Rabbi Israel Miller, president of the American Zionist Federation, asserted tonight that while the trend of alienation from Judaism among the Jewish student body on the campuses of the country is now under-going a process of reversal, a bold and dramatic program of communication is needed if the vast numbers of these students are not to remain vulnerable to enticement into new brands of paganism and cults.
The Zionist leader, who recently returned from the 28th World Zionist Congress in Jerusalem, attributed the reversal of the alienation trend to the growing disenchantment among Jewish students with the spurious anti-Israel and anti-Semitic propaganda of many sections of the New Left and the attempt to keep alive the fading Vietnam issue by equating it with American support of Israel.
In a keynote address before 200 Zionist leaders at the opening session of the semi-annual meeting of the National Board of AZF, Rabbi Miller stressed the priority of a more than superficial Jewish education. He disclosed that surveys presented to the Zionist Congress indicated that the Jewish people has lost more adherents through assimilation than through all the wars of this century and the Nazi holocaust combined. It is estimated that but for assimilation the Jewish people today could have numbered from 140 to 150 million people instead of its present total of 13 million.
Rabbi Miller decried the anti-Israel prejudice manifested in many circles of the Protestant clergy and in Church publications which, he said, have succumbed to anti-Israel propaganda and “leftist-oriented” clergymen who are inclined to regard Zionism as “narrow tribalism” or racist chauvinism, and see Israel as a militaristic and expansionist state.
He referred to a report presented to a meeting of the National Council of Churches held in Charlotte, N.C. in mid-February. While he voiced gratification with their opposition to the internationalization of Jerusalem, he termed as misguided and insensitive to Israel a proposal in the same report calling for increased participation of the Palestinian Arabs in the planning and decision-making of the future of the city.
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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.
