The 25th. anniversary of the Oxford University Zionist Society was celebrated last night at a dinner at the Randolph Hotel in Oxford. Some of the original founders of the Society and many former members were present, and speeches were delivered by Dr. Brodetsky, Viscount Erleigh, Mr. Harry Sacher, and Mr. Leonard Stein.
Mr. Leonard Stein traced the early history of the Society, describing the difficult conditions in which, and in spite of which, the Society was formed. In 1907, he said, Zionism was not a very popular movement. It has a hard struggle in the face of continual opposition from the communal leaders of Anglo-Jewry. Palestine itself was remote from them, not an existing reality as it is today. Mr. Stein referred to the two visits that Dr. Weizmann paid the Society in those prewar years. He also spoke of the Society breaking up on the outbreak of war to be reconstructed in 1922.
Mr. Stein concluded by emphasising the necessity of a thorough mutual understanding between the Jewish and the British people, saying that there in lay the future hope of Zionism.
Viscount Erleigh said that he had first become interested in Zionism when he saw the Jewish work in progress in Palestine – and that was at the worst possible time, in 1929, after the August massacres. The manual labour of the pioneers on the Holy. soil, as contrasted with the industrial regions whence they sprang, must make the pulse of every Jewish visitor beat faster. The road from Oxford to the Hebrew University on Mount Scopus was some 2,000 miles, but the path from the Wailing Wall to Mount Scopus was 2,000 years.
The path is uphill, Viscount Erleigh went on, and just before reaching the crest there is a British war cemetery. Jews must not forget, he said, that it is the mandate and the Ealfour Declaration which have made possible the Jewish resettlement of Palestine. We are entitled, he concluded, to demand security of person and property from great Britain as the Mandatory Power.
Professor Brodetsky referred to the important part that Oxford men, like Mr. Sacher and Mr. Stein, had played in the Zionist movement, the one in Palestine, and the other in control of the political work in England. As a result of the remarkable achievements in Palestine since the war, the Yishub was becoming less and less dependent on the Diaspora.
Palestine today, Dr. Brodetsky said, is one of the soundest countries in the world economically, and an optimistic spirit prevails throughout its length and breadth. In spite of disappointments and setbacks, and though the British may have made their mistakes, we must not forget, Dr. Brodetsky concluded, that we have in the British a people not merely friendly to the Jews, but a people possessed of a sense of fair-play, and an understanding of the peculiar position of the Jewish people.
Mr. Harry Sacher appealed to the younger generation to keep a sense of proportion, and to appreciate the full value of Jewish postwar achievements in Palestine, and their potential influence upon the world in general.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
