To the Editor, Jewish Daily Bulletin:
Rabbi Israel’s resolution countersigned by 240 rabbis, has served at least one useful purpose. It is bringing one of the important problems in Jewish life to the fore and the problem is being discussed with some frankness.
The preparation and the publication of the resolution was a purely party political act. Rabbi Israel and his immediate friends wanted to organize a counterblast to Jabotinsky and they dragged in the Bible, the prophets and social justice. Whether that was fair to a great number of men who knew nothing about inter-Zionist party struggles, is a question that Rabbi Israel and his friends must decide between themselves.
“Social justice” is a slogan of the Liberals whereas the policy of the Histadruth which is definitely a socialistic organization, part of the international Socialist organization, bound and obedient to its rules and regulations, is a program for proletarian predominance.
ACCENTUATED BY COMMUNISTS
I am not arguing against the merits of this but there is a distinction and a difference as sharp and as clear as the differences between the Shulchan Aruch and the decisions of the Central Conference of the American rabbis.
The class war preached by the Histadruth in line with its socialistic affiliations and accentuated by the Communistic faction in the organization, implies the destruction of the middle-class and the abolition of all rabbis. You rightly, Mr. Editor, ask whether the middle-class in the United States ought to subscribe to this and pay for it.
Socialism is definitely atheistic—no religious Socialist group has managed to survive anywhere. It has been characteristic of the aggressive atheistic tendencies that just as forty years ago so-called “Jewish Socialists” in London and New York demonstrated their atheism by holding Yom Kippur balls, so one of the registered complaints presented at the Prague Zionist Congress was the Mizrachi protest against the convening of conferences in Palestine on the days most sacred to Orthodox and even Reformed Jews.
NO DISCIPLINARY TRAINING
There were, if I remember correctly, five points in the Mizrachi protest. Not one of them, as I recall them, had to do with Church and State, a phrase which in this respect I do not even pretend to understand, but had to do with kashruth in public kitchens, public observations of the Sabbath, and the kind of respect the normal man pays anywhere to the religious habits of his neighbors.
As to the teachings in the schools, I have asked friends in Palestine to collect all the text books and send them here in order to obtain an opportunity for objective observation on the subject.
Mr. Disengoff, whose authority and experience in Palestine no one will care to dispute, who wrote eloquently on the subject recently in Haaretz, says that the schools of the general labor federation “do not give to their graduates any kind of training in religious, moral or social discipline.” He penned a very unusual sentence, “many of our youth show marks of the lack of any restraining power, of any social training—as if their sole idea were licentiousness, impudence and the lack of discipline.”
I asked a friend who came from Palestine about the time that Mr. Disengoff’s article reached New York, to explain what “licentiousness” meant. His reply was “just that.”
REVOLT AGAINST ‘MACHINE’
This, like a great many other things, may be an over-statement, but it indicates that the struggle in Palestine is not a wage-issue nor a question as to whether there ought to be one big union or two or three. There is in Palestine and Poland a revolt against a political machine which functions largely by reason of the fact that it controls the finances of the World Zionist Organization and has succeeded in inducing the middle-class to give for the Gewerkschaften campaign.
I am thankful that Rabbi Israel came out in the open. His resolution forces a real discussion. For years the community has submitted to the propaganda of the paid publicity mongers who have skillfully helped to extract from the public large sums for purposes other than those in which normal Zionists or pro-Zionists are interested. So that, instead of the demoralizing slogan “The campaign justifies the cause,” there will now be some reason for justifying the campaign.
Jacob De Haas.
Feb. 7, 1935,
New York.
WANTS APOLOGY
To the Editor, Jewish Daily Bulletin:
Don’t you really think an apology to Rabbi Israel would have been more in order than a long argument regarding that editorial about the Histadruth?
Why not admit a mistake? The 243 rabbis surely have a knowledge of the situation in Palestine as much as the writer of that particular editorial.
Emil Crockin.
Feb. 7, 1935,
Baltimore.
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.
