Discuss Jewish Religious Life at London Conference

(Jewish Telegraphic Agency Mail Service)

Comparison between conditions prevailing in the Rabbinate of America and that of Great Britain was made by Dr. Joseph H. Hertz. Chief Rabbi of the British Empire at the Conference of Anglo-Jewish preachers which took place here.

No religious body can long persist that does not honor its interpreters, the Chief Rabbi said in his opening address. “It rests with the preachers themselves how soon present conditions shall pass away. Let Jewish preachers as a body learn to preach living Jewish sermons that shed the light of aternal truth on temporal affairs, and are ethical aids in the conscious evolution of a higher and more Jewish Jewry, and they will once more attain to spiritual power.

“An unsparing critic of the American Rabbinate recently declared that a section of its ‘Rabbis’ profess Judaism, preach Christianity and practice neither. I will say nothing of the truth or otherwise of this indictment; but may Heaven forfend that such words be ever said of Anglo-Jewish preachers. They will profess and preach Judaism because they love its origunal theory of life and religion, and because they rejoice in their full Jewish heritage. They will preach and practice Judaism; and will seek the cooperation of all who assert and establish loyalty to the Torah and its historical exposition: who further the observance of the Sabbath and the Dictary Laws; who foster Jewish religious life in the home, as expressed in traditional observances; and who encourage the establishment of Jewish religious schools, in the curricula of which the study of the Hebrew language and literature are given a prominent place, both as the key to the true understanding of Judaism, and as a bond bolding together the scattered communities of Israel throughout the world. It requires courage to expound and defend Traditional Judaism in Anglo-Jewry today.” Dr. Hertz declared.

In the course of a survey of the religious conditions of the House of Israel, the Chief Rabbi dwelt on the ageny of Judaism in Soviet Russia. “While there is no persecution of the Jews. as witness the settlement by the Government of 130,000 souls on the land as agriculturists, there continues a dire persecution of Judaism in Russia. While there is little interference with the practice of Judaism. Jewish religious education is still proscribed. Religious instruction is therefore given clandestinely, underground or in lofts and at midnight, as in the days of the Inquistion.

“A Conference of 110 Jewish religious communities in Soviet Russia is to be held in October,” he continued. “but questioned relating to Chedorim. printing of Hebrew and religious literature have been ordered to be excluded from the deliberations of the Conference. Spiritually Russian Jewry is sinking; with no help forthcoming from the Jewries outside Russia. No protest or appeal of an ecclesiastic against this persecution would be of any use, otherwise I should not have been silent. For over a year I tried to rouse Western Jewish lay leaders to their duty. In vain. They give you a thousand reasons for doing nothing. One objects that to complain to the highest Soviet rulers against the wicked persecution of the Jewish commissars would be denouncing fellow-Jews.’ Well. I do not look upon these gentry as my fellow-Jews.

“The one heartening circumstance in this tragedy is the fact that the Faithful Remnant in Russia is uncowed,” Dr. Hertz stated.

NO RACIAL PREJUDICE IN REFUSING SITE FOR SALOMON STATUE

The view that no racial prejudice entered into the decision of the New York Art Commission in declining to give the site at Madison Square Park in New York City for the Haym Salomon monument, sponsored by the Federation of Polish Jews, is taken by the New York “World.”

Writing in its Saturday morning issue, the New York “World” states:

“It is much easier to overdo the erection of statues than to get tasteless or historically unjustifiable monuments torn down. This fact helps us to look with sympathetic eye upon the refusal of the Municipal Art Commission to sanction a statue to Haym Salomon in Madison Square. Its reasons are reported to be, first, that the evidence as to Haym Salomon’s Revolutionary services is obscure and in part conflicting; second, that, even accepting this evidence, historians doubt whether he is entitled to so prominent a position as in Madison Square alongside Farragut and Seward; and third, that no authentice likeness of Salomon exists. These reasons have such evident force that it is impertinent to talk of “race prejudice” as playing a part in the matter.

“Haym Salomon, a wealthy Jewish broker of New York, had a knowledge of international exchange that was valuable to Congress in its financial negotiations with France and Holland. He lent money privately to save such patriots as James Madison from going in emergencies to usurers. His advances to the Government were liberal and left him at the close of the war with a drawerful of loan-office certificates, Treasury certificates and Continental bills. virtually worthless. to represent payments in hard specie. While for part of his services he received a commission, on the whole his losses were heavy. But so were those of tens of thousands of other Americans who subscribed to loans and exchanged specie or goods for Continental paper. And there were thousands more who gave both money and life for the Republic.

“While such New Yorkers of Revolutionary fame as Clinton, the war Governor; Schuyler, the real victor at Saratoga, and Gouveneur Morris, the signer and diplomat, are without statues in this city; while not one of the four New Yorkers who have been President has a statue-it is surely no injustice to ask Salomon’s admirers to make out a clearer case before he is enshrined for generations to come in Madison Square.”