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Rabbi Urges Careful Study of Coughlin Plan

June 28, 1935
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The suggestion that Father Coughlin’s social justice program “merits the careful attention and concern of the Jew,” was made by Dr. Jacob R. Marcus of Cincinnati at today’s session of the annual convention of the Central Conference of American Rabbis.

Dr. Marcus’s discussion of Father Coughlin came during a report on contemporaneous history and literature. “There is one mass movement today,” he declared, “that merits the careful attention and concern of the Jew. I refer to Father Coughlin’s National Union for Social Justice. This movement is apparently liberal and even radical in certain respects.

“It is unfortunate and deeply to be regretted that Coughlin links with specific Jewish names the international forces which he stresses as sinister. It is also to be regretted that contrary to the spirit pealed to his hearers to remember pealed to his hearers to remember that ‘When it comes to law and when it comes to representation in Congress, don’t forget this is a Christian nation.’

“Coughlin is not an anti-Semite. Therefore, it is hoped he never will through inadvertence afford anyone the opportunity to associate him with anti-Semitic forces of reaction and hate.”

Dr. Marcus expressed the opinion that the ultimate hope of German Jewry lay in emigration from Germany. He held out the United States, Russia and Palestine as the

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