News Brief

picture. What we need today is the entrance of new persons and new leaders into Jewish politics. Certainly, there should be elections, but they should be elections of persons and not of lists. The experience of so-called democracy of post-war Europe should suffice to eliminate also from Jewish life the worship of lists.

“The Congress movement was supposed to afford the possibility of a new selection. Jewish groups and individuals were to elect persons who represented something and in whom the voters have confidence. Although a new generation has grown up, yet on the party lists there still appear the old familiar names. The Congress could have gained great merit just by aiding the abolition of the obsolete party structure. Even now the organizing committee should be advised to change the former resolutions in this direction and, if the congress is to be organized, to make possible the admission of wide circles of the Jewish people without formality; no consideration of the prestige of existing Jewish parties should be placed in the foreground.

“‘The Jewish Chronicle’, in its criticism of the Geneva Conference, put forward the thesis that the Jewish problems of each individual country can best be solved by the Jewish citizens of the country through negotiations with their government. This thesis has one modification, however, namely that the Jewish communities of those Western lands which are influential members of the League of Nations can bring pressure to bear upon their governments to prevent other states which are also members of the League from infringing on the right of Jews. Therefore, says the ‘Jewish Chronicle,’ since the United States is not a member of the League, there is no point in the Jews of that country taking an active part in a Jewish World Congress; nor can in a Jewish World Congress have any direct status at the bar of the League of Nations which is accessible only to States. We believe that these objections are only partly correct. Just because the United States is not a member, the League of Nations is today not the only instrument of international politics. The solidarity of World Jewry in time of danger is an entirely natural and universally comprehensible phenomenon. The malevolent will always find material for lies and slanders even if the Jews did not organize. The anti-Semitic poison of the myths about ‘Jewish secret societies’ is much more harmful than the discussions of Jewish questions at conference which are held in the full light of day. Since the days of the Alliance Israelite Universelle, the idea of the organization of all the Jews of the world has cropped out again but has never been actually realized. The ‘Jewish Chronicle’ surely has a right to criticize the Geneva affair if it appears inadequate to the ‘Chronicle,’ but it must not throw the pitcher out after the water and absolutely condemn the idea of the organization of Jewish energies.

“Insofar as the status before the League of Nations is concerned, it must be remembered that there is already a Jewish body which is recognized by the League of Nations, namely, the Jewish Agency for Palestine. In truth, the Jewish Agency, whose oft-discussed imperfection we certainly recognize, is the single existing nucleus of a Jewish world organization. Among the organizers of the Geneva Conference there are several persons who reproach the enlarged Jewish Agency with being insufficiently representative and with having been unable to secure the adherence of wide circles. If such a reproach can be made in connection with Palestine work, then how much more necessary was it to assure the participation of all sections of the Jewish people at the Geneva conference at which the entire gamut of Jewish diaspora questions was on the agenda? For, as things are today, such participation cannot be achieved through a mere ‘manifesto.’ On the other hand, the idea appears to us to be worthy of consideration whether the Jewish Agency can be developed into a body to deal authoritatively with all Jewish questions of the day. The rapid march of events in recent years has made the Jewish question so acute as nobody could have imagined at the time of the establishment of the Jewish Agency. The connection between Palestine and the Jewish question has become obvious to everybody, even to the non-Zionist members of the Jewish Agency. Our speech, our thinking, our inner Jewish life has not yet found the correct expression for the new actuality which already exists behind the curtain of the inherited formulas and party structure. Only through the courageous grasp of this actuality, without holding on to the obsolete and outworn dogmas can we succeed. The Jewish Agency might become the instrument of Jewish politics such as the moment demands but, of course, everything depends upon the availibility of an adequate leader who possesses among the entire people an authority which cannot be created merely by resolution.

“The Geneva Conference has proved that for an organization of the planned kind, it is not enough merely to describe a goal in words in order to create a broad basis. What is much more necessary is a certain definite consent which manifests itself in concrete action. Where common work is brought into the foreground of the cooperation also of elements of different views is possible; where, however, such work is lacking there is the danger of the unlimited discussions regarding views on which agreement cannot be reached. The belief that inner-Jewish conflicts can be fought out by resolutions as on a battlefield of the ballot, where victor and vanquished oppose one another, is a fiction of our Jewish life. The revolutionary significance of the Jewish Agency and of its Palestine work consists in this, that, here, the thing has defeated the word, and, for this reason alone, the Jewish Agency appears to us to be suitable for being the bearer of the task of a Jewish World Congress, because in it, the danger of divisive discussions is barred by the cohesive strength of the visible work in Palestine.

“The questions which were taken up by the Geneva Conference must be given further consideration. The Geneva Conference would then have the great merit of having brought the thing into being and having led to action, which may have more direct effect than the somewhat shadowy Congress in the year 1934.”