Palestine Snowstorm Sweeps Hebron Area

(Jewish Telegraphic Agency)

The area of Hebron, the ancient Biblical city, suffered in the snowstorm which is sweeping Palestine. The drifts in places were two metres deep.

An Arab was killed in the storm.

Among other speakers at the banquet will be Dr. Chaim Weizmann, Dr. Wise, and Carl Sherman, Vice President of the Congress.

The business sessions will begin on Monday, when three sessions will be held. The concluding meeting will be held on Tuesday.

DR. WISE’S ADDRESS

In his address Dr. Wise stated:

“Roumainia is writ large on the pages of contemporaneous Jewish history. A tragic frustration of hope has for the second time become the portion of Roumanian Jewry. Roumania after 1878 merely violated her plighted word to her cosignatories and defeated the express purpose of the stateman, Disracli, who had sought, with the help of the Powers, to constrain Roumania to deal lawfully, that is, humanly by its Jewish subjects. That promise, solemnly made to the Powers of Europe was broken to the hope of the Jew. In 1919, a new treaty was framed, paralleling the earlier as far as largesse to Roumania was concerned. But this differed in so far as just and even-handed treatment of the Jew became not an article of treaty stipulation, but a part of that organic instrument under which more than half a million Jews in Russian Bessarabia and Austro-Hungarian Transylvania, and Bukowina came under Roumanian sovereignty.

“All minorities, whose rights were scrupulously safeguarded under the Versailles Treaty, have fared ill at the hands of Roumania and the Jewish minority has fared worst of all. The normal method of approaching Roumania touching these violations is ## the machinery of the League of #### up ## part to #### these ## minority ## the Jewish of the League of France set up ## Part to mainmin ## these hard-woo #### the Jewnies of the al## France Iraly. France and Germany may be Crasted to make thier voices heard at Geneva. We are reminded that our own country is ## to voice a process against the ## viala## of minority ## by Roumania seeing that we failed to become a ## to the ## which re### larger ##.

“The is technically crue and valid. But it is it less as valid to paint our that ## is the only one of the #### with which out country and its true were associated wherein the ## of the Jews hs become worse ## than better since the war in the war, the America people ## by the side of Roumania giving of life and ## to the and that ## be not ## by the #### or not our government ## its signature to the possible the #### which it demand ## and a large and decisive part ## the negociations our of ## the new and ## Roumania ##.

“This consideration ## we ### in mind when the proposed Narional JEwish #### is considered by us. That ##ing and dupliearion are abhorrently wasteful. ? economy in fund###ing is a #### to be arressed by the demo### forces in JEwish ## For these have vainly protented to the past against ho worst of ### the extravaganee of#### respeat to the JEwish National ### requires to be uttered at this early stage.

“The power of the purse is an awful power. It may be used fairly, it cannot be used greatly, it dare not be used unjustly and malignly. A Chest may be a coffer into which treasure is gathered for high purposes; a Chest may also be used to smother and suffocate the undesired and the uncherished. If the force majeure of the purse of American Israel is to be trusted to a few hands, they must not be the hands of partisanship and favoritism. The power of the purse is too terrible a power to vest in any man or group of men save under the most stringent of safeguards, those safeguards through which democracy alone can guarantee the perpetuity of its spirit through these instrumentalities which it zealously uses and controls.”

Dr. Wise reviewed conditions in American during the last two years.

REVIEWS CONDITIONS IN AMERICA

“In our own land,” he said, “there is little to record save the subsidence of the floods of racial and religious passion, which some years ago threatened to engulf American. One last stigma of the evil survives in the form of an unlessened antagonism to the incoming of the foreigner and especially the immigrant from the despised because inferior Mediterranean lands, which have contributed little of moment to a civilization that lives by cotton steel, and corn. Time and again we have called the attention of the Committees of the Congress to the cruellest of the hardships which the quota regime intlicts.–the ruthless separation of family members–but thus far to little avail. The rigors are maximal, the mitigations are minimal.

