News of the establishment of a Japan Israeli Society as successor to the pre-war Judea Japan Society has been received by Rabbi Hugo Mantel of Temple Ashkenaz here. In a letter to Rabbi Mantel, former U.S. Army chaplain in the Yokohama area, Chaplain Meyer J. Goldman, stationed in Tokyo, wrote that its members plan to spread the knowledge of Jewish culture there.
“They are a group of educators, exporters and merchants, who became interested in Jewish matters and a committee of 15 of them called on me and asked me to help them,” he wrote. “They were active before the war, but then had to suspend their activities due to Nazi pressure. Now they want to continue with their work. They plan to spread the knowledge of Jewish culture by establishing libraries of Jewish information, and eventually they wish to establish cultural and economic relations with Isreal. Their founder was a Japanese consul to Poland before the war.”
Rabbi Mantel saw the printed constitution of the Judea Japan Society, its predecossor, which was founded in the early 1930’s. Its aims included aiding in the “realization of the Messianic era–the establishment of the state of Israel and universal peace.” All the members were native Japanese.
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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.
