Bill Seeks to Check Intolerance on Radio

(Jewish Daily Bulletin)

It would be a misdemeanor for a person to criticize anyrace. religion or creed in radio speech under a bill introduced in the Senate yesterday by Senator Burchill.

DIGEST OF PUBLIC OPINION ON JEWISH MATTERS

The celebration of the forticth anniversary of the founding of the Independent Order Brith Abraham is commented on in the “Jewish Daily News” of yesterday.

This event, the paper declares, “takes us back to the beginnings of mass Jewish immigration into this country. The I. O. B. A. in course of time became the largest of the Jewish fraternal organizations. Jewish orders have played an important part in the development of American Jewry. They were powerful Americanizing factors as well. They, too, in a measure, safeguarded Jewish interests generally. With the growth of the well-being of Jews, with the social changes that have taken place and with the general spread of life insurance, the orders have somewhat receded in popular favor. However, it should by no means be imagined that they can no longer be of service. These orders have to march with the time. They must adapt their policies to new conditions. The I. O. B. A. has now approximately one hundred and fifty thousand members, an aggregation of men and women that can be utilized for the general welfare of American Jewry.”

FRENCH STATESMAN REBUKES FRENCH JEWRY FOR INDIFFERENCE TO PALESTINE

A rebuke to the Jews of France for doing less than the Jews of other countries for the rebuilding of Palestine was made by Mr. Justine Godard, former French cabinet Minister and president of the France-Palestine Association. In an article published in “Le Monde Nouveau,” M. Godard writes:

“The position of the French Jews is quite different from that of the English or American Jews or the Jews in the countries of Eastern. Europe, such as Russia, Poland or Roumania. Iiving in the midst of a Catholic society they enjoy the same rights and prerogatives as their fellow citizens and are as free and happy as the English or American Jews are in Protestant countries. In spite of that the French Jews have to live continually in an atmosphere of latent and menacing anti-Semitism. Undoubtedly this hostility against them, which dogs all their activities, makes them more cautious, even to the extent of carrying their cantion to excess, because of their anxiety to safeguard their position. Whatever the cause, they are less prone to profess their Judaism than are the English or American Jews, who encounter no anti-Semitism and even less so than the Russian, Polish and Roumanian Jews, to whom anti-Semitism has become an every day experience and a stimulating factor in their Jewishness. The French of Jeorigin are in a way neutralized. This attitude may be a satisfactory one to those to whom assimilation is easy and a natural outcome of their conception of life.

“But as the new Jewish Palestine has since 1919, under the British Mandate made great development and has acquired a force of initiative and of realization which exceeds all expectation, we have as a result a vast disproportion between the ways in which other countries are assisting in the upbuilding of Palestine and the comparative indifference of France. It is not only from the Jewish and Zionist point of view that it seems strange and revolting that the French Jews, who were the first to be officially emancipated in Europe, should be doing less than the others for the emancipation in Palestine of the Jews who are still deprived of all civil rights; even from the French point of view this indifference runs counter to the liberal and republican spirit of France, which was the originator of great acts of justice.”