First Meeting in New York for United Palestine Appeal Brings $581,000 Toward City’s $1,500,000 Quota

A total of $581,000 was announced at the mass meeting in Mecca Temple Sunday night, launching the Greater New York campaign of the $5,000,000 United Palestine Appeal, of which Dr. Stephen S. Wise is National Chairman. The Greater New York quota is $1,500,000. The speakers included Dr. Wise, who presided; Emanuel Neumann, general director of the campaign; Judge Julian W. Mack, Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver, of Cleveland; and Dr. Nahum Sokolow.

Benjamin Winter was installed as Chairman of the Greater New York campaign, at the mass meeting, and Max Blumberg, of Brooklyn, as treasurer.

A huge crowd gathered at the Mecca Temple to attend the inauguration of the New York campaign.

DR. WISE WARNS AGAINST FAILURE

“Unless we together respond to the United Palestine Appeal in such wise that the five million dollars will be secured, I warn you in all earnestness that, even though thousands and tens of thousands of our homeless fellow-Jews are clamoring for admittance to Palestine, only the fewest of them will be admitted unless we provide those economic facilities which will make it safe for them to be admitted to Palestine,” Dr. Wise declared in his address.

“Whether Jews from Eastern Europe and from other lands are to be admitted to the land of their desire depends upon whether the great Jewry of New York is prepared to meet its elementary obligations, the obligations which grow, on the one hand, out of brotherliness within the Jewish bond, again out of that decent, humane consideration which Jews ought to have for their fellow-Jews, and finally out of regard for the honor of our people and of concern for their security,” the national chairman stated.

JUDGE MACK WARMLY GREETED

Judge Julian W. Mack, who made his first appearance Sunday night since the Cleveland breach, was enthusiastically greeted by the audience.

“We have a constructive job. Don’t let us spend any time on negation or destruction,” Judge Mack stated. “We have no competition with any other cause. We are not rivaling any other cause. I personally am whole-heartedly in favor of the United Jewish drive for $15,000,000, and I hope that every Zionist will share in that absolutely essential effort of our people in Europe and also in Palestine, but we as Zionists have a distinctive task of our own. As Dr. Wise said. ‘Upon us rests the responsibility, the duty’–I will not say the ‘burden,’ because it must not be a burden. It must be looked upon by Zionists as a privilege, a joy, a blessing that they have this opportunity,” he declared.

“A real situation confronts us. Four years ago there was no such task as devolves upon the Organization today. The doors of Palestine must be kept open. The Jews are going there by the thousands every month. Whether they are to be kept open or not depends upon you and not upon anybody else in this whole world. If American Jewry and especially the Zionists in American Jewry, do not feel and respond to the obligation, do not furnish the means by which those Jews who come there will be enabled to live, by which Hadassah will be enabled to do her magnificent work for their physical wellbeing, by which the Zionist Organization will be able to do its work in colonization, and immigration, and education, by which the Jewish National Fund will be able to acquire the land absolutely essential for the agriculture of the Jewish people, by which the Hebrew University will be able to keep open its doors for those who are barred from the universities of Europe–I say, unless American Zionists give so that these things can be done, the thousands who want to go there, the thousands who represent us and who will be the saving remnant in Israel will be kept out and upon our heads will lie the responsibility to our children and our children’s children that in this day of days we saw the light and closed our eyes,” Judge Mack stated.

“The four motives of Jewish life; prophecy, legalism, mysticism and nationalism, which are Israel’s gifts to the world, were fashioned in Palestine,” Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver declared. “The Jew has not been unproductive in the last 2,000 years. He gave much to mankind in these many centuries, even as he received much, but somehow the stamp of great originality and heroic pioneering, one finds in those ideas which enamated from Palestine alone. And the wish to rediscover the ancient authentic voice and moods, the wish to regain the privilege of genuine creativity through the free and integrated life of the historically stimulating environment of Palestine, is the driving force of Zionism today. Men say this is impossible, that it is miracle-mongering. But our whole life has been one outstanding miracle. Our modern renaissance, no less than our incredible survival through the ages, is a miracle. The unbroken will to live triumphantly which manifests itself so gloriously in the fervor of enterprises, of Jewish settlements in Palestine today, is a miracle, the miracle of the ages, for what forces have not been employed to break that will.”

NAHUM SOKOLOW TERMS OCCASION FESTIVAL

Nahum Sokolow, President of the Executive of the World Zionist Organization, was greeted with an enthusiastic ovation when he rose to speak. Mr. Sokolow called the occasion not a mass meeting but a festival, the eve of a day out of which an entire world is to be born. The address of Judge Julian W. Mack, who had preceded him, he declared, was more than a speech. It was an act.

“I am heartily in favor of all local Jewish undertakings such as the building of synagogues, hospitals and other institutions. I hope also that the $15,000,000 campaign for relief will be successful. In the case of every such undertaking the question is always raised of what the consequences will be in case of success and in case of failure. This question applied to the Palestine enterprise reveals its preeminent importance. What if the Palestine enterprise succeeds? Then we have a renewed Jewish people in a restored Jewish land, providing safety to the Jewish wanderer and to the Jewish soul, shedding light and glory on Jews everywhere. What if the Palestine enterprise fails? It is a question which I shudder to ask, but do so only to carry out my thought. If Palestine fails, it means the shame and failure for Jewish hopes and the Jews the world over.”

Mr. Sokolow then spoke of his own observations in the lands of Eastern Europe, observations covering a period not of weeks but of decades. One fact, he declared, stands out in comparing those lands with Palestine. The lands of Eastern Europe, as far as Jewry is concerned, represent destruction. Palestine represents reconstruction. A crisis in Palestine, he said, does not really mean that conditions there have become critical; it means that conditions in Poland have reached that stage.

So far as America is concerned, Mr. Sokolow declared that he has repeatedly urged that the reconstruction of Palestine requires not only American capital, it requires just as much American intelligence and American idealism. European Zionists do not look upon America simply as the “rich uncle.” They regard America as a source of political as well as intellectual strength for the cause. Mr. Sokolow then eulogized the pioneer spirit which Palestine has evoked out of the modern Jew. He has found no such spirit to be in existence anywhere in the world with such a tremendous idealistic power and endurance.

Anti-Zionism, declared Mr. Sokolow, is dead. He has looked for anti-Zionists, but has not been able to find any. Perhaps they are in hiding, but he has not been able to find them. There is only the spirit of indifference which must be combatted and for this such things as drives and campaigns, terms borrowed from the language of militarism, are necessary. The money contribution is relatively unimportant. It is like the money-pledge made by the man who is called to the reading of the Torah. Not the pledge, but the Torah is important.

Emanuel Neumann introduced Dr. Wise as chairman, Mr. I. Ben-Zwi greeted the gathering in Hebrew on behalf of the Palestine workers.

Contributions thus far received in the Greater New York campaign as announced Sunday night, include: $100,000, I. D. Morrison Trust Fund; $50,000, Nathan Straus and Benjamin Winter; $25,000, Max Blumberg; $15,000, Herman Conheim; $10,000, Elias Gottfried, A. Bricken, and Anonymous; $6,000, S. Liebovitz & Sons, Morris Eiseman; $5,000, the late Albert Kruger; $5,000, Mr. and Mrs. N. Lindheim, Jacob Siegel, and Morris Weinberg.