All American synagogue movements were urged today by a Religious Zionist leader to affiliate with the World Zionist Organization.
Rabbi Mordecai Kirshblum of New York, member of the Jewish Agency Executive, opening the 50th Jubilee convention of the Religious Zionists of America, Mizrachi Hapoel Hamizrachi, told the 800 delegates such affiliation would “revolutionize the structure of world Zionism so overwhelmingly that secular ideas will no longer determine the overall direction and path of Zionist-oriented policies.”
Rabbi Kirshblum also said that one of the principal purposes of the religious Zionist movement in the United States was to combat “the tendencies toward cultural assimilation among American Jews by the inculcation of an intensive program of Jewish education.”
He urged the delegates to act to increase the number of Jewish day schools, centers of Jewish learning and adult education for Jews throughout the United States. Without “the infusion of deep religious and traditional values.” he warned, Zionism “is an incomplete, watered-down and empty concept.”
Rabbi Isaac Stollman of Detroit, president, told the delegates that the outbreak of anti-Semitic incidents “constitutes such a grave menace to the texture of world freedom that emergency measures by the United Nations should be taken immediately to eradicate this vicious phenomenon.”
He added it was also “indispensable” that all agencies of Government in the United States, including the FBI. “proceed promptly to seek out and apprehend those mentally disordered and reactionary persons who are wreaking havoc with America’s great democratic heritage.”
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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.
