An appeal to the Soviet Government to support the Zionist demand for the establishment of Palestine as a Jewish Commonwealth was made here last night by Dr. Stephan S. Wise in an address at a farewell dinner for Ilya Ehrenburg, Soviet Jewish writer, tendered by the Jewish Writers and Artists at the Hotel Plaza. Asking Mr. Ehrenburg to convey his words to Moscow, Rabbi Wise said:
“We American Jews are tremendously eager to have a heartening word from the Soviet Union with respect to an ancient and unfulfilled dream of the Jewish people. It stands at the dawn of fulfillment. Dare we not hope that great dream of the Jewish people, about to enter into the arena of nationhood, may find help and furtherance from the Soviet Union? Russia ought to look with sympathy, understanding and friendliness upon the need, the dream, the hope–almost the reality–of a Jewish National Home, which is to take the form of a free and democratic Jewish commonwealth of Palestine.
“We do not dream of asking that the Soviet Union shall take sides against the six Arab states, for the most part improvised–no one of them a passionate supporter of the associated nations, such as were the Jews of Palestine. We feel that we have the right to ask of the Soviet Union that, within the amity of the United Nations and within the comity of its own ideas, it shall help the most deeply wronged, the most tragic victims of the second World War, to build, and create a national home that shall be home to its own people, that shall do justice to every population of Palestine while fashioning the Jewish State in the spirit and after the ideals of the Jewish people.”
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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.
