Digest of Public Opinion on Jewish Matters

[The purpose of the Digest is informative: Preference is given to papers not generally accessible to our readers. Quotation does not indicate approval.–Editor.]

The conviction that the reconstruction of Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem will be made possible at the appropriate moment by permission from the League of Nations and that even the ancient sacrificial rites will be revived. is entertained by the “Jewish Morning Journal.” In an editorial of Sunday the paper comments on the report that the Mandates Commission tabled the petition presented by a group of orthodox Jews of Jerusalem that the League intervene with the Palestine government to allot a strip of land on Mount Moriah for the reconstruction of Solomon’s Temple.

“So far as the legal claim to a part or the whole of Mount Moriah is concerned,” the editorial declares, “one does not have to be an orthodox Jew to support it. One may be an uncompromising opponent of sacrifices and of the Temple, or even an enemy of religion, and nevertheless perceive that we have as much right to that sacred hill as to any other part of Palestine. Today the attitude of the Arabs, the Mohammedan world, is suspicious against us, but we hope for a day when this attitude will be changed. Today the Christians do not dare to demand the return of the church of the holy Sophia of Constantinople which the Mohammedans converted into a mosque. But the situation will change for them and for us.”

“IF I WERE A JEW”

Under this caption a Christian clergyman, the Rev. Henry Alford Porter, records his opinion of the Jews, in an article which appeared in the “Christian Index” and is reprinted by the “Scribe” of Portland, Oregon. In the course of his article, Rev. Porter denounces Henry Ford’s anti-Jewish propaganda. He writes:

“If I were a Jew, I should feel that I have a right to be proud of the part played by my people in the drama of history. It is asked: To what nation or race is humanity most indebted? Who has played the leading role of the centuries? For answer, all eyes must turn toward the Jew.

“If I were a Jew I should want my fellow citizens to appreciate my higher personal qualities and essential spirit. The Jew has his faults, but they have been widely and grossly magnified by one of our eminent American business men, who ought to have been in much better business, and should have stuck to his job of making steel ‘lizzies.’ Henry Ford is a great and useful man, but his denunciation of the Jews in the ‘Dearborn Independent’ was a disgrace to our country. He forgot that race prejudice is wholly un-American. Some of his charges were ridiculous and some were simply calumnies. In so far as they were based upon the Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion, they were based upon a rank forgery.”