Concern that “the best Jewish brains in America are not part of the organized Jewish community” was voiced today by Edwin Wolf of Philadelphia, president of the National Foundation of Jewish Culture in the United States. He spore at the opening of the second “Dialogue in Israel” sponsored by the American Jewish Congress in cooperation with the Israel Government.
The American Jewish leader criticized Jewish artists and thinkers for “taking the easy way out of Judaism.” He told the assemblage of American and Israeli leaders that Jewish intellectuals “who do not like what they see of Judaism in organized forms have shown no desire to seek the enduring values that line beneath.”
“National and local leaders of American Jewry are living in an atmosphere of the most dollars speaking the loudest regardless of what is spoken,” he added, commenting wryly that he had expected “to find Israel a country of memorial plaques to which were attached buildings and trees.”
Supreme Court Justice Haim Cohen in his address sharply attacked various manifestations of Israel Orthodoxy which he found intolerant. Education Minister Abba Eban also spoke. The sessions opened in the Hebrew University Wise Auditorium and will move to Tel Aviv tomorrow for two more days of talks.
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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.
