Late Chajes Eulogized at Memorial Meeting

A memorial meeting in honor of the late Rabbi Zevi Perez Chajes, Chief Rabbi of Vienna, was held last night at the Free Synagogue House. Louis Lipsky, president of the Zionist Organization of America, presided. Professor S. Baron, Mrs. Rebekah Kohut, Rabbi Jacob Sonderling and Dr. Stephen S. Wise were the speakers.

“There are Chief Rabbis who are also Zionists and, absurdly enough, there are Chief Rabbis who are anti-Zionists; but Chajes was Chief Rabbi and, at the same time, the leader of the Zionist movement of his country,” Dr. Wise said. “It must not be imagined that it was easy to stand out as he did for Zionism, any more than it must be imagined that Jewish assimilation is exclusively a Park Avenue or Long Island disease. Assimilation raged for a generation in Vienna. Perhaps the finest thing about Chajes’ Zionism was that he did not do battle against assimilation. He just ignored it-ignored it serenely, even magnificently.”