For a Jew to be guilty of prejudice and discrimination is doubly shameful because he himself is a member of an oppressed race, Rabbi Israel Goldstein of Congregation B’nai Jeshurun, 257 West Eighty-eighth street, asserted in his sermon yesterday morning.
“A sympathetic interest in the plight of other oppressed minorities would broaden the intellectual and spiritual horizon of the Jew,” Dr. Goldstein said. “The Jew should feel a spiritual kinship with every oppressed minority, be he the Armenian in Turkey, the Negro in America or the Catholic in Mexico.”
Dr. Goldstein pointed out that Jews have been among the leading champions of the rights of other peoples who have encountered harsh treatment, naming Edward Lasker, Julius Rosenwald and Albert Einstein as “outstanding examples of how the Jewish heart pulsates with sympathy for the denied and underprivileged.”
On the other hand, the speaker continued, there are among the Jews “those who grow egocentric in the envisagement of their problem and who turn a deaf ear to the plight of others.”
“There are also those who indulge themselves in orgies of self-pity and even derive a pathological satisfaction from contemplating themselves as the special martyrs of humanity.”
By taking a sympathetic interest in the plight of other oppressed minorities, Dr. Goldstein declared, Jews can learn to bear their burdens with greater dignity and equanimity.
DR. NEWMAN CONSIDERS MEANING OF SAAR VOTE
Return of the Saar to Germany must not be interpreted as a vindication of Hitler’s policies, Rabbi Louis I. Newman told the congregation at Temple Rodeph Sholom, 7 West Eighty-third street.
“It was fated that the German population of the region should vote at the earliest opportunity to cast in their lot with the mother country,” Dr. Newman said.
“Hitler may seem to have
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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.
