Rabbi Israel I. Mattuck, spiritual head of the Liberal Synagogue in London, today took issue with the Jewish Agency on the question of the American Council for Judaism, declaring that “the Jewish Agency underestimates the importance of this Council.”
In a letter published in the London Times, Rabbi Mattuck replies to the statement published by Mr. Linton, political secretary of the Jewish Agency, who rebuked the Washington correspondent of the Times for citing the differences of opinion between the American Council for Judaism and the American Jewish Conference as proof that there is no agreement among the Jews in the United States with regard to the post-war status of Palestine.
“Though the American Council for Judaism is very young, it has already progressed considerably,” Rabbi Mattuck writes in the Times. “It is the first organization ever established in the United States to oppose political Zionism on the ground of religion and on the basis of Jewish unity.”
Referring to the resolution on Palestine adopted at the American Jewish Conference, Rabbi Mattuck points out that many delegates at the Conference abstained from voting for this resolution. “Many of those who did vote for it were not moved by political aims but by the desire to help Jews suffering under the Nazis,” he writes, adding that “non-Zionists too are eager to do their utmost to use Palestine as a place of refuge for the persecuted Jews in Nazi Europe.”
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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.
