Mizrachi and Hapoel Hamizrachi Merge at Atlantic City Convention

A united religious Zionist movement formed by the merger of the Mizrachi Organization of America and Hapoel Hamizrachi of America, was proclaimed at the opening session of a five-day convention in Atlantic City tonight. The new organization will have a combined membership of over 150,000.

The proclamation announcing the amalgamation traced the history and accomplishments of both organizations, which were founded independently more than 30 years ago, and declared that “the new merged movement would become the united religious voice of American Jewry.” The two organizations merged in Israel last year “as a first step in consolidating all religious parties in order to strengthen the religious participation in the building of the Jewish State.” The U.S. group is following the lead of the counterpart organization in Israel.

Dr. Bernard Bergman, president of Hapoel Hamizrachi of America, told the 1,000 delegates that “a golden era of religious Zionism would be launched with the merger of Hapoel Hamizrachi and Mizrachi..” “The new movement, uniting for the first time religious Jews in the United States, will mark the turning point of religious Zionism in this country,” Dr. Bergman said.

An ambitious program for expanding yeshivot, day schools and cultural centers designed to strengthen and revitalize religious Jewish life in the United States was outlined by the Hapoel Hamizrachi president. “The new movement will create a two way religious link between the United States, the largest Jewish community in the world, and Israel, which is Judaism’s spiritual and cultural center,” he said. Dr. Bergman concluded his remarks with the hope and prayer that this new merger will be the forerunner of a complete unification of all religious forces in Jewish community life in the United States.

Rabb Mordecai Kirschblum, president of the Mizrachi Organization of America and member of the executive of the Jewish Agency, asserted that the United States was pursuing contradictory and self-defeating policies in the Middle East. He charged that it was meaningless to talk “about stemming the tide of Russian aggression in the Middle East and at the same time be busily engaged in patching up and re-inflating the punctured balloon of Nasserism, transmission-belt of communism” in the Middle East.

Isidor Margolis, executive director of the education committee, said “the entire program of Jewish religious education in the United States is being impeded by the emphasis on scientific education and the specialization of Jewish students and educators in the sciences.”