(By our Strasbourg Correspondent)
Aime Palliere, president of the World Union of Jewish Youth, in opening the second Congress of the Union here today declared there are two questions before the Jewsish youth at the present time. Over sixty delegates are attending from Jewish youth organizations in various countries. The city authorities of Strasbourg were officially represented. Messages of greeting were received from prominent Jewish personages in many countries.
One of the big issues before the Conference is the attitude to be taken up by the World Union with regard to Jewish nationalism and the Jewish Faith. Diveree tendencies have been making themselves strongly felt for some time of the Union on this question.
“We meet nowadays young Jews who say they are neither religious nor Zionists,” the president declared in his address. “As neither religious nor Zionist, the World Union presented itself as a grouping for the defence of purely material interests, with an educational program which makes only an artificial use of Judaism, since it borrows from it nothing traditional and substantial. It is necessary for us. therefore, to give ourselves a complete account of how far it may be right or wrong to speak of our Union as a stranger to both religion and Zionism.
“The World Union of Jewish Youth does not regard Judaism as a religious creed in the sense in which this is understood by the western nations, that is, as a collection of dogmas and practices which bind a group of individuals with the bonds of faith,” he continued. “If such had been the conception, we should have objected to its being applied to us, in whom the religious sentiment is lacking and who in perfect sincerity, do not think it necessary to have such a creed.
“Our Union is based upon the essential principle of the unity of the Jewish people, the only principle which places us in accord with historical reality and shows that the Jewish people possesses a religion, morality, sociology, culture, literature, a tradition, in all of which the genius of Israel has asserted itself throughout the centuries, and which constitue its her##age. We shall strive to inculcate in our members the feeling that the history of the Jewish people, with its diverse manifestations of vitality, has continued down to our own time and is being perpetuated before our own eyes, and that it is the very first duty of every young Jew to prolong this history and to work hard to add to it new pages as we enter consciously and resolutely the grand stream of the Renaissance.
“If it is true that, in making Judaism a religious creed in the western sense, we are depriving it of its essence, it is no less certain that we are misconstruing Israel’s secular aspirations for the restoration of its national home in the land of the fathers, if we confine them to the Zionist party. But so far as the restoration of the national home in Palestine is concerned, we consider it incumbent upon us to give this work our wholehearted sympathy. This is why, among various activities, we provide also for work on behalf of the Jewish National Fund.
“Our Union ought to seek to establish a home in Jerusalem simi## to those of other creeds and which may attract young Jews, giving them the benefits of a youths’ home like that of the Y. M. C. A. And as it is easier to find this means of doing practical work for the renaissance of Eretz Israel, it behooves the Congress to reaffirm solemuly our attachment to the land of our ancestors, and our firm desire to labor with love and to the best of our ability for its restoration,” the president declared.
Our Union is the only Jewish organization participating in the entente of great international associations which group themselves around the League of Nations, and which has been invited, because of its identity of program, to take part in the Youths’ World Peace Congress to be held at Ferde in Holland.
At the evening session of the Congress. Rabbi Ernst Jacob, delegate of the Verband der Juedischen Jugend-Vereine of Germany, reported on the Jewish Youth Movement in Germany. He stated that this Union was absolutely neutral on the question of Zionism and religion, its aims being purely educational.
M. Aime Palliere then spoke on the negotiations proceeding with the representatives of the Verband for the formation of a new Federation, including the Verband and the World Union.
M. J. Schramek expressed the view that a similar accord should be concluded between the World Union of Jewish Youth and the Association Brit-Noir, and also with the large American associations of Jewish youth.
The Avukah. American Student Zionist Federation, is represented at the Congress by Lionel Gelber, of Toronto, vice president of the Toronto Avukah Chapter, and a member of the Avukah National Executive Committee.
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.
