Mr. MUNDT. They have fallen under the sway of another orator since that time?

Mr. WOLSEY. I am not unconscious of that.

Mr. MUNDT. So I was curious to learn in your answers to Mr. Vorys whether there is any higher authority than just a rabbi. I am a Methodist. We have the board of bishops who purport to speak for us. Sometimes they do not do a very good job. They put themselves in a room and out of the room comes very sagacious opinions. In the Catholics it is the college of cardinals and bishops. In your religion there is a board of rabbis or a higher group than the individual rabbi who could speak more or less for the organized Jewish?

Mr. WOLSEY. We have the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the Rabbinical Assembly, and the Orthodox Conference of Rabbis whose power is an advisory one. They cannot issue any orders, do not issue any, but they give advice born of their knowledge and study. But no individual Jew and no institution of Jews, particularly congregationals, are required to observe what they say. They have not that authority in either one of the three schools. Mr. MCMURRAY. Would the gentleman yield?

Mr. MUNDT. I yield.

Chairman BLOOM. Mr. McMurray.

Mr. MCMURRAY. The three organizations of rabbis you mentioned are each one branches or schools of thought of the church. There is the reform group which you represent, I understand. There is the orthodox, and then there is a conservative, and each one of those has a separate organization?

Mr. WOLSEY. They have varying interpretations.

Mr. MCMURRAY. I understand that. But each one of those has a separate and distinct organization of rabbis?

Mr. WOLSEY. Oh, yes.

Mr. MCMURRAY. Whose voice is merely advisory to their groups? Mr. WOLSEY. Yes; entirely.

Mr. MCMURRAY. That is all the information I wanted.

Mr. WOLSEY. Entirely.

Mr. MUNDT. And I presume the policy of these boards of rabbis is to take a position primarily on matters of theology and proper practice rather than on public questions, is it not?

Mr. WOLSEY. I should like to say that is what I would like them to do.

Mr. MUNDT. I sometimes would like to say that for the Board of Methodist Churches. [Laughter.]

Just one more question. Mr. Wright in his questioning endeavored to impute to you a disbelief or disavowal of the Balfour Declaration. To me it is confusing. I am not quite clear whether the Balfour Declaration intended to include such an arrangement as is intended by the last part of this resolution, the reconstitution of Palestine as a democratic commonwealth, or whether it was simply set up in Palestine as a national home for the Jewish people to which they should have free and unrestricted access. The language is this very apt phrase you used, it is "unprecise" language because it says, "His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people." It seems to me that

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does not necessarily include a phrase there "democratic Jewish commonwealth." You could have within Palestine a national home without creating a state?

Mr. WOLSEY. I think you are very visioning. I think you are completely correct. If I may express a point of view-I have no right to interpret-it seems to me lines 3, 4, 5, and 6 are definite supplements to the Balfour Declaration, and that they ask for more than the Balfour resolution provides.

Chairman BLOOM. I wish the audience would kindly refrain from demonstrations. It is not very respectful. Permit the rabbi to proceed in order. Proceed, please.

Mr. WOLSEY. The impression I get from these three lines of 418 which conclude it is this: That those who ask for congressional endorsement are not entirely satisfied with all the Balfour Declaration provides, and therefore, they ask for something more than what is in the Balfour Declaration. It is that "more" which is the nub of the disagreement between the two schools of thought. If they would surrender this I think there would be complete unity in Jewish life. That is my personal opinion.

Mr. MUNDT. So that, of course, enables you to support this resolution up to and including the word "country" and still be in complete support of the Balfour Declaration?

Mr. WOLSEY. That is right.

Chairman BLOOм. Mrs. Bolton.
Mrs. BOLTON. No questions.

Chairman BLOOM. Mr. Wadsworth.

Mr. WADSWORTH. None.

Chairman BLOOм. Mr. Gerlach.
Mr. GERLACH. None.

Mr. WRIGHT. Mr. Chairman, may I ask the witness one question? Chairman BLOOM. Yes, Mr. Wright.

Mr. WRIGHT. Mr. Churchill, who happened to be in the Cabinet at the time of the Balfour Declaration, stated:

If, as may well happen, there should be created in our lifetime on the banks of the Jordan a Jewish state under the protection of the British Crown which might comprise three or four millions of Jews, an event will have occurred in the history of the world which would from every point of view be beneficial.

You are acquainted with that language of Mr. Churchill?

