The refusal to grant the Heholuz subsidy has hunt us very much, Dr. Klee, the leader of the Zionist Party on the Berlin Jewish Community said in his speech announcing that the Zionists would secede and form a separatist community if their demand was not agreed to.
The subsidy was refused not for economy reasons, Dr. Klee went on, but on grounds of principle, in order to hit at our idea. Thousands of Jews are to-day thing of leaving the community because they believe that the community burdens them with taxes without giving them any equivalent. The attitude adopted by the Liberals towards us is like an axe laid at the root of the united Jewish community. Why should the promotion of Jewish agriculture in Gross Gaglow, in the Argentine and elsewhere be a religious matter and the promotion of colonisation in Palestine not a religious matter? Eretz Israel is not a political but a religious matter, even if it must be attained by political means. If you exclude Eretz Israel from the Community, you exclude one of the fundamentals of Jewish teaching. Eretz Israel is under the League of Nations, and is not the League of Nations a victory of Jewish thought? No Jew can deny Palestine from the religious point of view. The Jewish Community is a religious community, but Palestine, too, is a religious matter. Leading Liberal Jews all over the world are active in promoting the Palestine work.
For some time, Dr. Klee went on, there has been a dead set at the meetings of our Representative Assembly against everything that we bring forward, beginning with the Chair at the Hebrew University, our school demands, and now our demand for the Heholuz. The very serious question, therefore, arises in our minds whether there is any purpose in our further participation in this body. What is the use of going on when everything that is dear to us is rejected without even hearing our arguments?
It is possible, said Dr. Klee, that I am speaking here for the last time. Remember that there are 30,000 Jews in Berlin who voted for our party, and they are not a negligible quantity. We do not say that we shall leave the Community to-morrow, but we do say, what does this Community still mean to us? What are we here for, if we can never get anything done that we want?
REPLY BY CHAIRMAN OF LIBERAL PARTY
On a motion being made by one of the Liberal members, Dr. Seligsohn, that the meeting should pass to next business, the Chairman of the Liberal Fraction, Dr. Kurt Fleischer, said:
We shall not pass to next business on this matter that Dr. Klee has raised. I have something to say about it.
To Dr. Klee’s question-what is the use of our stopping here? we Liberals, he said, reply: We respect everyone’s conviction, but we demand just as much respect for our own conviction, because we represent here the great majority of the Berlin Jews. Our chief task here is to maintain the Jewish Community: and to protect the exercise of our faith. We take account of the interests of every single member of our community, in all social and economic relations and in the protection of life and limb. The United Jewish Community will and must be maintained, and it can be maintained if we up-hold our neutrality and respect every conviction. We respect also the Jewish Nationalist conviction. We give no privileges to any standpoint, knowing that in our final goal we are all at one. Our road to the goal, however, does not lead along nation Judaism and Palestine. The majority of the members of this Community see the support of the Heholuz as support given to a Party movement, and party movements we as a religious community must not support. We understand and we recognise the endeavours of these young people, but they are not our endeavours. If the majority of this community direct the affairs of the community according to their will, it is not a violation of the feelings of the minority. In an hour like this, frought with so much peril to Jews and Judaism, it is a dangerous thing to raise the cry of secession from the community. You speak of your 30,000 voters. We place against these our 60,000 voters. We know the gravity of the hour and the issue before us is to maintain our united community. Never theless, we are not going to yield to a demand that would mean sacrificing our own convictions.
Dr. Oscar Wolfsberg, one of the leaders of the German Mizrachi, speaking as a representative of religious Zionism, said that he could not sit there and hear how people were urging that work for the Heholuz was not a religious matter, that it was even a sin against religion. The whole of our work for Palestine, he said, is based on our religion. Do we not say Israel Goy Echod? Is that religious or not? If you exclude us from every opportunity of work in the Community and declare our religious ideals irreligious, how can we possibly sit among you and work with you?
Herr Alfred Berger, speaking, he said, for that section of Zionists who are national Jews, without any religious emphasis on the “national”, but who have a right to belong to the community and not to be ignored, said that they wanted a state of affairs in the community where matters would not be carried out according to the party book of the Liberals. If we were the majority, he said, we would never put up obstacles against every attempt made by the Liberals to promote something that is a Jewish concern. The Heholuz is an organisation of the youth of the Jewish community. If you want to maintain the united Community, you must see to it that our ideals should be respected.
Dr. Bruno Woyda, one of the leaders of the Liberals, said:
We recognise the justification of every point of view, but here it is a matter which affects the very foundation of the Community. Have we no common work outside the Heholuz and Palestine? Do we stand together in our religious and social work? One thing must be made clear. The last election campaign was fought on this very question, of restricting the scope of the community, to make it a religious community, and the decision given by the electors cannot be thrown overboard at the demand of the minority. It is not the duty of a united Community to accept the fundamentals of the minority. The work of the Heholuz is not only national colonisation, but also national cultural. If you Zionists feel that you belong to the Jewish nation, we belong to the German nation.
At this point, it being 1 a.m., the meeting was adjourned, and the question will be taken up again at the next meeting.
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