Jews have a special stake in the struggle against Fascism, James Waterman Wise, editor of Opinion, declared yesterday at Temple B’nai Jeshurun, 270 West Eighty-ninth street.
The reasons for the situation, he explained, are that Fascism “will inevitably victimize and scapegoatize all minority races and religions” and that “the Jewish people recoils from and revolts against everything that Fascism connotes.”
TRIUMPH OF REACTION
“Fascism,” the speaker said, “is the triumph of reaction, and where reaction triumphs, there the Jew is defeated. Alike for the preservation of our liberties as Americans and our ideals as Jews, let us fight this thing.”
Decrying efforts to silence Jewish opposition to the menace by raising of “the specter of radicalism,” Dr. Wise added:
“Let us make it known to both our friends and our foes that we can neither be bribed nor blackmailed into abandoning our struggle against Fascist tyranny and for social and economic, and hence human, emancipation.”
RABBI LANDMAN’S SERMON
Rabbi Isaac Landman, in his sermon yesterday at Congregation Beth Elohim, Eighth avenue and Garfield place, Brooklyn, drew a parallel between the religious crisis that confronted the world when Jewish and Greek civilization clashed more than two millenia ago and the religious situation confronting people today.
“What the Greek Antiochus attempted to achieve was a totalitarian state, much like the modern Nazi political ideal. He sought to coordinate all the elements in his empire, to regiment the various peoples under one pattern, into which he hoped to weave himself as a demigod.”
Rabbi Landman said it would surprise Hitler and his henchmen to learn that what they are seeking to achieve in Germany has already been tried and failed.
WILL AID JEWS’ CAUSE
“In the field of faith, when Greek meets Jew it is the Jew whose cause the thinking, believing world will espouse.”
This assurance was given by Rabbi William F. Rosenblum in his sermon at Temple Israel, Broadway and Ninety-first street.
“Deeper than the attempt to drive Jews out of the professions and out of business,” he added, “is the campaign to drive Christianity, which is a development and an interpretation of the religion of the Jews, out of the souls of the German people.”
HITS AT GERMANY
Rabbi Joseph Zeitlin, preaching at Temple Ansche Chesed, assailed Nazi Germany as a country which in the past “contributed greatly” to civilization but which, “because of its ignorance and bigotry” has gone back to abysmal degeneracy.
“Its perverted conduct at the present time has caused much of the good that it effected in the past to become forgotten memories,” he asserted.
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.
