An American Jewish youth leader warned here today that “the Jewish community could ill afford the politics of violence or the madness of the street confrontation.” Steven Windmueller, program specialist for campus and youth of the American Jewish Committee’ Jewish Communal Affairs Department, speaking at the annual conference of the North American Jewish Youth Council being held at Camp Moshava here, took issue with the tactics of extremists of both Left and Right who despair of democracy’s solving its problems peacefully.
Windmueller insisted that the survival of American Jewry depended on making democracy work so that minority group members. Black, Jewish and others, “can process their grievances within a legitimate and open political system.” He warned that irresponsible attacks on Jewish institutions in America may leave a legacy of a weakened Jewish community. Jewish continuity and Jewish security, he continued, may not survive “political extremism, social faddism and nihilism, and cultural authoritarianism,” he declared. Windmueller called for Jewish communal institutions to “adjust their services and priorities to the upgrading of a quality of life for American Jewry.”
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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.
