Rose Halprin Questions Agreement Between Ben-gurion and Dr. Goldmann

Mrs. Rose Halprin, acting chairman of the Jewish Agency here, today questioned the agreement announced yesterday by Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and Dr. Nahum Goldmann, president of the World Zionist Organization, on the topics to have priority at the forthcoming 25th World Zionist Congress.

Speaking at a press conference, Mrs. Halprin said that if the agreement would prevent Mr. Ben-Gurion from speaking his mind fully on such disputed issues as Aliya and Halutziyut, it would be unfortunate. “It would have been wiser to permit Mr. Ben-Gurion to say what he wanted to say at the Congress,” she declared. “This way of treating situations of concern to the Zionist movement is not healthy.”

She questioned the basic reality of the agreement, asserting that “the differences between the two men are fundamental and great.” She said that if Mr. Ben-Gurion did not express his full views, it would amount to “sweeping the problem under the rug.”

Mrs. Halprin felt that if the next Congress would be “Aliya oriented” it would be likely to be a quarrelsome meeting at which such basic issues would not be systematically and comprehensively explored. She expressed hope that out of the Zionist Congress would emerge “a projection, a planning” for the future tasks of the Zionist movement, based on a realistic recognition and adjustment to the facts of Jewish life in various communities, particularly in the United States.

She rejected proposals that the Zionist Congress should seek to define the meaning of Zionism “once and for all, ” asserting that “definitions divide us. Tasks do not.”

CITES FUNCTIONS WHICH ZIONIST MOVEMENT CAN UNDERTAKE IN U.S.

Noting that there were half a million Zionist homes in the American Jewish community, she cited a number of examples of functions the Zionist movement could undertake to make the Jewish community more Zionist and Israel-centered.

One was a proposal that Zionist parents should insist that their children choose Hebrew education instead of dancing classes. Another example, she said, was the need to do away with the “vulgar” approach to the Bar Mitzvah observance which she said was prevalent in the American Jewish community.

American Zionists as parents, she said, could strive for a more modest and seemly Bar Mitzvah geared to love of Zion. She said, also that the Zionist movement needed “to introduce the Israeli picture into more Jewish schools.”

Such “smaller” tasks, as a package, would have, if implemented, a profound effect on the psychology of the Jewish community in the United States within as brief a period as five years, she asserted. The Zionist movement, she stressed, could make Aliya one of the functions of its programs in the United States, but not the central function at the present time.