Dr. Nahum Goldmann, president of the World Zionist Organization, today warned Jewish youth throughout the world “not to submit to conformism” and urged the younger generation to “safeguard the uniqueness and separateness of Jewry.”
Addressing some 400 delegates from 39 countries attending the second World Conference of Jewish youth, Dr. Goldmann said that many of the Jewish youth were abandoning Judaism in search of greater challenges in foreign fields. He said they could be attracted to challenges “on the home front” by a change of values and revification of Jewish life. He warned that the Diaspora community which failed to maintain contact with Israel could not continue to exist.
Rabbi Emanuel Rackman, of Far Rockaway, N.Y., assistant to the president of Yeshiva University and former president of the Rabbinical Council of America, told the delegates that the conference was being held during a crisis period for the Jewish people and its heritage, when “acculturation and assimilation are decimating the ranks and threatening the very survival of Diaspora communities.”
On the other hand, he asserted, “many Israeli intellectuals and cultural forces are contributing towards a creeping alienation between Jews of Israel nationality and non-Israeli Jews, whose Jewishness is rooted principally in some form of religious identification of community or social interest.”
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.
