Speaking at the opening exercises of the sixtieth year of the Hebrew Union College, Dr. Julian Morgenstern, president of the college, said that “today more than ever before in the world’s history, the world has become aggressively conscious of the Jew.”
Speaking on the Jewish problem, Dr. Morgenstern said that while the Jew’s problem has always been to find out what to do with himself, the world’s Jewish problem has been how to rid itself of the Jew. Three methods have been employed for this purpose, namely: assimilation, isolation, and destruction or expulsion.
A fourth method of dealing with the Jewish problem, the educator stated, was to ignore the Jew, to refuse to regard him as a problem, to let him be himself, undisturbed. This system, Dr. Morgenstern pointed out, always worked admirably when tried. It has succeeded, he said, in Holland for four hundred years, in Italy for almost as long, in England for almost a hundred years and in America for about the same time.
MORE CONSCIOUS OF JEWRY
World conditions, Dr. Morgenstern held, has made the world more conscious of Jewry than ever before and likewise “probably never before in all its long history has the Jew been so deeply conscious of himself and so eager for a solution of the problem which he presents to himself and the world.”
The Jews’ own solution of its problem is defined by the Hebrew Union College president in the following words:
“Israel is a religious people whose distinction is its consciousness of God, and of its intimate relation to Him. The maintenance of this consciousness, this conviction and this consecration is our task and duty and our solution of the Jewish problem.”
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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.
