Dr. Samuel Schulman Sees Agency As Most Promising Instrument for Jewish Unity

The most promising instrument for the expression of Jewish unity is today the Jewish Agency for Palestine, according to Dr. Samuel Schulman, rabbi of Temple Emanu-el, in a statement to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency yesterday.

Dr. Schulman has recently returned from Europe where he attended the meeting of the Administrative Committee of the Jewish Agency held in London.

This meeting, he said, showed the possibility of co-operation between the Zionists and non-Zionists in the Agency. It also was brought out in the general discussion that the Agency should be strengthened, he stated.

Dr. Schulman expressed the viewpoint that while at present the Jewish Agency “is an instrumentality for promoting the upbuilding of Jewish Palestine, irrespective of opinion on the fundamental principles which divide Zionists from non-Zionists, it can also become the clearing house of thought for many other Jewish problems and can quietly and effectively bring about a real union of the active efficient forces in Jewish life.”

Dr. Schulman scored the conference in Geneva, which he termed “A last gasp in Jewish nationalism, as it is passing away,” and asserted that it played into the hands of the Hitlerites.

He praised the Zionists’ departure from the rule of voting en bloc at the meeting of the Agency Administrative Committee.

Of the meeting, he said, that “it was a very important one. It marked a stage in the growth of the Agency. It was made perfectly clear at that meeting that the non-Zionists would refuse to vote on the budget, or on any important question, if the Zionist members of the Agency are, as a group, bound beforehand, by the resolution of the Actions Committee of the Zionist organization to vote one way.

“As I myself made clear in the course of the discussion, any discussion of the merits of the budget, or of anything else, would be useless if the Zionists, as a bloc, were committed to vote in one way and in no other. We non-Zionists succeeded in bringing about the release of the Zionists from such instructions, and the principle was thus affirmed, which will be of great use for the future, that questions must be discussed on their merits, and opportunities opened for individuals to be convinced, irrespective of bloc affiliations. In the end some non-Zionists voted for the budget as brought in by the majority of the Committee on Budget.”

Discussing the conference in Geneva where the convening of a world Jewish congress in the summer of 1934 was approved, Rabbi Schulman stated: “The conference called at Geneva was most unfortunate for the Jews of the world.

“As a matter of fact, no active practical leaders were present. The most influential men in America, in England, in Germany refused to attend this conference. The conference, I would call a last gasp of Jewish Nationalism as it is passing away.

“For thirty years or more,” he said, “there has been talk of the Jews as a nation. As a matter of fact, the Jews today are not a nation in any accepted sense of the word. They therefore cannot be organized politically with a world Jewish Parliament. And the sooner such ideas, wrong in theory and disastrous in consequences, are swept away, the better for the Jewish people. The Jews in Western lands, are nationals of the countries in which they dwell. They belong to no other nation.”

“The Jews in every Western country today can speak for themselves. Wherever anti-Semitism exists, it is a local problem,” he asserted.

“The conference,” he charged, “played into the hands of the Hitlerites and enabled them to say that Jews were interfering with internal affairs of Germany. As a matter of fact, the Jews in Germany are conducting themselves magnificently and in the end, anti-Semitism will be triumphed over in Germany by what is best in German thought.”

He stated his belief that the position of the Jews will also be improved with the improvement of the general economic condition in the world. “The salvation of Israel will not come from sophomoric political speeches, or from sensational self-advertising noise. It will come from the moral and spiritual education of the world Jewish and non-Jewish, a slow but steady process.”

Rabbi Schulman severely attacked the American Jewish Congress which called the Geneva conference, “as being conceived in sin and born in iniquity. It is itself the result of a broken pledge as every one in this country knows.

“When in 1917,” he said, “those who opposed the Congress united with those who favored an American Jewish Congress in order to present a united front in Paris, after the war, one of the conditions for such union was that the Congress be a temporary institution and that it go out of existence immediately after the report from Paris is brought back, after the Treaty of Versailles was accomplished.

“The present American Jewish Congress was deliberately organized as a violation of the spirit and letter of the agreement made. Thus born in evil, it is continuing to produce evil. To call together Jews from all over the world in a so-called Congress, without any purpose would prove the great misfortune for our people,” Dr. Schulman holds.

“It is very significant,” he said, “that the President of the Jewish Agency, who is at the same time the president of the Zionist Organization, did not attend the conference at Geneva. We need no new organizations,” he asserted. “We cannot afford to spend money on amateur Jewish politics. Let us unite practically for work helpful to the Jew, wherever our help is needed,” Dr. Schulman concluded.

While abroad, Dr. Schulman visited Germany, Switzerland, England and France.

He expressed regret that he was unable to attend the meeting of the World Union for Progressive Judaism in The Hague and in Amsterdam, where he was to deliver an address, because the meeting conflicted with the meeting of the Agency Administrative Committee.