Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver of Cleveland last night urged Jews to launch an offensive against injustice and oppression, in emulation of the Maccabees of old. He addressed some 250 persons attending the 13th annual Chanukah dinner of the Metropolitan Conference of Temple Brotherhoods at the Hotel Commodore.
“The struggle of the Maccabees anticipated with amazing fidelity of detail the elemental struggle now raging in the world,” Dr. Silver said.”..”Israel was the only dissident, non-conforming people in the whole of antiquity. They refused to accept ‘Gleichshaltung.’ The Maccabees carried on what we would call today an underground movement. Israel has always had as its adversaries the greatest empires of the period, and Israel has survived. Israel has again been singled out for especial fury by pagan imperialism. We again accept the challenge. The victory in the most recent struggle between the sovereignty of the mind and spirit and the tyranny of political culture reinforced by dictatorship belong today, as in the days of old, to those who are not afraid to belong to a minority, to those who are ready to suffer for those things which alone make life worthy of suffering.”
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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.
