Delegates to the 81st annual convention of the Central Conference of American Rabbis were pledged today “not to be silent” if plans for Joint Israeli-Jordanian rule over Jerusalem were to be considered part of proposals for peace to be negotiated between Israel and Jordan. Proposals for a joint administration, details of which were not spelled out, were included in proposals for an Israeli-Jordanian settlement which Secretary of State William P. Rogers submitted to the Soviet Union last year. The 400 Reform rabbis attending the convention here began their deliberations Friday afternoon in the Mt. Scopus amphitheater. Most of them donned skullcaps for the opening prayer.
At sessions today, the Reform rabbis pledged also to carry out an educational campaign among Christians to explain the Jewish commitment to Israel with special emphasis on the land, the faith and the people. A speaker at today’s session charged that mounting Christian political criticism of Israel stemmed from traditional anti-Semitic roots as well as economic ties in the Arab states. In his opening speech, CCAR president Rabbi Roland B. Gittelsohn told the Reform rabbis that all sectors of Jewry should end their useless search for and endless debate on “who is a Jew?” and get down to the essential task of defining “what is a religious Jew?”
Former Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, who addressed the convention today, said that the question “who is a Jew?” had no real meaning today. He said the question was not how one described oneself but what one did. He declined however to be drawn into more specific definitions which might have brought him into controversy with either Orthodox Jewry or his Reform hosts. The noted Kabbala scholar and philosopher, Prof. Gershom Sholem, argued that the definition of who was a Jew changed with time and no rule laid down could be taken to be valid forever. Prof. Efraim Urbach, the Talmud scholar, generally took the Orthodox position on the issue but expressed the hope that the fact that the Reform rabbis were holding their convention in Jerusalem might lead to the beginning of a dialogue among the different branches in Judaism.
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