Rabbi David Polish, president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, has called for an immediate reinstatement of Dr. Nahum Goldmann as speaker at the festive session at the forthcoming Zionist Congress in Jerusalem, regardless of explanations offered by Louis Pincus, chairman of the World Zionist Organization Executive. Rabbi Polish said that he agreed with Pincus’ view presented in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s News Bulletin yesterday that Soviet Jewish aliya must be given top priority in the campaign for the rights of the three million Russian Jews.
But, Rabbi Polish said, “One need not agree with Dr. Goldmann to take exception to the withdrawal. The chief issue is not Dr. Goldmann but the democratic process.” He termed the Zionist action, “an act of moral and political folly,” and observed that “at a time when the Zionist movement should be pulling together. Its leadership seems determined to pursue a self-destructive course.”
Rabbi Polish added: “This obstructionist venture is particularly objectionable because nothing in Dr. Goldmann’s address which triggered the violent reactions warrants the blind and bureaucratic course taken by some Zionist leaders….The Zionist movement with which I have been identified throughout my life once thrived and rose to heroic heights in the arena of controversy and passionate debate. There is still need for such a movement, but if its officials persist in stifling free expression, they will have lost the future in their dubious triumph” (over Dr. Goldmann).
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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.
