Goldmann Stresses Need for Israeli-world Jewry Partnership

The future of Israel and the destiny of the Jewish people depend on a mutual partnership, Dr. Nahum Goldmann, world Zionist leader, told delegates last night to the International Jewish Ideological Conference taking place here at the Hebrew University.

Stressing that Israel was a great mutual undertaking of the Jewish people, Dr. Goldmann said that the unique and unprecedented problems emerging from the new and revolutionary chapter in Jewish history marked by the advent of the Jewish State could be solved only by such a partnership.

He asserted that culturally, too, Israel must depend on the non- Israeli Jewish world, if it was to ward off the danger of provincialism and become a world center of thought and spiritual values. He cited the “anonymous and automatic assimilation” going on in the “free world,” and said that the loss of six million Jews murdered by the Nazis and the destruction of Jewish centers and intellectual fortresses could not be replaced by any other Jewry, including American Jewry.

Both Israel and the non-Israeli Jewish world must readjust their attitudes to create a mutual relationship without which, he said, “there is a dim future for Israel and none for the Jewish people. ” He said Jews outside of Israel must overcome the “bogey” of dual loyalty and must realize it was fully justified for them to take responsibility for Israel’s welfare, and to have the courage to reject the notion that loyalty to the nation in which one resides is exclusive.

Branding the theory of the exclusivity of the state as an immoral concept which was gradually being eclipsed, he said that the time had come for Jews everywhere to openly proclaim their identity with Israel. The modern human being, he said, has many loyalties of which he is proud and Jews must not be hyper-sensitive on this point, while Israel similarly must avoid over glorification and remember that its history does not begin with establishment of the state but goes far back into the past.

Israelis, he said, must consider themselves the heirs of thousands of years of history. They cannot select Isaiahs and Maccabees and discard those parts of Jewish history they do not relish, he asserted, warning that such a course would lead to Levantinism and end in frustration and collective neurosis. He was warmly applauded for his concluding statement that only as bearers of the same responsibility and as fulfillers of the same destiny would Israel and non-Israeli Jewry achieve the vision of one people re-building its center and securing its survival everywhere.