Tribute to Dr. Chaim Weizmann, as a statesman, scientist and leader of the World Zionist movement was paid here last night at the dinner tendered in his honor at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, attended by more than 2,000 prominent Jews and non-Jews. Dr. Abba Hillel Silver and Dorothy Thompson were the principal speakers.
The first page of a “Weizmann Golden Book,” to be collected at the Jewish National Fund in Jerusalem in honor of the World Zionist leader, was presented to Dr. Weizmann by Dr. Israel Goldstein, president of the Jewish National Fund in America.
In an impressive address Dr. Abba Hillel Silver, national chairman of the United Palestine Appeal, reviewed Dr. Weizmann’s contribution to the Jewish cause, terming him “the prophet of Jewish restoration.” He emphasized the courage with which Dr. Weizmann has been fighting for Jewish rights in Palestine, his practical approach to the complicated problems concerning Jewish interests in Palestine, his statesmanship, his loyalty to England, his unswerving determination to have Palestine established as a Jewish National Homeland.
Dorothy Thompson, in her address, pointed out that Dr. Weizmann’s correct analysis in the last war was that only the British Empire could give a chance to Zionism.” “His correct analysis in this war,” she said, “is that only democracy and political freedom can give a chance to Zionism. So he forgives and forgets the nuisances and setbacks that the Palestine Jews have had in the last twenty years. Rome was not built in a day, and neither is a Jewish state. And, as a chemist know that there are processes that can only be achieved step by step, one process after the other, so a good politician knows that history is a logical process taken step by step.”
ASSIMILATION, NATIONHOOD, OR A COMBINATION OF THE TWO MUST SOLVE JEWISH PROBLEM
“The whole world today consists of nations and assimilationists,” Miss Thompson continued. “Every country has assimilated vast numbers of individuals from other nations, and yet the nations have remained. From an American viewpoint, it is a good idea to have an asylum, and more than an asylum, a homeland for the Jews in this world. But it is not the whole thing: it does not suggest that we want to send all Jews to Palestine, any more than we wish to send all Europeans back to Europe – for if we did we would have nothing left by Americans.”
Pointing out that the Jews did not acquire Palestine by conquest, by expropriation of the soil of others, but by purchase and political agreement, Miss Thompson said: “The political agreement rose out of an attempt to make good some of the wrongs that had been inflicted and to reward benefits that had accured from the last war. And as this was the situation in the last war, it is much greater in this one for the evils inflicted on the Jews and the benefits received from them to the democratic world are both incomparably greater. So Dr. Weizmann is in a happy position For the unrolling of the Jewish question on a gigantic scale demands a logical solution to it. That solution must be either extermination, assimilation, or nation hood – or a combination of the last two.”
Dr. Stephen S. Wise was the toastmaster at the dinner. The speakers also included Judge Louis E. Levinthal, president of the Zionist Organization of America. Jan Masaryk, Foreign Minister of the Czechoslovakian Government-in-Exile, and Sir Ronald Campbell, British Minister to Washington.
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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.
