against a “hysterical cry for united action,” and indicated “the tendency which is already apparent among certain types of Jewish leaders to exploit this for their own purposes.”
The Hitler boycott was termed an unreliable weapon in defeating anti-Semitism in a paper of Dr. Solomon Grayzel, instructor of Jewish History at the Gratz College of Philadelphia. Read in his absence, the paper stated that “the boycott as an organized and purposeful weapon with which to bring an enemy to the Jews to his knees is, to say the least, not a reliable weapon. It certainly offers no means for a permanent solution to the problem of recurrent anti-Jewishness,” he said. “An individual and unorganized boycott is human and understandable; an organized one smacks of the uncivilized. Moreover, no minority can afford to resort to force. Even if this boycott against Nazi Germany, aided as it is by a great variety of other economic forces, succeeds, I doubt that we will ever again be in a position to use the boycott as a weapon.”
The solution of the problem, he said, is for the Jews to direct their efforts against “the evils which beset human life, and against the chains which trammel it.”
Speaking in the same spirit, Dr. Israel Goldstein of New York City declared that “only by a re-adjustment of our economic order can race conflicts be solved,” adding that “perhaps they can never be solved entirely but they can certainly be reduced to the irreducible minimum.”
The Rabbinical Assembly of the Jewish Theological Seminary in convention here today was told that there is less unemployment among conservative rabbis today than there was in 1929. The present status of the conservative rabbis was discussed in reports presented by Rabbis Louis Schwefel, of New Rochelle, N. Y., and Rabbi A. M. Heller, of Brooklyn, N. Y.
In the executive session of the convention, there was considerable discussion on this report. Another report given in executive session was that of the committee on Jewish law prepared by Dr. Julius Greenstone of Philadelphia, and read by Dr. Louis Finkelstein of the Jewish Theological Seminary.
Support for the National Jewish Education Talmud Torah Association which provides training for poor children coming to Colorado in quest of their health was urged by Rabbi C. E. Hillel Kauvar, of Denver. Rabbi Louis Hammer, of Brooklyn, told of plans made for a circulating library among rabbis.
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.
