Norman Thomas today told the annual meeting of The New York Chapter of the American Council for Judaism that “we shall all pay a price we cannot afford if Judaism should become merely an emotional extension of Israeli nationalism.”
Thomas shared the platform with Rabbi Irving F, Reichert of San Francisco, who declared that the “attempt to indoctrinate American Jews with the idea that Israel is their homeland is artificial, presumptuous and dangerously misleading,”
The meeting heard a report sent by Leasing J. Rosenwald, president of the Council, who expressed the hope that “Israel will develop into a peaceful, democratic state and that it will live up to the best that its advocates hoped for. We are very much concerned with ‘Jewish’ nationalism as a threat to the security, well-being and integration of Jews the world over, and to the universal character of Judaism,” Rosenwald added.
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