Rabbi Urges Conference of World Jewish Leaders to Combat Anti-zionism, Anti-semitism

Rabbi Bernard L. Berzon, leader of Congregation Ahavah Israel in Brooklyn, N.Y. and president of the Rabbinical Council of America, called yesterday for a conference of world Jewish leaders to combat “one of the greatest dangers in the history of the Jewish people” –anti-Semitism cloaked behind the rhetoric of anti-Zionism and anti-Israelism. Addressing the midwinter conference of the Assembly, the country’s largest Orthodox rabbinical group, Rabbi Berzon charged that world Jewry was underestimating the threat of this new form of anti-Semitism, which he attributed to the Soviet Union and “the so-called Left.” While their approach is different from the “classic anti-Semitism” practiced earlier by reactionary and nationalistic forces, he noted, the “Jew-hater and Jew-baiter of old” is still at its source.