A challenge to the World Zionist Organization to become the new world Jewish organization was issued today by Dr. Simon Greenberg, vice-chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary of American. He spoke this afternoon to 500 colleagues gathered at Grossinger’s, for the largest convention in the history of the international rabbinical body of Conservative Jewry.
Dr.Greenberg charged that the inability of the present Zionist movement to achieve such stature was due to “the failure of Zionist leaders to formulate a platform whose basic planks could take the place of the first paragraph of the Basle Program in its boldness of concept and its universal appeal.”
Declaring that the need for such a worldwide Jewish organization concerned “exclusively with coordinating and challenging the widespread interest of Jews in Israel cannot be gain sayed, ” Dr.Greenberg asserted that its creation would demand that “the leader ship of the present World Zionist Organization have the courage to start “anew” Just as the founders of the United States scrapped the original Articles of Confederation at the American Constitutional convention.
Outlining what such a new constitution might contain, Dr. Greenberg suggested recognition as equal forces of “a politically independent, secure, spiritually and ethnically sensitive democratic Jewish community in Israel, ” a ‘Torah-rooted synagogue in every Jewish community everywhere,” and “the use of the Hebrew language both for prayer and as a language of daily intercourse. ” Such an organization, he said, would contribute to the sense of kinship among all Jews and “to our awareness of our treasured religious heritage and our vast literary and cultural tradition.”
Dr. Greenberg also called upon the members of the Rabbinical Assembly to take part in developments in Israel not only as individuals but as a movement. He called for reexamination of the position that “we remain neutral in act and word in relation to the discussion carried on among Jewish residents in Israel regarding the character of the community they seek to build there. ” He described this ideological stance as one which could never be adhered to and to which “it is no longer possible even to pay lip service, since what happens in Israel is bound to have a tremendous effect upon our lives, the lives of our children, and upon the future role of the Jewish religion in the world.”
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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.