Mr. WOLSEY. Oh, yes.

Mr. WRIGHT. Then the report on page 89 of the pamphlet we have here, prepared by the chairman, states:

His Majesty's Government evidently realized that a Jewish state might in course of time be established.

That was the report of the Royal Commission which preceded the British White Paper. And there are several other declarations of statesmen

Mr. WADSWORTH (interposing). Would the gentlemen mind reading the rest of the sentence, "but it was not in a position to say"? Mr. WRIGHT. Yes; that was later on.

Mr. WADSWORTH. In the same sentence.

Mr. MUNDT. Mr. Chairman, I would like to correct the correction of mine which the gentleman from Pennsylvania made.

Mr. Churchill is a dreadfully loquacious fellow, and like most loquacious fellows he talks clear around the mulberry bush. On page 81 the same Winston Churchill said this:

I entirely accept the distinction between making a Jewish National Home in Palestine and making Palestine a Jewish National Home. I think I was one of the first to draw that distinction.

So that just sort of confounds the confusion so far as I am concerned.

Chairman BLOOM. Thank you very much, Rabbi, and it was very nice to have you here and get your views.

Dr. Heller.

STATEMENT OF RABBI JAMES G. HELLER, FORMER PRESIDENT, CENTRAL CONFERENCE OF AMERICAN RABBIS AND CHAIRMAN OF THE UNITED PALESTINE APPEAL

Mr. HELLER. Mr. Chairman and ladies and gentlemen of the committee, I am a little disturbed at the outset lest this committee may think this is a procession of rabbis and not of sufficient laymen. I happen to have the honor of being a rabbi, also.

First of all, may I have the privilege of saying, Mr. Chairman, that although an American citizen for many years, this is the first time in my life I have ever attended a hearing of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, and I have been tremendously interested in the conduct of the hearing I hope this will be included in the record, Mr. Chairmanand greatly impressed with the conduct of the meeting and with the participation of the members of the committee in attempting to formulate their opinion in regard to what is a very difficult question.

I would like to do something, Mr. Chairman and ladies and gentlemen, which it is not usually my habit of doing. I think we all ought not to speak about ourselves, but the phrase has been used several times in this discussion that we are Americans of the Jewish faith, one which I fully accept for myself.

The impression has been gained that there is a distinction among American Jews toward this particular phrase and toward some of the concepts that underlie it.

Chairman BLOOM. Would you mind an interruption there? To what branch of the Jewish religion do you belong?

Mr. HELLER. I am going to express that in a moment.
Chairman BLOOM. All right; go ahead.

Mr. HELLER. I happen to be a Son of the American Revolution from two ancestors.

I am a rabbi of the Reform Jewish group. I was for 2 years, up until 8 months ago, the president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, of which Rabbi Wolsey is a member, and of which he was president some years ago.

I served as a chaplain in the Army of the United States in France in the last war.

I happen also to be very actively identified with the Zionist movement for many years. As a matter of fact, I inherited that work from my father, one of the first rabbis in the United States, and one of the first graduates of the Hebrew Union College, to be so identified. It must be very difficult, Mr. Chairman, for the members of the committee to formulate their own opinion when they discern differences in the opinions of those who approach them.

With entire courtesy to one who happens to be a very dear and almost lifelong friend of mine, Rabbi Wolsey, I would like to try to make clear the differences which obtain and also the extent to which this difference pervades the Jewish community.

The members of the committee will remember, I hope, that in the hearings in the Sixty-seventh Congress of 1922, when the resolution which has been referred to was passed, at least three rabbis appeared at those sessions and voiced their opposition to the Balfour Declaration and expressed it rather heatedly at the time. Nonetheless the committee voted unanimously for the resolution.

At that time there was a joint resolution, according to my recollection, which passed the Senate and the House.

I wish to God that we had complete unanimity among my people and my faith on this subject. Unfortunately we have not. We did not have in 1917 and 1918, nor have we now.

However, I think the committee ought to know much more clearly than has been said before it thus far, of the extent of the opposition to what is represented in the resolution that is before you. I believe I have some knowledge of this, Mr. Chairman. First of all, I served as president of the rabbinical group to which Mr. Wolsey belongs, and this subject was considered last November. They enacted two resolutions which I would like the privilege of reading in part.

