Individual Zionist Groups No Longer Needed, Rabbi Miller Says

Individual Zionist parties outside Israel have “outlived their purpose,” Rabbi Irving Miller, president of the Zionist Organization of Israel, today told a meeting of World Jewish Congress leaders. Rabbi Miller arrived here yesterday from a two-week visit to Israel where he conferred on American and world Zionist problems with Premier David Ben Gurion.

Commenting on his talks with the Premier, Rabbi Miller said that he had noted a significant change in the Premier’s attitude: that Mr. Ben Gurion no longer denied the fact that Jewish communities abroad would survive and that he no longer stated that Jews could not be Zionists unless they came to Israel to live. The Z. O. A. president reported that the Premier had questioned him for four hours on all phases of American Jewish life, and that “concrete help to Israel” was only mentioned in passing.

The major portion of his talks with the Premier were concerned with strengthening Zionism throughout the world, which it was agreed, Rabbi Miller said, would have to be based on the following points; acceptance of the spiritual content of Judaism; the unity of the Jewish people; and, the centrality of Israel in the entire scheme of Jewish existence. Rabbi Miller criticized the tendency of Israelis to isolate themselves from world Jewry, and stressed Mr. Ben Gurion’s concern with the content of Judaism abroad.