Religion: Soil & Soul

Soil & Soul Zionism was sparked largely by oldtime European social democrats who relegated religion to second or even no place at all. In Israel, Orthodox believers and a secularist government still live in uneasy truce. But among U.S. Jews, this division has been largely ignored. The majority of U.S. Jews accepted Zionism so enthusiastically, mixing its political aims with their faith’s ritualized nostalgia for the lost homeland, that most Orthodox rabbis and lay religious leaders have made a place for themselves in Zionism. They usually did so in one of two organizations: the 100,000-member Mizrachi Organization of America (founded in 1911) and the 50,000-member Hapoel Hamizrachi of America (founded in 1921). Last week, in convention at Atlantic City, N.J., the two merged into a new group to be known as the American Religious Zionist Organization, calling itself “the united religious voice of American Jewry.”

The new body will be considerably less than that, but will be a potent force among the 2,000,000 Orthodox Jews in the U.S.—not by weight of numbers but of influence; it claims to include in its 150,000 membership a solid majority of the U.S. Orthodox rabbinate. A.R.Z.O. will try to strengthen Jewish religious life in the U.S., is especially concerned with expanding Hebrew schools and training more Hebrew teachers. The organization will also raise money to support religious schools and settlements in Israel.* Elected president of the A.R.Z.O. was Russian-born Rabbi Isaac Stollman of Detroit’s Mishkan Israel Synagogue, former national vice president of Mizrachi. Said Honorary Cochairman, Mordecai Kirshblum: “We represent the religious aspiration of Jewry to see in Israel not only a revival of the soil, but also of the soul.”

* For other news of American-Israeli fundraising, see NATIONAL AFFAIRS.