Statement on the Tulin Incident at Convention Made by Rabbi Silver

The Tulin incident, said to have determined the outcome of the Zionist convention in Pittsburgh, was the subject of a communication from Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver, mentioned on the convention floor in this connection, to the Jewish Daily Bulletin.

In a telegram to the Jewish Daily Bulletin on July 5, Rabbi Silver declared:

“In your issue of July 5 your report of the Pittsburgh Zionist Convention reads that Abraham Tulin had stated to me that the reason Lipsky had declined to run again for president was because he does not dare to run, for if he runs the judges will have the district attorney on his trail. This is absolutely false. Nor did I make any such statement to Jacob Fishman.

“Whatever I stated to Fishman was in strictest confidence and in the nature of an inquiry. Fishman undertook to speak to Lipsky about it privately. He proceeded, however, to violate a confidence and to spread a rumor for political ends. If I had wished to make a statement to the convention or to a caucus I could have done so without the assistance of Fishman.

“When I learned of the pernicious spread of the rumor, I requested some of the leaders of the administration and especially Lipsky to put a stop to it. I also requested Lipsky not to permit his final decision in the matter of being drafted for the presidency to be influenced by it. He promised to do so. This was 4:30 Tuesday morning. At 8 o’clock I left for Cleveland to officiate at a funeral of one of my members.

“That evening Lipsky telephoned me from Pittsburgh and told me that the matter had not been kept from the floor of the convention and that my name had been bandied about considerably. He also informed me of the vote of the convention on the new constitution and of his decision to permit himself to be reelected to the presidency. He asked me to be one of the vice presidents. I told him that in view of what had transpired I could not accept the office. I promised, however, to help him in the hard year ahead of him.”

Commenting upon Rabbi Silver’s telegram, Mr. Fishman declared: “Rabbi Silver is doubly mistaken. First I want to deny categorically that the statement he had made to me was in any way confidential. Second, I insist that Rabbi Silver attributed to Mr. Tulin exactly the words I quoted. However, this was not the determining factor of the convention decision to draft Mr. Lipsky. This decision was based upon an open statement that Mr. Tulin had made at a caucus of the opposition.

Furthermore, I never spread Rabbi Silver’s statement to me, though it was not confidential. As a matter of fact, I had left the hotel immediately after my talk with Rabbi Silver and returned about 3.30 in the morning to discover, to my amazement, that Rabbi Silver’s statement of Mr. Tulin’s remarks had become public, evidently because Rabbi Silver had himself repeated the remarks to a number of delegates. I had nothing to do with it except to confirm, after it had become public, that Rabbi Silver also said the same words to me.”