A resolution calling on the United States Government to seek cancellation of a World Bank loan to the United Arab Republic for improvement of the Suez Canal was adopted today at the closing session of the 50th Jubilee convention of the Religious Zionists of America, Mizrachi-Hapoel Hamizrachi. The resolution warned that continuation of Egyptian “piracy” against Israeli shipping constituted danger to peace in the Middle East and it demanded “drastic action” by the United Nations to “terminate these illegal seizures and searches.”
Other resolutions adopted by the convention appealed to the West German Government for severe measures to stamp out all traces of Nazism and deplored injection of any religious considerations into the 1960 presidential campaign here.
Rabbi Bernard Bergman of New York was elected president of the organization; Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, of Boston, honorary president, and Dr. Samuel Sar, of New York, chairman of the board.
Moshe Shapiro, Israel Minister of the Interior, told the parley that “one of the paramount problems” in Israel today “is to maintain the co-existence between the religious and non-religious parties.” He added that Israel’s Mizrachi parties “have always exerted their maximum efforts to effectuate a modus vivendi with the opposition parties in Israel.”
Mr. Shapiro told the 800 delegates at the convention here that “Israel is facing three dilemmas in the next decade–economic consolidation, absorption of immigrants from every corner of the world and security from the depredations, threats and boycotts of its Arab neighbors.”
To solve these problems, he added, “it is vitally important that all ideological and political groupings in Israel find a common denominator to subordinate their differences in a Joint platform of unity, cooperation and loyalty for the welfare of the state of Israel.”
The convention was told that there are now in the United States 260 Jewish day schools on the elementary and college levels, with an enrollment of 48,000 students and a teaching body of 2,500. The total annual budget of these schools was given as $35,000,000. A “grave shortage” of Jewish school buildings was reported and the convention was informed that “at the present time, over 15,000 prospective students are being denied an opportunity for Jewish day school instruction because of insufficient facilities.”
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.
