Mass immigration of Jews into Palestine was set forth as the greatest Zionist problem of today by Robert Szold, vice-president of the Zionist Organization of America, in an address to 500 delegates attending the eleventh annual Junior Hadassah convention at the Hotel New Yorker yesterday.
“The problem is to get the maximum number of Jews into Palestine in the shortest space of time,” he asserted. “We must face the fact that a structure of Arab national life is developing, and quickly. Great Britain is retarding immigration. We must fight all this, and transfer as many Jews as possible into Palestine.”
Mr. Szold presented official figures showing that 40,000 Jews entered Palestine in 1933 of which 2,500 were illegal settlers.
ZION IDEAL FOR JEWS
“Palestine is fit for the Jew,” he said, “and the Jew is fit for Palestine. Palestine comes nearer than any other place to being the ideal land for Jewish development.”
Speaking of the Histadruth, Palestine labor organization, Rabbi Samuel Wohl, chairman of the League for Labor Palestine said, in part: “If we are to build, let us build a Palestine which will express the noblest aspirations of our people. The ideals of the shared life and the cooperative commonwealth will establish a Jewishness as the Torah is Jewish and the Prophets are Jewish and the Land of Israel is Jewish. Palestine without Kyutzoth without Kupath Holim, without its cooperatives would not have raised the sacrificial service of its youth to a religious fervor.”
Mrs. Samuel W. Halprin, president of Hadassah, traced the rise of the Zionist movements and the various philosophies which emerged from the first Zionist ideal of Herzl.
Golden keys for cultural service were presented to the following: Ethel Alder of Omaha; Dorothy Finkelstein, Minna Olander and Ida Neuer of Columbus, Ohio; Rose Kotzin, Adele J. Leventhal and Rose Shur of Philadelphia; Sylvia Brody, Katherine Sheinin and Anne Trenner of Akron, Ohio; Ida Ebin of Minneapolis; Clara Wildman of Rochester, N. Y.; Estelle Weiss of Chicago; Pessa Polasky and Sarah Metz of Cincinnati; and Zella Ruslander of Buffalo, N. Y.
A discussion of cultural problems was held during the afternoon. Resolutions for more popular participation in cultural activity and better-rounded programs were adopted. Speakers were: Esther Norogrodsky, Rose Kornblatt, Thelma Goldfarb and Sylvia Brody.
WEINSTEIN TELLS OF BOND
The bond between Jewish youth and Palestine was described by Rabbi Jacob J. Weinstein at a banquet last night.
“I confess that I could not consider as lost and foresaken those young people who asserted that Judaism, Zionism, the Jewish people were entirely irrelevant,” Rabbi Weinstein said. “There were only two basic divisions of mankind, as they saw it, the Haves and the Have-nots—the powerful rich who were in and the powerless who were out—boss or worker, capitalist or proletariat, exploiter or exploited. All differences, all hates, all loves depended on which side of the class line you stood. What has ‘Jew’ to do with this?
“Why should I worry about trachoma or malaria in Palestine when tuberculosis and rickets ravage the poor in the streets of New York? These are my people; to them will I minister; to them will I bring healing. Nor did they stand even on one impatient foot to wait for an answer.
“You Hadassah Juniors have been aware of all the burden in the fate of the Jew and yet have not considered Jewishness a worthless distinction or a rank misfortune. A people that has lived 3,000 years against every discouragement has gained a sheer momentum that cannot lightly be gainsaid. If historic fate and social forces have conspired to keep the Jew alive, there must be a need for him in the world.
“Now, have you faced the challenge implied in the statement that it is foolish to worry about trachoma in Palestine when there is tuberculosis among the poor of your own street? You have discovered that a sensitive being, conscious of her past, develops a personality in which memory is impounded in flesh.
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.
