Clarence L. Coleman Jr., of Chicago, was elected today national president of the American Council for Judaism, succeeding Lessing J. Rosenwald who retired after a 12-year tenure in office. The election took place at the 11th annual conference of the anti-Zionist organization, which concluded its four-day session here today.
Responding to his selection by the 400 Council members who attended the conference. Mr. Coleman said: “There can be no better insurance that a future generation of American Jews will reject the principles of ‘Jewish’ nationalism at the political level than to provide them with a Judaism that is welded to the American scene rather than to Israel and Zionism; a Judaism that encourages future leadership to believe it is made up of individuals, not members of a corporate ‘Jewish community.’
“There is no surer way to avoid dragging our faith into foreign policy debates than to create an American Judaism which is the personal, spiritual expression of people who know that Judaism is a religion and not an instrumentality for the welfare of a foreign state,” the new president stressed in his acceptance speech.
Discussing the problem of philanthropy in American Jewish life. Mr. Coleman said that Dr. Nahum Goldmann, “an executive officer of the Jewish Agency, which receives the bulk of United Jewish Appeal’s contributions, is today the master strategist in waging Israel’s diplomatic offensive against our own country’s Middle East foreign policy.” He referred to a statement by former Assistant Secretary of State Henry A. Byroade that the States Government has no objections to ” ‘proper philanthropic support.’ “
“The distinction between ‘proper’ philanthropy and any other kind is therefore no longer a matter of mere divergent opinions among American Jews over ideologies,” Mr. Coleman declared. “It is no mere quibble. It is imbedded in the realities of American foreign policy.”
Mr. Rosenwald, in his address at today’s session, said that the Council’s principles “have attained a new and unprecedentedly high level of acceptance,” and that “the turning point probably came with the change in the national Administration in 1953.”
“Almost the first official act of the new Secretary of State was the formulation of a new and realistic policy treating with affairs that concerned the Middle East,” Mr. Rosenwald declared. “From that time on there has been a slow but sure progress in dealing with the problems of that area. We have been blessed with wise and courageous officials of our government who have withstood the tremendous pressures applied to them to return to ‘the good old days’ and the ‘favored nation’ approach.”
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.
