Wertheim, Other Leaders, Hope New Year Will Bring Relief for Jews

The hope that he free world foreshadowed by the Four Freedoms will bring to Jews, as to members of all faiths, relief from the monstrous tortures and injustices to which many of them have been subjected, was expressed here today by Maurice Wertheim, president of the American Jewish Committee, in New Year’s greetings to Americans of Jewish faith.

“The opening of the Jewish New Year comes amid the grimmest and most fateful conflict in human history,” Mr. Wertheim’s message said. ” A particular significance is added this year to the Holy Days. For by the time the new year has run its course, it will probably have been determined, for nations as for individuals, when liberty and peace are to prevail again. To achieve a free world, our New Year’s devotions should nerve us to endure and persevere with undismayed heart through disasters and suffering.

“This hope, foreshadowed in the Four Freedoms, envisages a world worth living for, and if necessary, dying for. Its sublimity must guide the post-war world, since on no other foundation can man-kind and civilization survive. To Jews, as to members of all faiths, this future must bring profound relief – relief from the monstrous tortures and injustices to which many of them have been subjected; relief from the closing of their schools and the burning of their synagogues; relief from hunger and squalor; relief from the fear that haunts millions of them in every waking hour.

“The re-enfranchisement of the oppressed in Europe will free millions of Gentiles as well as Jews, for this is a war for general liberation, a war which, ironically enough, the would-be enslavers and oppressors falsely charge was brought on by the enslaved and persecuted. The statesmen of tomorrow must remember our President’s words: ” We know that enduring peace cannot be bought at the cost of other people’s freedom.” This vital and incontestable truth must be the charter of Jewish freedom when victory is achieved. It enshrines the first and last word of the sternal Jewish creed. It was this creed which produced the teachers and the prophets in Jewish history, and which has kept the Jewish people alive in its unparalleled career of suffering. With its new affirmation and our rededication to it may yet begin a new chapter in the history of man.

“Upon us Jews, in particular, therefore, lies the imperative obligation to help carry the present struggle to successful and early conclusion. To that aim, all energies and all resources must be devoted. No one who knows the love of American Jews for their country, the United States of America, can doubt for a single instant that they will throw their all into the fight to preserve the freedom of America and the entire world,” Mr. Wertheim concluded.

RELIGIOUS AND ZIONIST LEADERS PRAY FOR VICTORY

Adolph Rosenberg, chairman of the Board of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, the oldest synagogue organization in America, addressed a Rosh Hashanah greeting to the presidents of the 307 congregations affiliated with the Union. Mr. Rosenberg expressed the conviction that Judaism can again serve mankind by offering well-tried, even though old, remedies which were learned through long experience of moral and spiritual growth. Recognizing that the coming year will bring its difficulties for all of us, Mr. Rosenberg concluded his message by praying that the “hardships of the year fall lightly upon you and your loved ones.”

Dr. Israel Goldstein, president of the Synagogue Council of America, which represents 1,300 Orthodox, Conservative and Reform rabbis and congregations, expressed the hope that our democracy will meet its post-war responsibilities after winning the war. “In the Rosh Hashanah mood the Jew envisages his own present affliction in the light of the world’s tragedy and links his hope for his own future with the hope for mankind’s future. May the New Year bring us closer to the inevitable victory of freedom’s cause, closer to lasting peace and closer to the realization of God’s Kingdom on earth,” Dr. Goldstein’s message road.

Declaring the dawn of the new year 5703 “instills in us renewed faith in the triumph of the cause of the United Nations”, Judge Louis E. Levinthal, president of the Zionist Organization of America, in a Rosh Hashanah message to American Zionists, voiced the conviction that the “freedoms we Americans enjoy, shall become the inalienable rights of all men everywhere and that the Jewish people shall find permanent redemption in the re-establishment of Palestine as a Jewish Commonwealth.”