Rabbi Judah L. Maimon. one of Israel’s most venerated Orthodox leaders and a personal friend of Premier David Ben Gurion, wrote the Premier today that Mr. Ben Gurion’s position on the question of “who is a Jew” is the “mistake of your life.”
Rabbi Maimon’s letter came in response to a questionnaire sent to him and other Jewish scholars and religious leaders throughout the world for their opinion of how to register the children of a mixed marriage. On this, Rabbi Maimon replied: “The question ‘who is a Jew’ was established thousands of years ago when we became the chosen people. According to the Torah and tradition only a person born of a Jewish woman is Jewish.”
(In New York, Rabbi Eliezer Silver chairman of the presidium of the Union of Orthodox Rabbis, emphatically denied today a report published in the Israel press that he sent a message of congratulations to Rabbi Jacob Toledano of Tel Aviv on the occasion of his appointment as Israeli Minister of Religions, Rabbi Silver declared that his message to Rabbi Toledano as chairman of the presidium of the Union of Orthodox Rabbis in America contained only a request to withhold acceptance of this position until the principle of “Who is a Jew” is established according to the Halachah.)
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