The Board of the Vienna Jewish Community is faced with a crisis following the resignation of the eleven members of the Union of Austrian Jews. This resignation has made the election of former vice-president Dr. Josef Loewenherz as president of the Board by the Zionist majority impossible.
But the resignation of the eleven members of the Union of Austrian Jews has brought up the whole question of the future of the present Board of the Vienna Jewish Community. Originally the Board consisted of thirty-six members, twenty-one Zionists and fifteen non-Zionists. of the twenty-one Zionists seventeen belonged to the middle class parties, while four were Poale Zionists. The fifteen non-Zionists also included four Jewish Labor members, the rest being members of the Union of Austrian Jews.
After the February revolution, however, the mandates of the Labor members were annulled. This decision left the Zionists with only seventeen members of the Board. The members of the Union of Austrian Jews are of the opinion that the present Zionist majority does not represent the necessary quorum legally justified to appoint a president.
The Zionists are in favor of new elections, but it is very possible that the present Government will consider elections of any kind as contrary to the spirit of the present regime and may even demand an undemocratic revision of the constitution of the Board of the Jewish Community and thus seriously infringe its autonomy.
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.
