The Zionist Actions Committee opened its current session here today with an address by Dr. Nzhum Goldmann, president of the World Zionist Organization, in which he warned against the danger of assimilation.
Asserting that disintegration was today more serious and difficult than when the Zionist movement emerged, Dr. Goldmann said that the time had come for the Zionist movement to shift from exclusive work for Israel to the fight for securing the survival of the Jewish people the world over. Israel, he noted, was strong enough to allow the Zionist movement such a shift of priorities “without naturally giving up work for Israel in the fields of immigration, absorption and settlement.”
The realization of this task of “saving the Diaspora and tying it up with Israel, ” he declared, is dependent upon the full and meaningful cooperation with Israel which ought to regard the Zionist movement as the main chosen instrument. Fortunately, he said, Israel is strong enough to devote its attention to the future of the Jewish people outside Israel, while in Israel people have begun to realize the importance of a partnership with the Diaspora.
Another condition, Dr. Goldmann said, is the revival of the spirit of the Zionist movement, especially in the United States where it must begin to lose its “inferiority complex,” widen the narrow limits of its activities, become a pioneer in the fight to reorganize Jewish communities in representative bodies, and manifest flexibility in relationships with organizations outside the World Zionist Organization by opening the way for their cooperation.
Dwelling on the danger of assimilation, Dr. Goldmann stressed the tendencies of Jewish isolationism. There are great communities, including the American Jewish community, he declared, where a majority are far from accepting the principle of united international Jewish action and this lack of organized Jewish action, within both an international and national framework is a permanent source of weakness for effective organizational efforts. Moreover, he added, the American Jewish community remains far from any representative body able to speak on its behalf.
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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.
