Anti-zionist Group of Reform Rabbis Opens Two-day Session in Atlantic City

More than sixty Reform rabbis from various parts of the country, constituting, a minority group in the Central Conference of American Rabbis who oppose Zionism and the creation of a separate Jewish Army, opened a two-day session in the Chelsea Hotel here today to discuss a number of problems including the question of “whether the creation of a Jewish State in Palestine is consonant with the universal messages of Moses and the Prophets.”

Dr. Louis Wolsey of Philadelphia, presiding at the meeting, in his opening address declared that “what we shall do here is subject to the considered opinion of those who have voluntarily and convincingly assembled here.” He then explained that the conference will state “whether or not the Zionist speaker is right when he claims, even before the governments of the world, that he represents the opinion of our four million Jews, and whether or not the Zionist movement means to absorb the totality of Jewish life.”

“Here we shall have to say,” Dr. Wolsey continued, “whether, as some have asserted, Zionism is equivalent to the Jewish religion; whether return to God means a return to nationalism; whether or not our salvation is in our religion or in a Jewish soil; whether retreat to nationalistic ghetto is a surrender of the great universal message of the Jewish prophet and sage; whether we shall yield our sacred Jewish tradition to a movement which is completely and deliberately non-religious; in a word, whether we should consent to the destruction of our faith.”

Dr. David Philipson of Cincinnati read a paper on “The Message of Reform Judaism to American Israel” in which he traced the history of Reform Judaism contracting it as a religion with Zionism which, he said is a purely political endeavor. Rabbi Abraham Shusterman of Baltimore spoke on the same subject.