U.S. Jewish Groups Call Huge Meeting Against Soviet Anti-semitism

Twenty-four Jewish organizations, with a combined membership of more than 3,000,000 American Jews, including Zionists and non-Zionists and representing all religious branches of American Judaism, today decided to jointly sponsor a mass meeting to denounce the anti-Jewish campaign in the Soviet Union and its satellite nations. The meeting will be held at Manhattan Center February 16.

The decision to call the meeting was taken by the representatives of these groups at an emergency meeting at the American Zionist Council. The meeting is one phase of a “counter-offensive” by these groups, Louis Lipsky, chairman of the AZC, announced. He pointed out that this is the first mass meeting sponsored by so many major Jewish groups in the U.S. since the early years of the Hitler regime. He reported that efforts to square Madison Square Garden, which can hold many thousands of persons more than Manhattan Center, failed because there were no free Garden dates until mid-May.

Among the sponsors of the meeting are: American Jewish Congress; American Zionist Council; B’nai Zion; Farband-Labor Zionist Order; Free Sons of Israel; Hadassah; Hapoel Hamizrachi; Independent Order Brith Abraham; Jewish Labor Committee; Jewish War Veterans; LZOA-Poale Zion; Mizrachi Organization of America; National Community Relations Advisory Council; National Council of Young Israel; New York Board of Rabbis; Progressive Zionist League; Rabbinical Assembly of America; Rabbinical Council of America; Rabbinical Council of America; Synagogue Council of America; United Zionist Labor Party; Workmen’s Circle; Zionist Organization of America; Zionists-Revisionists, and Zionist Youth Council.

The American Christian Palestine Committee issued a statement declaring: “As Christians intent on preserving the democratic values of the Judaic-Christian tradition and extending them as widely and deeply as possible in our common life, we are impelled by our faith to condemn and oppose this resurgence of anti-Semitic activity. We consider it as parallel to the bestial pogroms of the Nazis; and, as two decades ago, so today we affirm our unalterable opposition to such cruelty which violates all that is worthful in democracy and Christianity.”