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 recent article in the London “Spectator” by Rabbi Mattuck of the Liberal Synagogue, “Liberal Judaism and the Modern State”, charging that Zionists and Orthodox Jews who pray for a return of their people to Palestine, are inconsistent and cannot possess a full measure of loyalty to the State, is denounced by the “Jewish Daily News,” orthodox paper of New York.

“The charge of Dr. Mattuck reflects not only on the English Jews but also on the Jews in all other countries,” the paper states. “It is a charge against the Jews everywhere who have not forgotten the oath they swore never to forget Jerusalem. The Jews of America and Germany and France and of every other country are placed under the suspicion that their citizenship is not complete, that their devotion is not a whole-hearted one and that they do not fulfill their patriotic duties to their States. Moreover, the whole Jewish history of the last 2,000 years is put under the shadow of the charge that wherever the Jews have been they have not shown faithfulness to their countries because they have never forgotten the Holy Land. It also casts a blot on the future generations of the Jewish people.” The editorial alludes to the fact that Rabbi Mattuck is not a British Jew, but “originates from Far Rockaway, N. Y.” and adds:

“The British Jews who utter the Zion prayer are very good Englishmen in the eyes of Lord Balfour, Loyd George, His Majesty the King and the Ministers. Only in the eyes of the Far Rockaway assistant of Claude Montefiore they are not good enough Englishmen.”

OFFICIAL GOVERNMENT REPORT ON ROUMANIAN EXCESSES BLAMES JEWS

The official report issued in Bucharest regarding the anti-Jewish excesses in Roumania seeks to throw the blame for those excesses on the Jews, and to create the impression that the Jewish population had arranged pogroms on the Christians. “Der Stral,” Jewish organ of Czernowitz, in its issue of Dec. 24, comments on this government report, which was published in “Universul”and other official Roumanian papers, as follows:

“Reading this report the impression is given that the Jewish population in Kishineff and Kalaras had arranged pogroms against the Christian students. Everywhere the Jews acted provokingly. In Kishineff, was are told, the Jewish butchers came out into the streets with knives, hatchets, etc., to attack the students who had come with the most peaceful intentions. In Kalaras, the report says, members of the Jewish Culture League hurled stones at the train. . .

“In the first police-report of the Kishineff outrages,” the “Stral” continues, “it was stated that on the demand of Jews military detachments were called out in order to protect the Jewish population. But this trifle has evidently been forgotten for in the present official report we are told that the military detachments were called out to defend the students who were attacked by the Jews!

“That is how the Roumanian government itself incites to new excesses against the Jews,” the paper writes.