Dr. Kurt Fleischer, the Chairman of the Liberal fraction in the Representative Assembly of the Berlin Jewish Community, addressing a meeting of prominent Liberal Jews held here said that it was not sufficiently known that the first step to re-establish peace in the Berlin Jewish Community came from the Liberal side. Three days after the disturbances in the Representative Assembly, which had threatened to result in a split in the Community, the Liberals, under the leadership of Herr Heinrich Stern and on their own initiative, had opened negotiations with the leader of the People’s Party, Dr. Klee, and it was he himself (Dr. Fleischer) who had given the initiative which had been followed by the Round Table Discussion. A formal settlement had been concluded, and the breach in the Community over the Heholuz subsidy had been healed.
In internal Jewish conflicts it is sometimes forgotten that Liberal Judaism is only a means to an end, and that the end is the preservation of Judaism, Dr. Martin Lesser, Chairman of the federation of Liberal Jews in Berlin, said. If others saw the preservation of Judaism in Zionism, or in Conservative Judaism, that did not mean that they could not all collaborate in the greater aim. We adherents of Liberal Judaism, he said, respect the convictions of others. The clashes inside the Community were due to misunderstanding. Now they had arrived at an understanding, and had been able to lay down the basis of their common work.
Dr. Lesser went on to speak of the economic position of German Jewry. In 1930 German Jewry had already been 50 percent, proletarianised, he said, and therefore it was essential to extend not only the religious activities of the Community, but also its social-political activities. He appealed to Jewish
employers to employ as far as possible Jewish workers and employees. He also urged that they should start a vigorous counter-campaign to stem the movement among Jews to leave the Jewish community, and also in cases of mixed marriage to try to keep the Jewish partner to the marriage.
Herr Hans Loewenstein, publisher of the “Juedisch-liberale Zeitung”, said that the paper was fighting against antisemitism, but it also fought against those Jewish tendencies which sought to estrange Judaism from Germanism. We Liberals, he said, recognise only one homeland, Germany. Judaism has given Germany a great deal, but it has also received a great deal from Germany.
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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.
