“No minority is so interested in the principles of cultural pluralism as the Jewish people, ” Dr. Nahum Goldmann, world Jewish leader, declared here today in a lecture delivered at Brandeis University.
Speaking on “Cultural Pluralism and Jewish Survival, ” Dr. Goldmann said that “as long as Jews will live dispersed all over the world–and certainly our generation will not see a fundamental change in this respect–our survival depends on the right and facilities to live our own life although fully integrated as equal citizens in the life of the countries where we live.
“Real emancipation is not achieved, ” he said, “by only gaining equality of rights as citizens but by possessing the right as equal citizens to live our own Jewish life. In our case this depends on a close cultural and spiritual tie-up with Israel as the great new creative center of the Jewish people.
“Our people lives in two spheres as a majority in its own land in Israel and as a minority with full equality of rights in all other countries. Both spheres have the right to exist and can develop creative values but they are not equal in their opportunities and creativeness. Otherwise a Jewish State would have been unnecessary.
“The fight for cultural pluralism against the tendency of modern states to interfere in everything including the cultural sphere and, in this way, to standardize human life which is a great danger of our civilization, is just as important for other minorities, religious, cultural and national as for us Jews, ” Dr. Goldmann stressed. “The Jewish people has to be leading in this fight just as we have helped other minorities in having been the great protagonists in leading the fight for equal human rights for everybody. “
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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.
