Plans for designating the 70 American delegates to the World Jewish Congress in Geneva next August were announced by Louis Lipsky, vice-president of the American Jewish Congress, at a press conference. He emphasized that the congress would not be a Jewish parliament but a meeting of Jewish communities.
A national electoral conference will be held in Washington June 13 and 14 at which fifty of the delegates will be elected and instructed. The other twenty, it is tentatively planned, will be chosen by national Jewish organizations. About 1,000 delegates to the Washington conference will be elected by local communities before May 31.
In announcing the plans, Mr. Lipsky made public an appeal addressed to the Jews of America calling upon them to support the congress “to renew and strengthen the international representation of the Jewish people for the defense of their rights.”
The appeal stressed the necessity “for the Jewish people with dignity, vigor and determination to present their demands for the recognition of their inalienable rights, their claim for justice and equality, to the enlightened public opinion of the world.”
The tentative program of the congress, as set forth in the appeal, follows:
1) Establishment of an “executive body representative of the organized Jewries of the world for the defense of the political and economic rights of the Jews.”
2) Establishment of “an economic institute to gather the facts with regard to the economic life of the Jewish people and to cooperate in the reconstruction of the economic life of the Jews in any country in which their existence is threatened through discrimination and inequality.”
3) Creation of “an institute for the regulation and coordination of all Jewish immigration agencies.”
Discussing the congress, Mr. Lipsky said it will be convened in emergency session the first or second week of August and will have a total of 300 delegates. He declared that there was now less opposition to the congress than over before, adding that he thought emphasis on the congress as a meeting of Jewish communities rather than a Jewish parliament would satisfy objections raised here. Mr. Lipsky returned from Paris recently where he attended the meeting of the executive for the congress.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.
