The Central Consistory of France Has Temporarily Withdrawn from Crif in a Dispute over the Role of T

The Central Consistory, which administers and represents most synagogues in France, has temporarily withdrawn from the Representative Council of Major French Jewish Organizations (CRIF) to protest the latter’s recent affiliation with the World Jewish Congress. The Consistory was sharply critical of the WJC’s campaign to expose the Nazi past of Austrian President Kurt Waldheim which, it maintains, only assured Waldheim’s election.

The Waldheim affair was cited by the Consistory as one example of what it sees as the WJC’s tendency to act and claim to speak on behalf of word Jewry on major issues without prior consultation with the various Jewish communities it purports to represent.

The Consistory charged that the current WJC president, Edgar Bronfman, and the late Nahum Goldmann, former president of the WJC, were both guilty of this practice.

The Consistory, France’s Jewish religious organization, is one of the three main constituents of CRIF. The others are the FSJU (Fonds Social Juif Unifie), which runs the United Jewish Appeal campaigns and is responsible for social and cultural activities, and the French Zionist Movement. CRIF joined the WJC last spring, to create the European Jewish Congress, which has been headed since October I by CRIF president Theo Klein. The campaign against Waldheim was launched by the WJC’s New York office without bothering to sound out the various European communities, the Consistory charged. As a result, it triggered a strongly nationalistic backlash in Austria which propelled Waldheim to the Presidency.

Klein, meanwhile, dismissed the Consistory’s withdrawal as “an episode without great importance.”