An American Jewish leader and an Israeli leader basically agreed that diaspora Jews have the right to be consulted about issues affecting Israel. Rabbi Alexander Schindler, chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, and Leon Dulzin, treasurer of the Jewish Agency and World Zionist Organization, expressed their views to the 79th annual national convention of the Zionist Organization of America Saturday night.
Schindler called for “equality of integrity, intelligence and moral worth” as a basis for relations between Israel and American Jews. “Some American Jews get the feeling they are cows,” he asserted, “to be milked, walked around a bit for exercise and then led off into a quiet pasture.”
“Cows, however, have their limitations,” Schindler declared. “When I am in trouble I do not want a cow. I want a man with the capacity for independent thought. Truth is the highest form of support the Jews of America can give to Israel.”
Dulzin, noting that Jewish life today has become “Zionized,” said that the leaders of world Jewry have the right to be consulted on the problems facing Jewry, “whether problems of physical rescue or problems of stemming the tide of assimilation.” But, he said, the very fact that diaspora Jews demand to be consulted about the major issues facing Israel “is prime evidence of the centrality of Israel in their lives.”
GREATEST ZIONIST MITZVOT IS ALIYA
Dulzin said that since the creation of Israel, the Jewish State has the central responsibility of saving Jewish lives and securing the Jewish future. “The fact is that the centrality of Israel is now an integral part of the way in which Jews all over the world conceive of their Jewishness,” he said. “The fact is that the existence of the Jewish State has radically transformed the self-awareness of Jews, regardless of their synagogue and social-political affiliations.”
However, Dulzin pointed to a difference between what he called Zionists, members of organized Zionist movements and “zionists” who do not belong to the movement. “The basic difference lies in the doing of ‘mitzvot.’ Zionist ‘mitzvot,'” he said. “This is what puts the capital ‘Z’ in Zionism.”
Dulzin added that the greatest of Zionist “mitzvot” is aliya: “For in aliya lies the ultimate strength and vitality of the Jewish State. It is the sheer number of Jews who make aliya to Israel that Israel’s security, development and future are based–for the personal benefit of those who make aliya and for the benefit of the Jewish people as a whole.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