As to the first, the relevant section reads as follows:

Of late, however, some of our members have renewed the assertion that Zionism is not compatible with Reform Judaism. The attempt has been made to set in irreconcilable opposition "universalism" and "particularism." To the members of the conference, this appears unreal and misleading. Without impugning the right of members of the conference to be opposed to Zionism, for whatever reason they may choose, the conference declares that it discerns no essential incompatibility between Reform Judaism and Zionism, no reason why those of its members who give allegiance to Zionism should not have the right to regard themselves as fully within the spirit and purpose of Reform Judaism.

That resolution was adopted by a viva voce vote with precisely two members recording their votes in the negative.

Then a second resolution was adopted. The relevant part reads as follows this refers to the organization of which both these gentlemen are members. Mr. Rosenwald is president of the American Council of Judaism, and some of his articles of faith were read here, and Dr. Wolsey is one of its most prominent members the resolution refers to them in this way:

While members of the C. C. A. R. are fully within their rights in espousing whatever philosophy of Jewish life they may accept; nevertheless, the American Council for Judaism, because of the special circumstances under which it came into being, has already endangered the unity of the Conference. Its continued existence would become a growing threat to our fellowship.

The American Council for Judaism was founded by members of the C. C. A. R. for the purpose of combating Zionism. The Zionist movement and masses of Jews everywhere, shocked by the rise of this organization at a time when Zionists and others are laboring hard to have the gates of Palestine reopened for the harassed Jews of Europe, could not avoid judging this event in the light of past controversies, or seeing in it an example of what they had come to consider the constant opposition of Reformed Judaism to Zionist aspirations. This impression does grave injustice to the many devoted Zionists in the C. C. A. R. and to the conference itself.

Therefore, without impugning the right of Zionists or non-Zionists to express and to disseminate their convictions within and without the conference, we, in the spirit of amity, urge our colleagues of the American Council for Judaism to terminate this organization.

The vote upon this resolution, which I recall vividly, was by 137 to 45 members.

You will recall, please, ladies and gentlemen, this is the one section in which opposition to Zionism has existed, which in all likelihood is about 5 percent of the Jewish population. It comprises a membership of 62,000, and if you multiply by four or five it would total 250,000. Even in this organization 3 to 1 of its spiritual leaders disagree.

In the second place, the American Council for Judaism, as Mr. Rosenwald reported, has a present membership of 2,500 people. The Zionists in this country have a membership of 314,000. Even this is not quite a correct figure, as we know who have been observing this for years.

And above all, Mr. Chairman, the American Jewish conference which was held last June seemed to us to be a complete demonstration of the point which we have made. It was not elected by direct vote, although the Zionist groups would have liked to have had it that. This was not done because it was felt that during the war it might create difficulty to have that machinery. Instead, an attempt was made to have all Jewish organizations in the United States in their respective communities select delegates and send them to a conference. And I need not tell you that every election held in this country reflected the opinion of the American Jewish communities. Five hundred delegates were elected. In the vote on the essential resolution, the Palestine resolution, as far as I could observe, by holding up cards, not by a roll call, there were probably only about five or six opposed. So this assembly which was selected upon a representative basis showed that probably a proportion of 85 to 90 percent at a minimum estimate of the representatives of the Jewish communities of this country were in favor of the resolution before you.

So I should like the committee to bear in mind that this point of view is that of a small minority of this country.

I note by some of the comments from the members of the committee that they appear to be confused by the constant emphasis upon a religious interpretation of the character of Jews in this country in contrast with that which has been spoken of as a nationalistic interpretation. The resolution which I have read from the Central Conference of American Rabbis says that is not true. They present no such antithesis as is implied in this. As a matter of fact a majority of the Jews in the orthodox, the conservative, and I think in the Reform group also are not accustomed to making this kind of separation. We are not accustomed to that. We regard ourselves as a strange amalgamation of historic continuity, possessing common ways of life and religion.

Among the Jews-I think this will be particularly interesting to Mr. Mundt it is not like the religion in the Westminister Confession or in the Presbyterian Church and in various others. There has never been a credal test of the Jewish religion. Judaism is regarded as a way of life. Moreover, I should like to make the point that Jews regard this as a religious movement because to them in consonance with the tradition there is no religious duty that is more sacred than that of saving the sons of their people. For us to disassociate this from the religious idea in trying to find a haven would be destructive. Our feeling is we are dealing not with ideologies but with facts. I hope the committee will also think so. That is an internal problem