The Committee on Contemporaneous History and Literature of the Central Conference of American Rabbis proposed to the 50th annual convention today the adoption of protests against Britain’s Palestine policy and against persecution of Jews in Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland and Rumania.
Prof. Jacob R. Marcus of Cincinati, chairman of the committee, told the 500 Reform rabbis, gathered at the Hotel Mayflower in the second of the five-day sessions, that the one-third Jewish minority provided for under the British White Paper “is irrevocably doomed” if it be made dependent “on Arab tolerance or guarantee.”
Dr. Joseph L. Fink of Buffalo urged the conference to appoint a special committee to study the problem of Church vs. State and prepare a course of ethics and universal moral principles for public school use. He said this could be done without sectarianizing the schools.
Dr. Abba Hillel Silver of Cleveland urged the joining of “forces with all men of all faiths and races who have remained faithful to the spiritual vision of life for a major offensive” against reaction. He declared that “the Jewish problem is the world problem epitomized” and the Jew a symbol of the world conflict.
The annihilationist policy of the Nazis is not likely to become the norm fixing the future relationship between Jews and non-Jews, Dr. Silver said. “Should the Fascist movement spend itself and should nations return to the primal sanities of civilized life, then constitutional guarantees for individuals and minorities will be reestablished in the world and anti-Semitism will cease to be a matter of political policy and progress. The pressures upon the Jewish group will be then greatly relaxed.”
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