Organizations Abroad Assist Jewish Colonization Work in Russia

(Jewish Telegraphic Agency Mail Service)

Branches of the Jewish Colonization Society Ozet, have been established in a number of European countries, according to reports which have been received here by the Central Administration of the Ozet. Groups have been formed in France and Belgium.

In Paris, the report states, a meeting was held, several persons attending. A resolution was adopted to support the Jewish colonization work in Soviet Russia. The Belgian group is arranging a series of public meetings in order to acquaint the population with the progress of the Jewish colonization movement. A group is being formed also of the Jewish students at Liege University.

Steps are also being taken to organize a group in Amsterdam, the capital of Holland. An organization to support the Jewish colonization work in Russia has been formed in Copenhagen. The organization is raising funds to provide tractors for the Jewish colonists in Russia. It is also making arrangements for establishing branches in Norway and Sweden.

COMMUNICATION TO THE EDITOR

Sir:

Will you kindly allow me to make one or two corrections in the report of the Menorah Conference in your issue of yesterday?

You state: “In the last seventy-five years, covering almost the entire period of Jewish emancipation in Europe and “America, only three books on Jewish history were written, Mr. Hurwitz asserted.” I did not assert this. The inaccuracies of such a statement are so patent that I hope no reader of your valuable paper has assumed I said it. What, as a matter of fact, was brought out abundantly at the Conference by scholar after scholar was the fact that no Jewish history now in existence gives an adequate picture of the Jew in all his various historic manifestations and expressions.

As to Dr. Weizmann’s criticism of the Menorah movement, I wish you had found a few lines’ space to give something of the answer made to it before our Conference Dinner was closed. Of course, we welcome criticism. Every organization or movement should. But we can not accept as valid Dr. Weizmann’s criticism of the Menorah on the ground that it is engaged in a hopeless or too herculean task. We reject Dr. Weizmann’s contention that Judaism in America has no vital future. We believe it has. We certainly do not deny the beneficent influence that Zionism and Jewish life in Palestine may exert upon our Jewish life in America. But we must work out our destiny here in America no less than in Zion. We have our own problems and potencies in America that demand our greatest resources of intellect and spirit. Such resources the Menorah is helping to mobilize, nurture, and direct. It is indeed a great task, but far from being sentenced to death or to hopeless struggle, it seems to us to merit the aid of every well-wisher of Judaism at home and abroad.

There is one other matter I wish to comment on. Unfortunately some newspapers made a special feature of the words of one or two speakers at the Conference on the relations between our rabbis and our so-called “intellectuals”. That was really but a small item taken out of the context of the papers and discussions devoted to a survey of our spiritual situation in America and an earnest seeking for more light and advance. The interest of the Menorah Association in promoting the Conference was to provide a forum for all views, and the Menorah is of course not to be taken as responsible for or committed to the statements of Dr. Wechsler any more than to those of Rabbi Heller or any other man who participated. The Menorah is not devoted to any one particular group in Jewry, but aims to offer a common meeting ground and clearing-house for the exchange of opinion and ideas concerning all aspects of Jewish life in America, and to bring about a union of all thoughtful men and women, transcending personal or party differences, for the sake of a common cause — the furtherance of the noblest Judaism in America.

HENRY HURWITZ. Chasseller of the Intercollegiate Menorah Association. New York, N. Y. Feb. 3, 1927.