“vote Embodies Confidence of American Israel in My Loyalty As Jew and Zionist,” Declares Wise

Dr. Wise, in his address following the vote rejecting his resignation, declared:

“Words cannot convey how deeply I am moved by the expressions of confidence and trust, which have come to me during the past fortnight from my fellow-Jews and fellow-Zionists throughout the land and even of other lands, culminating in the decision of your body not to accept my resignation. This I placed in the hands of the Chairman of the Zionist Organization of America not because of any sense of wrong-doing, not because of any fear of censure but because of my instinctive unwillingness to endanger or hurt, even in the slightest degree, the cause of Zionism.

“I will not deal with the regrettable controversy which, as far as I am concerned, is now ended. I have no criticism to offer, even of those who have most deeply wronged me. As against the misunderstanding or misinterpretation of any word of mine, I might well place the understanding and confidence which have been evoked from tens of thousands of Zionists throughout the land. Of their will you were the voice, when a moment ago you registered their as well as your own decision that my resignation as Chairman of the National Executive of the United Palestine Appeal be not accepted.

RELIED ON JUSTNESS OF JEWISH OPINION

“Now that the decision has been reached, I may confess to you that it would have been the most grievous hour of my life if you had concluded otherwise. Not because of hurt that I would have suffered, but because any action other than that which you have taken would have involved a grave impairment on that freedom of opinion and utterance which is essential to Zionism. Nor do I feel that you have based your decision chiefly upon my service to the Zionist movement beginning in the days of Theodore Herzl. No service however great by any Jew to Zionism could be suffered to stand in the balance as against any disloyalty on his part to the Jewish faith, to Jewish life, to the Jewish people. I have felt confident from the beginning that, whatever the tension of the hour, to whatever the extreme of ill-founded and unjustifiable judgments certain groups in Jewry might for a time be led, whatever exploitation might be attempted of a misunderstood word, ultimately the sanity and justness of Jewish opinion would

“ISRAEL’S FAITH IS MY FAITH,” HE DECLARES

“If I could bring myself to believe that you have refused to accept my resignation because of a sense of indebtedness to one who has given the best part of his life to the Zionist cause or because you have been ready to waive the question of my loyalty as Zionist and Jew because of the service, real or imagined, which I might render in connection with the United Palestine Appeal, I would tonight, without one moment of reconsideration, insist that my resignation should stand. May I not take it, however, that your refusal to accept my resignation embodies the confidence of American Israel in my unimpairable loyalty as Jew and Zionist, and the recognition of the obvious fact that I could not and did not depart from the traditional attitude of the Synagogue towards the doctrines of other faiths.

“Whatever I may have been able to do in the past, whether for American Israel or for the cause of Zionism, has been made possible, not because of any special gifts or powers, but solely because Israel’s faith is my faith because the people of Israel are my people, because my will has been and is, with the last atom of my strength, to deepen the faith of the Jew in the soul of his father’s faith. Adonoy Elohenu. Adonoy Echod. The Lord is our God. The Lord is One-I have endeavored to do what one man could in order to bring about an ever finer and nobler unity of the people of Israel; wherever Jews dwell here and abroad, to demand for them understanding and justice, and from them loyalty and nobleness; to hasten the recreation upon a high and spiritual plane of Jewish life in the Jewish land.

TELLS HOW HE DEDICATED HIMSELF TO JEWISH RENNAISANCE

“Having given my life to these ends, it is not needful in the presence of you, my comrades, to make clear what it meant to find my faith as Jew called into question, my loyalty as Zionist doubted and even denied. I will not point to my record, lest I seem to extenuate in the hearing of accusers or to vaunt myself at a moment when your confidence invites humility. What token of loyalty could I have offered in the past that I have failed to bring to the sanctuary of Israel? I have tried never to be unmindful of what I, as Jew and Jewish teacher, owed to the honor and the well-being of Israel. The charge to be a faithful servant of Israel came to me out of the sanctity of the home in which I was reared, out of the tradition of my father and father’s fathers, at whose behest I dedicated myself to the task of helping to convert Palestine, forsaken and mournful, into Eretz Israel, rejoicing and redeemed.

“Not long ago it came to me that I might offer one further token of my faith in the abiding integrity and unity of the Jewish people. In the presence of a real peril to our common and glorious task, in utter disregard of medical counsel, I took upon myself the heaviest burden I have yet dared to assume-the burden of bringing American Israel into unity of service to Palestine, such service as would secure, in a most urgent and even critical time, the five millions of dollars immediately needed for Palestine. A fortnight ago this day, that task was under way. Since that time the work has been interrupted. If I withdraw my resignation tonight in conformity to an overwhelming demand, it is because I have faith that on the morrow, yea, tonight, we take up the task and the burden, never to rest or lay it down until it shall be crowned with triumph.

BELIEVES WITH HERZL RETURN TO JUDAISM MUST PRECEDE RETURN TO PALESTINE

“You know that I have no desire to retain office for the sake of office, and I pledge myself again to take up the burden, provided and as long as you give our cause, not me, the uttermost of your support and devotion. Controversy, dissension, strife must be banished from Jewish life. But whether banished or not, as long as you, my comrades in the cause, continue to stand at my side and make it possible for us together to lead the campaign to a successful issue, I promise to serve as leader. But, if your support of the cause be on any ground whatsoever suffered to wane, then it will be my duty to insist, though I shall always serve in the ranks of our cause, that the leadership be placed in other hands.

“With Herzl I have believed and believe that the return to Judaism must precede the return to Palestine. For Herzl as for me Zionism has meant, and still means, not only the establishment and development of the Jewish national home–but also the conservation of all that is truly Jewish; our Jewish culture, our Jewish traditions and ideals, our Jewish spiritual values and our Jewish faith.”I stood alone, or nearly alone, for Zionism a generation ago. I can, if need be, again stand alone against mass-misunderstanding. But no misunderstanding however regrettable, no misrepresentation however wilful, can move me to avow or reavow my faith as a Jew. It is not needful for me to affirm, ‘I am a Jew.’ Happily for Israel and for Zionism, American Jewry will not be so false to truth as to pit a word about an alien faith against a lifetime of inalienable loyalty to all that is Jewish, the lifetime of one who has cried ‘Shame!’ as perhaps none other, against every manner of Jewish disloyalty and, most of all, against the deep and dishonoring sin of apostasy.

“Having placed in my hands again the leadership in the prosecution of our immediate task, I turn to you, sons and daughters of Israel, Am Echod, the living people Israel, of Adonoy Echod, the One Eternal God! With the spirit of unity and forbearance in our hearts, moved by the will to take an honorable and decisive part in laying the foundations of the Jewish life that is again to be in the Jewish land, with faith that Israel may continue to be and in ever-increasing measure become a creative and beneficent agent in the spiritual and moral life of the world, I beseech you not to grow faint nor be weary until our task be done.”