French Jewish Leaders Hope to Develop Community Life Along American Lines Says Meiss

French Jewish leaders have been greatly impressed by the cultural development of American Jewry, and hope to revitalize French Jewish life along similar lines, Leon Meiss, president of the Jewish Consistory of France and of the Representative Council of the Jews of France, said today on the eve of his return to France.

Mr. Meiss, who headed the four-man delegation which arrived here last month to confer with American Jewish leaders, said that although the Jewish population of France has been greatly reduced, Judaism is not dead in France, but is on the verge of a new development.

The president of the Representative Council believes that the Jews of France, the first to be liberated, can show the way toward unity of all Jewish groups, everywhere. “Our program,” he said, “is comprehensive of the Zionist aims. The program of the Representative Council of the Jews of France calls for the rehabilitation and reintegration of the Jews in France, with all rights. It also calls for the abrogation of all restrictive measures concerning the immigration of Jews into Palestine, including the White Paper. But we do not see Palestine as the immediate solution of the entire Jewish question.

Mr. Meiss pointed out that there was always a cleavage in France, between the Jews who considered themselves French, and the immigrants, or foreign Jews. But the Nazis put all in common jails and in common graves, and under this common persecution, they learned to fight together. In the Representative Council of the Jews of France, he said, they recognize that there is a level upon which different problems are to be faced by the two groups, but they recognize also that the most urgent problems of the Jewish people are common to all Jews, and that on this level all Jews must act in unity.