Jacob Fishman, managing editor of the “Jewish Morning Journal,” takes issue with Dr. Lion Feutchwanger in his column on the latter’s views on Palestine and Judaism, as expressed in an address delivered on Tuesday at a reception arranged by the American Friends of the Hebrew University.
Mr. Fishman refers to Dr. Feuchtwanger’s statement that he envisions Jerusalem as the spiritual center of the world and objects to the latter’s making the Hebrew University the centrifugal point of this center.
Mr. Fishman also derided Dr. Feuchtwanger’s view that the Jews have nothing in common except their mentality.
Dr. Feuchtwanger’s address was disappointing, writes Mr. Fishman. Feuchtwanger, he says, places all emphasis upon the Hebrew University and brushes aside all else in Palestine. “It is remarkable that this novelist of rich fantasy sees nothing or pretends to see nothing of the great epoch, of the great drama now being created in Palestine, known as the rebuilding of ‘Alt-Neue-land.'”
Non Jewish writers, Mr. Fishman continues, cannot sate themselves with descriptions of what is transpiring in Palestine but Feuchtwanger, the novelist of historic themes, remains indifferent, and spurns the rebuilding work in Palestine in its national and practical aspects.
There is no such thing as a “common mentality” in the Diaspora, with its pogroms and discrimination, Mr. Fishman holds. The only Jewish “mentality” of any value, is that which carries with it a national character, he says, the mentality which seeks to provide for the Jews a place in the sun: to make the Jews a nation among nations.
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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.