“It almost seems as if the American Boxers or anti-foreigners were resolved to pursue their purposes until the torch upheld by the hand of the Statue of Liberty were extinguished. Lately it has been suggested that there be formulated a code of laws for the alien, or a ‘foreign code.’ Against this proposal to govern the foreign-born children of our country, even though they be unnaturalized, we pit a law which goes back nearly 3,000 years ‘and there shall be among you one law for the stranger and the homeborn.’ Very different this from the proposal to enact and formulate a spectar code for the foreigners to make and keep inviolate the doctrine and practice of ill-will to the stranger. And, yet, it is unbelievable that American will forever forswear the tradition of asylum or sanctuary, wrought out of and in turn fortifying to one of the noblest moods of America.

POINTS TO CHANGES

“In a sense, this session of the American Jewish Congress is preliminary to the European Conference on Jewish rights which an earlier Congress Session resolved to summon. It was the American Jewish Congress of 1918, which gave content and the largest measure of effectiveness to the Committee of Jewish Delegations in Paris, 1919. The latter, minus the representatives of the American Jewish Congress, had been incomplete and impotent as is the League of Nations minus the United States of America. The inclusion of the representatives of the American Jewish Congress within the Committee of Jewish Delegations did most to insure the safeguarding of minority rights by the terms of the Treaty.

“Nearly ten years have passed and the most decisive changes have come over the fortunes of Jews in so-called minority lands. We have learned afresh the axiom of historic experience that whereas wrong-doing may be automatic, the preservation of right, even of constitutional guaranteed rights, is never automatic. Wrong may be self-perpetuating, the right must be vigilantly cherished if it is to prevail and abide.

MUCH EXPECTED OF EUROPEAN CONFERENCE ON JEWISH RIGHTS

“In 1918, in the midst of war’s confusion, it was not possible to effect a completely democratic organization of the Jewries to be represeted in the composition of the Committee of Jewish Delegations. Today it is more nearly, if not completely, possible. Moreover, we have had nearly ten years of life in the reconstituted lands of Europe, nearly a decade in which to learn the surest methods of enforcing rights and of averting infractions thereof. In these circumstances and with the fullest approval and support of these Jewish representatives from European lands, included within the Committee of Jewish Delegations, we have taken steps to call a Conference to be held in some European city in the month of August, which conference is to limit itself to the consideration of Jewish rights. The composition of the conference has not yet been fully determined, but it is certain that several groups will be included, the representatives of the lands in which Jews dwell under the regime of minority rights of the West European zone and farther still from the spirit of governmental inequity and legal inequality. That Conference will, it is hoped, be inclusive of the finest spirits in European Jewry. To it we must delegate our strongest and our wisest to the end that American Israel be fitly represented at a Conference, the purpose of which is to take counsel in order to end speedily every invasion and curtailment of Jewish rights,” Dr. Wise declared.

JEWISH COMMUNAL ACTIVITIES

A drive for $100,000 to erect a new building for the Jewish Home for the Aged in Providence, R. I., will be launched by Mrs. Jacob A. Shein, President of the home.

Nearly one-half of the quota of $2,500 for the United Palestine Appeal was subscribed by Linden and Rosell, N. J., Jews when their drive opened with a banquet in Serary Manor, Newark, N. J.

Founders Day at the Dropsie College will be celebrated this year on Sunday, March 13. Addresses will be delivered by Professor Israel Davidson, of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, who has just returned from a year’s travel in Palestine, Egypt and Europe, and by Doctor Cyrus Adler, the President of the College, Degrees will be warded.

At the last meeting of the Board of Governors, it was reported that at the close of the first term of the year, January 30, sixty students received credit for attendance. Besides the courses that had been announced, additional courses in Egyptology and Mishua were conducted by Fellows of the College.

Through the cooperation of a number of men, under the leadership of Harry G. Sund heim, a fund was raised for the College to enable Doctor Ephraim A. Speiser, now the Annual Professor at the American School of Oriental Research in Bagdad, to carry on archeological work in the neighborhood of that ancient city.

The Librarian reported the total count of the Library to be 32,049. Among the more recent acquisitions were mentioned a copy of Moses ben Maimon’s Mishna Torah published by Soncino in 1490, and a copy of the second edition of the Mechilta, Venice 1545.

BREVITIES

Mrs. Sarah Zerersky, 111 years old, said to have been the oldest Jewish woman in Baltimore, died last Thursday at the Hebrew Home for Incurables, where she had lived for many years.

Mrs. Zerersky’s husband, Bessah Zerersky, died two years ago, at the age of 111.