Complexity of Current Issues Leaving Jews with Sense of Unease

The executive head of the American Jewish Committee said here today that the increasing complexity of many current issues was leaving many Jews with a sense of unease.

Bertram H. Gold, executive vice-president of the AJ Committee, in remarks prepared for tomorrow’s discussion on Jewish security at the organization’s 67th annual meeting at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, pointed out that issues such as increased trade with the Soviet Union and the restricted emigration of Jews from that country, the mounting energy crisis, and the profusion of group conflicts in the U.S. all presented new problems to the Jewish community. What may occur, he suggested, is that unpopular side effects of these questions may be used to foment anti-Jewish reactions.

Gold suggested that Jews in America have received a high degree of acceptance and that “overt anti-Semitism has become unfashionable.” Furthermore, he noted, “classical anti-Semitism and organized bigotry as represented by those groups and movements whose essential purpose is to spread hatred of Jews is not an important factor in America today. These groups continue to atrophy. Diminished in numbers, shrinking in membership, barren of program, they have no significant impact on the American scene today.”

BEYOND A CONCEPT OF SELF-INTEREST

However, he continued, “since the Six-Day War Third World advocates, doctrinaire Marxist-Leninists, Black Pan-Africanists, and the amorphous amalgam known as the New Left, violently anti-American and passionately anti-Zionist, have maintained a steady and furious drumbeat of harsh anti-Israel propaganda. By accident or design, and the intent is really immaterial, theirs is the anti-Semitism of today.”

The loss of support for Israel’s cause that has become evident in some parts of the world has also made Jews uneasy, Gold continued. To strengthen Jewish self-confidence in view of these actual or potential dangers, he stated, there must be a “new search for self-definition and identity, and an attempt to enhance the quality of Jewish life.”

Jews must seek, he asserted, new ways of finding self-fulfillment, new and stronger cultural infrastructures, more adequate Jewish communal responses to Jewish needs, and new ways of relating to the non-Jewish community. But Jews must go beyond a concept of self-interest, Gold insisted. “The Jewish stance must end with the realization that Jewish interests are best served in a world which is stable and whole and which holds at least the potential of achieving equality for all.”