The refusal of Israel Premier David Ben Gurion to give adequate assurances that the Mizrachi educational system in Israel would be “respected as an untouchable treasure” was responsible for the decision of the Israeli Mizrachi Party not to enter the new coalition government, Rabbi Max Kirshblum, new president of the American Mizrachi, declared here tonight.
Addressing a dinner-reception in his honor at the Commodore Hotel, Rabbi Kirshblum declared that the Mizrachi had consistently pressed for a wider coalition government. He said it was “regrettable” that in the process of creating his coalition government Premier Ben Gurion had demonstrated a “capacity for solving problems by inviting new ones in their place.”
Speaking of the role of the Orthodox parties in Israel as an opposition to the new government, Rabbi Kirshblum said that it will be an opposition “which will support all measures designed to help Israel meet its overall problems while, at the same time, giving articulate opposition to all proposals and acts which seem to it as contrary to Israel’s Bible-saturated history and his historic way of life.”
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