American Zionist leaders discussed yesterday the resolutions of the recent 28th World Zionist Congress and their implementation at a Leadership Seminar sponsored by the American Zionist Federation. Mrs. Max Matzkin of Hadassah, chairman of the AZF’s executive committee, stressed the need for Zionist education. Harry A. Steinberg, executive director of the AZF discussed Zionist relations with the Christian clergy.
Mrs. Matzkin asserted that “Zionists must now bring the new dimension of deepened Jewish and Zionist education to all Jewish educational institutions serving both youths and adults, including the organizing of ulpanim for adults” and “must help create the proper atmosphere for aliya by disseminating information on the possibilities of a life of self-fulfillment in Israel.” Mrs. Matzkin said the implementation of these steps must involve “the total Jewish community” with Zionists serving as “the catalyst that arouses the community to the meaning of the Jerusalem program that contains the basic credo of Zionism.”
According to Steinberg, “the hierarchy of the Protestant church will not stand by Israel’s side” should Israel be confronted again with a situation such as existed on the eve and during the Six-Day War. “It can be said,” he noted “that the Christian religious establishment cannot be relied upon to behave much differently than it did in May and June of 1967 when it failed miserably to understand or sympathize with Israel’s plight.”
Steinberg attributed the position of the church not only to theological reasons “but also to the interests of the church in the Arab world, and in the case of the leftist-oriented clergymen, their disdain for an Israel which receives support from an “imperialist America,” and their concern for the Palestinians. Steinberg claimed that “The understanding achieved with leading Catholics presents a more positive picture as far as acceptance of Israel is concerned.” He said “The most positive strides have been achieved on the grass roots level in both the Protestant and Catholic churches.”
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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.
