Americans of Jewish nationality.”

“Jews outside of Israel who do not wish their national integration in the countries which are their homelands disturbed by a continuance of the anomaly of a ‘Jewish’ nationalism fostered by Zionism,” he added, “must aggressively reject the contention that the proclamation of Israel has invested all Jews with a ‘Jewish’ nationality, in either a first, second or third degree of national attachments. We are not the heirs of the political fight being waged by Zionist-nationalists nor its allies, simply by virtue of being Jews,” Berger says.