Dr. Nahum Goldmann, president of the World Jewish Congress, said Tuesday night that it was not incompatible for Jews to live in Communist nations, as this has been accomplished in Rumania and Hungary. The point was one of four made by Dr. Goldmann to the plenary session of the WJC’s American Section, according to a WJC spokesman.
Dr. Goldmann also made the following three points: “Third world” countries should be helped to understand the nature of diaspora Jewry and its relation to Israel: critics of diaspora Jews’ “dual loyalty” should be told that limiting a man’s loyalty to his state and ignoring his cultural, religious and ideological loyalties was akin to Nazism; and Jewish youth should be taught Jewish values in contemporary terms.
On the question of Jews living under Communism. Dr. Goldmann told his listeners that there were more than three million such Jews in Eastern Europe today, and that more Communist countries were emerging. It would be a tragedy, he said, if Jews could not be able to continue living there. In many “third world” countries, he continued, there are no Jews at all, and this fact raises a challenge to world Jewry to inform those countries–an important bloc in the United Nations and other international assemblies–of international nature of Judaism.
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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.
