Rabbi Irving F. Reichert, one of the founders of the American Council for Judaism in 1942 and honorary vice president of the organization, resigned from the Council yesterday with a blast at its officers for carrying on an “obstructionist campaign against the welfare and legitimate aspirations of Israel and its people.”
Rabbi Reichert, in a letter of resignation to Council president Clarence L. Coleman, insisted that the organization had abandoned its original purpose of supporting projects in Palestine of an “economic, cultural and spiritual nature.” Instead, he said, the Council has become a political pressure group attempting to influence the policies of the United States toward Israel and the Middle East “in precisely the same fashion as have the Zionists, whose political activities it severely criticizes.”
The Council, Rabbi Reichert continued, “is virtually a pariah in Jewish organizational life” as a result of its activities. He cited as a case in point the recommendation of the last convention of the Council for Judaism that the U.S. Government undertake an official investigation of the United Jewish Appeal. He called this proposal “incredible and outrageous.”
Finally, Rabbi Reichert pointed out to Mr. Coleman that the atmosphere in which the Council had been founded had changed. He said that membership in Zionist organizations was declining and that the loyalty of American Zionists to the U.S. “is freely conceded to be as ardent as that of any anti-Zionist or non-Zionists.”
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.
