Two Rabbis Urge WZO Executive to Re-instate Invitation to Goldmann

Two leaders of American Reform Jewry urged the WZO Executive today to re-instate its invitation to Dr. Nahum Goldmann, president of the World Jewish Congress, to address the World Zionist Congress in Jerusalem next month. In a statement issued here Rabbi Maurice N. Eisendrath, president and Rabbi Alexander M. Schindler, vice-president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, declared:

“The muzzling of a speaker because of his professed views is a scandalous betrayal of values which are central to Judaism and democracy alike.” Dr. Goldmann’s invitation to deliver an address at the festive session of the Congress was withdrawn last Friday because of the “circumstances” following his Dec. 19 remarks in London on Soviet Jews.

Rabbis Eisendrath and Schindler’s statement noted that the WZO’s “action is all the more puzzling because a careful reading of Dr. Goldmann’s speech actually reveals his views to be in harmony with the concensus of world Jewry on the subject. He welcomed emigration of Soviet Jews to Israel, but added that our concern must extend also to those Jews who choose to remain behind, and we must struggle to secure their right to live as Jews in the Soviet Union. This is precisely what the Brussels Conference (last Feb.) resolved.”

The statement added: “But even if Dr. Goldmann’s views had gone beyond the consensus he does not deserve such short shrift by those who owe him so much. He is, after all, one of the greatest living champions of Jewish rights and of the Jewish people. To degrade Jewish loyalty into a party line is to corrupt those values of freedom and dignity which stand at the very core of the Jewish tradition, and which alone justify Jewish survival.”