“nation” Lauds Jewish Congress As Courageous Idea

The “Nation” in its current issue carries an editorial on the Jewish conference in Geneva where it declares that obscurantism and defeatism will not solve the Jewish problems.

“The world Jewish conference which met recently in Geneva, voted to call a world congress during the summer of 1934. This congress will discuss such questions as anti-Semitism, Zionism, minority rights and the economic status of Jewish life. To our mind this represents not only a courageous but an extremely important step. There were many influential members of the race who opposed the idea of holding a world congress. Some were apparently afraid of their Jewishness. . . . Some believed an international congress of Jews would simply serve to antagonize still further the anti-Semitic forces. . . . A few of the opponents were merely defeatists. That all these objections were overcome at the Geneva conference shows with what good sense the majority of the leaders are facing the problems of their race. . . . Only by discussing them in open and democratic fashion can the tasks before the Jewish race successfully be met.”

Leadership in the constitution of the world Jewish congress which is to be convened in the summer of 1934 must come from America inasmuch as the representatives from various lands at the Geneva conference “failed to show that they have possibilities at the present time to help us in organizing the coming world congress,” declares Z. Tygel, secretary of the Executive Committee to organize the congress, in a statement issued.

Because of this fact, “it is readily understood that most of the future work is to fall to the lot of American Jewry,” according to Mr. Tygel, and “in the present moment on the American Jewish Congress.

“There is danger that without the co-operation of the entire American Jewry this enterprise will not be carried to a consummation,” declares Mr. Tygel.