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CHAPTER 5 Between War and Peace The Council's First Annual Conference In 1945, the year World War II ended and the Palestine question resurfaced as a serious international problem, the Council experienced its maximum growth. Elmer Berger traveled across the country for almost six months, working incessantly to help organize local ACJ branches. As aresult of his and Rosenwald's efforts, the Council grew from 9 to 23 chapters and its membership increasedfrom 5,300 to 10,300. Throughout 1945 the Council distributed close to 750,000 pieces of literature, of which about 500,000 were copies of the Information Bulletin. This distribution also included several pamphlets based on Wallach's and Berger's articles and speeches. One ofthe Council's most successful publications was Christian Opinion onJewish Nationalism and aJewish State, a compendium of comments by Christians sympathetic to the Council's viewpoint. Moreover, it was in 1945 that Berger published his important book, The Jewish Dilemma, the first comprehensive synthesis of his thoughts on the conflict between Zionism and anti-Zionism. 1 Until late 1945 all important decisions in the Council were made by a small group of members who lived in or near Philadelphia. The ACJ executive committee held no meetings at all between 7 December 1944 and 23 September 1945 because both Rosenwald and Berger spent much time away on Council business; when they were available for a meeting, it seemed impossible to bring together a quorum. The situation so infuriated Rabbi Irving Reichert that he decided to resign his Council vice presidency as early as December 1944. He did not want to be held responsible for the activities of an organization that failed to consult him. Only after urgent appeals from Berger and Rosenwald was Reichert persuaded to remain in office.Z In 1945, despite an expanding membership, the ACJ found itself increasingly isolated and estranged from the larger Jewish community. It Copyright1~f'aterial Between WaT and Peace failed to compete effectively with the Zionists, who were forcefully seizing the initiative among Jews. But, while becoming alienated from the majority of American Jews, the Council was actually evolving into a support group for the American government. Its views on Jewish immigration and Palestine coincided almost completely with those of the State Department. Despite the crises of December 1944-the publication by the Zionists of Rabbi Goldberg's letter to Martha Silverman, Rabbi Wolsey's furious reaction to that embarrassing episode, and Rabbi Reichert's threat to resign-the ACJ proceeded to hold its first annual conference in Philadelphiaon 13 and 14January 1945. Attended by more than sixty delegates, the spirit of the gathering was upbeat. In their optimistic mood, the delegates decided on the very exaggerated goals-which they would not achieve-f bringing50,000 members into the Council byJune 1946and securing a budget of$250,000 for 1945-1946.3 Rosenwald's presidential report set the tone for the conference. The tenets and ideas of the Council, essential to the Jew in the modem world, Rosenwald declared, clashed fundamentally with Zionist doctrines. Zionism was archaic, medieval, and undemocratic. A menace to both Jewish settlers in Palestine and the remnants of European Jewry, Zionist ideas implied a retreat from emancipation, which had been won at a great cost and after a long struggle. Such ideas, Rosenwald insisted, had to be opposed by the ACJ "as doctrines which would create a self-imposed ghetto for Jews in Palestine to which the vast majority of Jews in the rest of the world would be tied by the silver cord of religion."4 Ideologically, Berger's and Wallach's speeches were the main events of the conference. Both focused on contrasting the Council's vision with that ofthe Zionists, stressing the themes ofJewish emancipation and integration as real alternatives to Zionism. In his address, "Emancipation-A Rediscovered Ideal," Rabbi Berger developed the theme that the ACj's philosophy ofemancipation and integration was not only older than Jewish nationalism but also inseparable from the Western liberal tradition. That philosophy was based on the idea thatJews, freed "from the isolation forced upon them on the pretext ofseparate race, national status and aspirations during the Middle Ages," should integrate themselves into the societies in which they had been living and share their destiny with their fellow citizens. By identifyingJews with their neighbors in everything except religion, liberalism freed Jews in the United States, in the nations of Western Europe, and in several other progressive countries. 5 Copyrightr.graterial [13...

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