Claims Jewish Congress Impractical; British and American Jews Disapprove, According to the Writer’s

In a revent editorial in the Jewish Daily Bulletin, the editor expressed a wish for a discussion, pro and con, of the proposed Jewish World Congress. Such discussion is certainly timely and necessary in order to crystallize public opinion on the subject before the Jewish people willynilly are definitely committed to a project frought with so much danger.

We hear from many sources that the Jewish people are not organized. Is it not rather a fact that we are too much organized? We have a superabundance of organizations of every sort and covering almost every human activity. We have too many seminaries, too many orphan asylums, too many welfare organizations, too many bodies supposedly working for the upbuilding of Palestine and too many groups promoting an anti-German boycott. These multifarious organizations, many of them working on paraliel lines, overlap one another and frequently come in conflict.

And now it is proposed to create a super-body, which would not only speak for all these organizations but also for those Jews who have not organized themselves into groups, and this super-body is to be clothed with authority of represent the Jews of the entire world.

JEWS REFUSE CONGRESS CALL

Whence does the call for such an organization come? Certainly not from the Jews of the United States, for one can attend the meetings of any number of organizations, societies and groups and not hear the project mentioned. The persistent propaganda that has been conducted by one group for such a congress for the past two years has evidently fallen on deaf ears. If there is a desire for such a congress on the part of the European Jewry, this desire is certainly not reflected in their press. It may be safely asserted that if a plebiscite were to be held on the question of holding a World Jewish Congress, not 10% of the Jews of the world would participate in this plebiscite.Moreover, the leading Jews of the United States and Great Britain have openly expressed their disapproval of the project and it can be freely asserted that, notwith-standing the denunciation which the advocate of a world congress recently sought to heap upon the heads of these leaders (presumably this was done in the interests of Unity in Israel), these men are still looked to by the Jewish masses for leadership and counsel and their opposition is based upon well-grounded information and inferences. But assuming that this world Jewish Congress were called into being, could it speak for World Jewry?

EUROPEAN JEWRY FEARS ACTION

Could German, Polish, Rumanian or Austrian delegates to the World Jewish Congress speak out in denunciation of their governments’ policies toward the Jews? And if they did, what would happen to the Jews of those countries?

Of course, the Congress could and would adopt an avalanche of resolutions on every conceivable phase of Jewish life, but Jewish organizations and mass meetings of recent years have given birth to so many resolutions that it is almost impossible to follow their trend and their effectiveness is open to grave doubt. There would, of course, he a flood of oratory which would tell us nothing that we have not heard before and would be designed principally to attract the notice of newspaper correspondents.

So long as the Jewish people are part and parcel of the nationalities among which they dwell, there is no common ground on which they can meet for the purpose of solving the problems of Jews in different countries. These problems must be solved by the Jewish citizens of their respective countries and while Jews from other countries may furnish material and moral help, whenever possible, to convoke at this time a body which would attempt to speak for the Jews of the world, but which in reality would represent only an insignificant faction of the Jewish people, would bring upon us ridicule and contempt, and furnish our enemies with additional weapons.