Rabbi Fabian Schonfeld, president of the Rabbinical Council of America, representing the largest Orthodox rabbinic body with almost 1000 members throughout the United States, announced today that the Council was undertaking a crash education program in all of the synagogues served by its members to point out the dangers to the entire Jewish community and the individual Jew of the United Nations General Assembly resolution that classified Zionism as a form of racism and racial discrimination.
“We must make it understood,” Rabbi Schonfeld declared, “that this is not merely an attack upon Israel or upon Zionism as a political movement but rather an attack upon the entire Jewish community. Every Jew must understand that he and his family are personally endangered in their security, in their freedom and in their right to live in human dignity by this benighted act of the General Assembly.”
The crash program, he said, will include lectures, publications, seminars and adult classes, in addition to radio, TV and other public media. “They will stress the relationship between Zion and the Land of Israel and the Jewish people throughout their history and will underscore that the concept of a return to Zion is a deeply religious spiritual imperative with which no Jew can take issue,” Rabbi Schonfeld said. The seminars will trace the references to Zionism and Israel in all the sacred scriptures, as well as post-Biblical, medieval and modern texts.
In addition, the Rabbinical Council will establish a central coordinating body to be in touch with its member synagogues in the U.S. and Canada and to issue a weekly bulletin disseminating all information pertaining to the campaign to combat the anti-Zionist resolution, according to Rabbi Bernard Twersky, spokesman for the Council.
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