Goldmann Stresses Need for Creative Diaspora; Priority for Soviet Jews is Emigration to Israel

The recapture of our youthful Jewish intellectuals may well be “the number one problem of our Jewish generation,” according to Dr. Nahum Goldmann, president of the World Jewish Congress. Addressing the 72nd annual five-day convention of the Rabbinical Assembly, the organization of Conservative rabbis, Dr. Goldmann said this afternoon that Jews are living in “the most revolutionary period of their history” and that their leadership must refocus the strategy from day to day problems to more fundamental, basic questions of identification and survival.”

Our efforts,” he said, “must be primarily concentrated on developing new cultural, religious and social challenges, which will bring back to Jewish life the hundreds of thousands of Jewish intellectuals, and the idealistic part of our youth, which does not identify its idealistic longings and hopes with Jewish issues and values.” The two great threats to contemporary Jewish life, Dr. Goldmann warned, are “the danger to Jewish survival arising from the emancipation of the Jews in the Western world and their growing integration into the life and culture of the peoples among whom they live as equal citizens” and the threat to the full acceptance of the diaspora by all Jews as a necessity for Jewish life.

He said: “Our unique problem is, therefore, how to create a situation in which, without impinging on the equality of rights and the position of Jews as equal citizens of their countries, a permanent link between the Jewish diaspora and the State of Israel can be secured, not only based on emotional motivation but in an organized and solid form.”

Warning against “an extreme tendency in Israel to disregard the diaspora and to consider it only as a reservoir of material and political help and a source of aliya to Israel,” Dr. Goldmann said that “for Israel to attempt to dominate diaspora Jewry would antagonize major parts of the Jewish communities and would hinder the cultural and spiritual development of diaspora Jewry.” He further warned that the current attachment of diaspora Jewry to Israel “should not mislead us into the belief that it will forever stay like that.”

JEWISH RIGHTS IN COMMUNIST COUNTRIES

On the subject of Jewish life in the Soviet Union, Dr. Goldmann reiterated his position that “at the moment, priority should be given to the demand for ever increasing immigration to Israel.” But, rejecting the thesis that Jewish life is impossible in Communist regimes, Dr. Goldmann said that “statesmanlike policies–unlike demagogic ones–can never consider only one aspect of a problem and, in addition to demanding the right of every Jew to go to Israel or elsewhere, we must insist on the rights and facilities for the Jewish communities to maintain their Jewish identity and develop their Jewish life, both religiously and culturally.”

To give up hope that Jews in Communist countries can continue to remain Jewish “means to despair of the Jewish survival of hundreds of thousands, even millions of Jews, which would be a real crime,” Dr. Goldmann declared.

He paid tribute to the “excellent job in constructive cooperation that Israel has done with many of the nations of the Third World.” He said that it is the duty of Jewish leadership to see “that the governments of the Third World begin to understand the uniqueness of the Jewish problem and the justification of our demands, both with regard to Israel and the right of an autonomous Jewish life in the diaspora.”