World Press Digest

Under the headline “Jewish Leadership Must Lead,” the Jewish Weekly News of Melbourne, Australia, says:

If the years to come will criticize this generation for its general attitude towards Jews and Judaism, criticism will be directed mainly against refusal to face major problems and to endeavor to find a solution.

The change will be that, at a critical period in the history of the people Jewish leadership lacked sufficient courage and sufficient determination to amend and demand Jewish observance in order that it might more adequately interpret the spirit of Jewish tradition in the light of the age in which we live. The whole vast literature of Rabbinic Judaism cries out in eloquent protest at our refusal to face facts.

One has only to read the discussions that make up the Talmud to appreciate the sanity and vision of those great Jewish sages and how foreign was this modern laissez-faire policy.

DEPLORE DRIFT

As long as we decline to meet our problems in the same spirit of common sense and rationality as did our ancestors when faced with like difficulties and similar situations, so shall we continue to deplore the drift and condemn the indifference.

There is a wealth of custom and ceremonial which is vital to the stream of Jewish tradition and without which Judaism cannot hope to survive. But even the most punctilious in the matter of Jewish observance admits the presence of much that is no longer not only inessential but a dangerous excrescence on the fabric of Judaism and which remains on the Statute Book merely because recognized authority has not had courage enough to remove it. It is the responsibility of Jewish leadership to distinguish between that which is essential and that which is unessential. It is the duty of Jewish leadership to lead and not permit every Tom, Dick or Harry to usurp its functions.

OWNING LAND WOULD SOLVE LABOR PROBLEM

The Zionist Record of South Africa in an editorial on land problems in Palestine, says:

We hear much in these days of the drift of Jewish labor into the towns. This is not the place to enter into the controversial aspects of this vexed question. But it is fair to say that if the Chalutzim coming into Palestine could all be placed upon land which they could work on their own account, in groups or singly, the problem would cease to be a problem. It is largely because the Jewish National Fund cannot, through lack of means, acquire large new areas for this purpose that the newcomers swarm into the towns and betake themselves to purely urban occupations.