Search JTA's historical archive dating back to 1923

Rulers Making Robots of Men, Rabbi Cautions

October 9, 1934
See Original Daily Bulletin From This Date
Advertisement

Is America to be a nation of people or of robots?

That was the question propounded by Rabbi William F. Rosenblum of Temple Israel at an open forum of the college division of the American Jewish Congress at Synagogue House, 40 West Sixty-eighth street.

It is a question, Rabbi Rosenblum pointed out, which the young college graduate of today must answer “before it is too late.”

The answer, he declared, does not depend entirely upon the youth of today. If it did, he said, the answer “would be a more hopeful one than can be given now.

“It depends upon those,” Rabbi Rosenblum stated, “who are shaping the world of the future now and they seem to be in a state of muddled thinking. Too many people in places of leadership are overwhelmed by the idea that the struggle now is between Communism and Fascism and they make the mistake of confusing one with liberty and the other with autocracy.”

The real struggle, he warned, is rather the doctrine that the state must coordinate everyone to the state policy, and that which permits individuals to find their place in society with a minimum of regulation and an absence of dictatorship.

Recommended from JTA

Advertisement