Book contents
Appendix B - Key Institutions
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2015
Summary
Jewish Organizations
American Council for Judaism: Anti-Zionist Reform rabbis organized the council in 1942 in response to what they perceived to be Reform's movement away from the Judaism-as-a-religion-only principles of Reform founder Isaac M. Wise. The council expanded to include laymen, such as Times publisher and Wise's grandson-in-law Arthur Hays Sulzberger, who helped write the group's founding statement and served briefly as a vice president. The group was stridently anti-Zionist and even after the Holocaust insisted that Jews remain in their countries of origin, including Poland and Germany. Sulzberger officially broke with the group in 1943, but continued to support it behind the scenes until the founding of the state of Israel in 1948. Among its religious leaders were founders, Rabbis Morris S. Lazaron and Louis Wolsey. Lessing Rosenwald, scion of the Sears Roebuck fortune, served as lay president.
American Jewish Committee: The committee was founded in 1906 by well-to-do American Jews, mostly of German background, including several of Times publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger's relatives. Because its membership included men of wealth and social prestige, the committee had influence within the American government. It shunned public protests, preferring behind-the-scenes negotiation to affect U.S. policy. The group did not support the idea of a Jewish state and thus often found itself in conflict with other Jewish groups. Maurice Wertheim served as president at the beginning of World War II and was succeeded by lawyer Joseph Proskauer in 1943.
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- Buried by the TimesThe Holocaust and America's Most Important Newspaper, pp. 368 - 372Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005