A Zionist Organization of America leader believes the ZOA can be a more effective instrument than the synagogue in combatting intermarriage, proselytization and other assimilationist attempts on American Jewish youth. Rabbi Joseph P. Sternstein, chairman of the ZOA’s National Executive Committee said here yesterday that there are many young Jews who may be unresponsive to the synagogue’s quest for their “individual or personal salvation” but who will respond to Zionism’s “articulation of loyalty to the Jewish people.”
Addressing a tri-state ZOA leadership training institute at the ZOA House here, Rabbi Sternstein said “the very nature of Jewish living in America’s free and open society subjects the character of Judaism and its survival to constant challenge.” He said the challenge may present itself in the guise of Key 73 with its missionary thrust, the blandishments of the New Left or intermarriage. “Zionism,” he said, “is an ideology which can effectively neutralize the speciousness of whatever message Christian missionaries may try to exercise on Jewish youth and it is among the most inciteful ideas that can repudiate the basic emptiness of the so-called Left.”
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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.
