A message from President Truman to the sixth annual conference of the American Council of Judaism was made public here today by Lessing J. Rosenwald, president of the organization, on the eve of the opening of the three-day parley. The gathering will open tomorrow at the Hotel Gibson with approximately 200 delegates attending.
“The faith upon which the Council is founded and to which it has adhered under complex circumstances of the modern world, is an inspiration to all of us who believe in the brotherhood of man,” President Truman said. “This faith embodies principles which find an accord in the minds and hearts of all of us who are devoted to the extension of democratic practices and beliofs.” The President further expressed the hope that the Council’s program of education would achieve the “objectives of increasing the national, civil, cultural and social integration of Americans of Jewish faith.”
Rabbi Elmer Berger, executive director of the Council, in a report to be delivered by him at the opening session of the convention, points out that “the Council has been responsible for alerting American Jews to the dangers of the Zionist effort to train American Jewish youth for resettlement in Israel.” He also attacks non-Zionist organizations for “increasingly using the mask of so-called pluralism to foster a separatist national culture for Jews.”
Referring to the fight the Council wages against political Zionism, the report emphasizes: “We said that if Zionism won its political campaign in Palestine, it would affect the relations between American Jews and between American Jews and Americans of other faiths. It has. Those 5,000,000 Americans of Jewish faith are now the bulls-eye at which ‘Jewish’ nationalism is aiming.”
(In New York the Council today issued a statement replying to charges levelled at the organization by Benjamin G. Browdy, president of the Zionist Organization of America. The statement points out that the Council does not oppose the state of Israel. “We oppose only the exploitation of Israel by the Zionist movement,” the statement says. “Zionists make it appear that all Jews, everywhere, are part of a fictitious word-wide ‘Jewish nation.’ We categorically affirm that Judaism is our religion. Our nationality is American.”)
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