The 56th four-day national convention of the Religious Zionists of America opened here tonight at the Promenade Hotel with an address by Dr. Nahum Goldmann, president of the World Zionist Organization, in which the world Zionist leader stressed that “a strong Zionist movement in the United States is more necessary than over to consolidate the rallying of the Jewish people around Israel which is sure to be confronted with weighty political, economic and cultural problems during a decade.
“The Zionist movement will be required to stand more and more in the frontline of the struggle against the erosive and blighting dangers of assimilation and disintegration which constitute the gravest menace to Jewish survival in our period,” the Zionist leader said. “The slogan of the last Zionist Congress ‘with the face to the Diaspora’ will demand the adoption of new ideas and methods to awaken a deeper sense of Jewish ness in our youth and to create positive values and motivations for every Jew. Anti-Semitism and persecution are weak foundations on which to predicate a dynamic Jewish renaissance in our generation.”
Dr. Goldmann further held that “the Zionist movement will have to crusade for the fundamental concept of Zionism which is based on the principle of the unity of the Jewish people despite its dispersion and the centrality of Israel as the cynosure of collective Jewish life and creativeness.”
Rabbi Mordecai Kirshblum, member of the executive of the Jewish Agency for Israel and former president of the Religious Zionists of America, also addressed the opening session of the convention. Having Just returned from the semi-annual meeting of the Jewish Agency executive in Israel, he spoke about “the great and growing sense of democracy which impressively came to the forefront in the recent elections in Israel. The recent elections have proven conclusively that the Israeli populace has matured considerably in its political thinking and in its evaluation of the issues. They can neither be enticed into or incited against certain camps or patterns of thought,” he declared.
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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.
