Convention of U.S. Mizrachists Approves $2,700,000 Budget for 1957

A budget of $2,700,000 for 1957 was approved here today at the closing session of the four-day convention of the American Zionist Religious Organization, formed at the convention of the merger of the Mizrachi and Poale Mizrachi organizations of America.

The 1,000 delegates to the convention adopted a resolution calling on the West to guarantee the security of Israel as a democratic nation in the Middle East. The convention lauded President Eisenhower’s new Middle East plan, but noted that the Arab-Israel problem remains unresolved. It asked the U.S. to bring about direct Arab-Israel peace negotiations.

The delegates expressed concern for the “violation of the human rights, security and freedom of Egyptian Jews” and urged the U.S. to sponsor in the United Nations a resolution to condemn Egypt for persecution of the Jews. They further called on both the U.S. and the U.N. to repudiate any attempt by Egypt to reestablish her former military position in the Sinai Peninsula and to prevent the return of the Gaza Strip to Egypt.

The convention, at its concluding session today, elected new officers. Rabbi Isaac Stollman of Detroit was named president; Samson Krupnick, president of the Traditional Synagogues of Greater Chicago, was elected chairman of the board. Rabbi Bernard Bergman president of the former Poale Mizrachi, and Rabbi Max Kirshblum, president of the Mizrachi were named honorary board chairmen.

Israel Minister of Religious Affairs Moshe Shapira told the convention last night that all religious denominations in the State of Israel “enjoy complete freedom.” At the same time, the leader of the Israeli Poale Mizrachi movement scored the exclusion of religious Jews from worship at the Wailing Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem, now in possession of Jordan.

Calling attention to Israel’s difficult problems, Mr. Shapiro asserted that “as in the past we in Israel have one great and ever loyal ally, the Jewish people.” Emphasizing that the Jewish religion through the ages has been the unifying force for the Jewish people and that any weakening of our religion must weaken the Jewish people, Mr. Shapira declared: It is therefore essential that there be a religious revival in the Jewish communities of the world for the sake of the Jewish people upon which we in Israel rest and must continue to rest for some time in the future.”

The Minister called attention to his nation’s constant endeavors to find a peace solution to the problems in the Middle East. He stressed that Israel has “extended a hand in friendship to our Arab neighbors who instead of clasping it have given us one rebuff after another.”