Deputy Prime Minister Yigal Allon of Israel told the triennial national convention of B’nai B’rith here tonight that Israel rejected pressures to abandon direct peace negotiations and declared that no intermediate arrangements short of real peace were acceptable. The former Israeli general said that American and international commitments received in 1949 and again after the Suez war in 1957, proved to be “valueless notes of false promises.” He asked. “Can we be expected to agree to the repetition of the same performance for a third time.?” He asserted that “only a formal and full-fledged peace treaty is acceptable.”
Gen. Allon said that a prime condition for peace was the strengthening of Israel militarily to deter aggression and that Israel urgently required U.S. supersonic military jets. He denounced new manifestations of Soviet anti-Semitism in which “Zionists” have been blamed for democratic strivings in Czechoslovakia and Poland. He asked, “if the Zionist influence on the internal policies of the Communist countries has reached such heights, perhaps these governments will free themselves of such influences by giving every Jew who so desires the right of emigrating to Israel.”
Dean Marver H. Bernstein of the Woodrow Wilson School of International Affairs at Princeton University, charged in an address before the convention that the United States was still seeking a more extensive “detente” with the Soviet Union “and cannot, therefore, become exercised about the Soviet penetration of the region” of the Middle East. He said that despite the stalemate on the peace front, Israel is more secure than ever. He cited the security provided by the results of the Six-Day War and said “a new status quo has begun to materialize.”
SAYS OVER-STRESS ON ORGANIZATIONS DETERS YOUTH FROM ROLE IN JEWISH LIFE
An over-emphasis by the Jewish community on “organizational activities and apparatus” is discouraging many young Jews from taking part in Jewish life. Dr. Harold Weisberg, of Brandeis University, chairman of B’nai B’rith’s Adult Jewish Education Commission reported to the convention. He and other educators and scholars told panel sessions that those active in campus protests and other anti-Establishment movements are seeking to apply Jewish ethics to current social concerns. But they reject the attention given by Jewish communal institutions, including synagogues, centers and organizations, to structure of the community rather than to ethical and religious distinctiveness in
Judaism. Religion is done under auspices of the synagogue, anti-Semitism is combatted by community relations groups, recreation is conducted by centers and country clubs, Dr. Weisberg said. As a result, Jewish youth is exposed to a Jewish community “fragmentary in character and without a continuity of organic relationships.”
Rabbi Jay Kaufman, executive vice-president of B’nai B’rith, said the Jewish college generation is rebelling “against its role as the first generation of a technological society in which men have become tools of their own tools.” Dr. Robert Gordis of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and Label A. Katz, former B’nai B’rith president, both assailed what they termed the “superficial character of Jewish education.”
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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.
