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26
wini
August, 1945
Because many Jews and Christians oppose such undemocratic and exclusionary procedures, any place in the world, they oppose Zionism and offer in place of the Jewish Commonwealth formula a program that would make of Palestine a democratic commonwealth in which Jews would be Palestinean citizens of the Jewish faith and share the responsibilities and privileges of citi2;enship with their fellow Palestinean nationals, of whatever creed or race.
But there is more than this dissent from immediate Zionist procedures to the opposition of many Jews and Christians to the movement. Zionism seeks "to strengthen and foster Jewish national sentiment and consciousness" among all Jews, everywhere and among Christians, in their opinion of, and relation to, Jews. In the words of a more modern disciple of the movement it looks upon all Jews as members of a "world-wide Jewish people which sees in the Jewish Commonwealth its highest pohtical aspirations."
Many Jews and Christians believe this to be deleterious to Jews and to the societies in which most men and women of Jewish faith live and hope to continue to live. For if Jewish nationalism succeeds, it will tend to fragmentize the world and to make of Jews, blocs in the many countries of the world. If a Jewish people, as such a political entity, should exist and its "homeland" should be considered to be Palestine and upon the basis of that association of "people" and "homeland" special political rights be accoided this "people" there, it follows by all the logic of history and
L. LMER BERGER is Executive Director of the American Council for Judaism. Graduated from the University of Cincinnati, 1930, B. A., Phi Befa Kappa. Ordained, Rabbi, Hebrew Union College, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1932. He served as Rabbi of the Reform Congregaflons in Pon/ioc and Flinf, Michigan, from 1932 io 7943, when he was asked to assume the responsibilifies of his present position. As Executive Director of the Council, he has written and lectured extensively on the subject with which this article is concerned. He is the author of a boot to be published this month, ' The Jewish Dilemma."
Rabbi Berger was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and educated in the public schools of that city. The American Council for Judaism evolved out of an experiment which he conducted with a small group in Flint. In 1942 he described his activities with this group to a group of Reform Rabbis meeting in Atlantic City to consider o program of action to counteract the unchallenged program of Jewish nationalism. Out of this meeting, the American Council for Judaism was born and is now a nationa\ organization of some 8,000 members, headed by Lessing J. Rosenwald of Philadelphia. Headquarters— 1001 Keystone State Building, 1321 Arch Street, Philadelphia 7, Pennsylvania.
events that this same "people" will have less than equality elsewhere. Nd man can be a member of two nationalities, maintaining organic, political relationship with both. No man can have two "homelands" in the modern order of things. Jews are not members of a "homeless" people. The Jews of the world cannot have special, national rights in Palestine and equal national rights in the countries in which they live. And the Jews of Palestine, as Jews, presently have no democratic right for such control of