SAUL E. JOFTES AN ARTIST OF THE POSSIBLE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00001R000300350010-6
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: November 11, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 19, 1998
• Sequence Number: 10
• Publication Date: October 5, 1966
• Content Type: NSPR

= Sanitized - Appro o ~ se : CIA-RDP75-000
By H. M. BLUMBERG
CPYRGHT
j i I
C%1!''n P Lea E?
AN A TEST OF THE POSSIBLE
Wha: are the international affairs of a world-wide Jew-
is,% brotherhood, like Briai Brith, and what kind of person
directs them'?
South Africans, including the late Prime Minister, Dr.:
H. F. Verwoerd, had the opportunity in mid-August this year
to svetis;y their curiosity, when they met Mr. Saul Joftes,
Secretory-Gene:cl of the International Council of Bnoi Brith.
The record of Bnai Brith on an
international level reflects not
only the dispersion of Jews
throughout the world in the mid-
twentieth century, but also the
diminishing isolation of Jewish
communities anywhere on earth in
our age of jet travel and trans-
continental communication.
Claiming to be the oldest and
largest-Jewish service organisation
(it was founded by Jewish immi-
grants from Germany in New.
York in 1843), Bnai Brith looks
upon its international obligations
and privileges as very important,
and the man who directs them f
PYRTpossess unusual qualities of
political judgment and diplomatic
skill.
?- For thirteen years, Saul Joftes
has been entrusted with the task
of observation, interpretation and
organisation, with his headquar-'
ters in Washington and a mission
to rove the world.
He visited South Africa twice:
the first time on a reconnoitre
1953; the second time a few
weeks ago to inaugurate a pro-
Mine for the extension of Bnai
in Southern Africa. -
JI
Trained as a lawyer, Saul Joftes
is cautious in making an assess-
ment after a short visit, hesitant
to express an opinion, and wary
about taking up a fixed position!
on a domestic issue. When he
does, it reveals a sensitive ear and
a shrewd eye for an opening.
I have no idea how he shapes;
in open argument, but in informal;
discussion in a drawing-room, l
around a committee table, over a!
,coffee, he emerges as having an an
alytical mind, rather than a flam-
boyant manner. I have been .told.,
that on two occasions in Johan-,
nesburg, he actually dug in and'
spoke out, but his customary
stance is that of the orthodox di-?
plomat, rather than a publicist of
"ideas and opinions.
That approach is in itself un-
usual in Jewish public life.
Take, for instance, the night
when he reutrned from the much-
'publicised thirty-five-minute inter-
.view with Dr. Verwoerd in the
Prime Minister's office in Cape
-Town at the beginning of August
this year.
I was asked to interview him
for what could have been present-
ed as something of a scoop, since
the Prime Minister's interest in
Bnai Brith was as unusual as it
- If; as' a veteran Washington
rrcommentator. recently suggested,
"it'is an old American custom to
I suspect the worst about the mo-
tives of our politicians," I suppose
I would not be far off if I sug-
gest that it is "an old Jewish cus-
tom to suspect the worst about
about the motives of. those who.
are always having appointments 7
with politicians, Premiers and.Pre-
sidenits. "
Aware of it, Joftes doesn't care
about it. He maps out his pro-
gramme, makes his plans, and
gets his appointments, quite sure
of their purpose. In this respect,
he is fortunate in that Bnai Brith's
International Council and their
United Nations Liaiason Commit-
tee allow Joftes considerable
flexibility, and.rely to a large ex-
tent on his initiative and judg-
ment.
- He is grateful to the honorary
officers for that authority and
trust, but is especially. grateful to
Frank Goldman, onetime. Presi-
. dent of Bnai Brith, his guide and
mentor, who took him out of a
university job teaching Interna-
tional Law at the Boston Law
School - to send him to the Nu-
remburg Trials as an observer.
"I was, I suppose, born with a
was obviously unexpected. Pleased silver spoon in my mouth," Joftes
that he had the interview, satin- admits, "and had every advantage
Pied with the course it took; Saul from my youth, being sent up to
Joftes was nevertheless anxious Harvard, eventually graduating
that it should not be blown up with four University degrees, en-
bigger than it was, either to make abling me to teach Comparative
.good newspaper copy or to en- - Government at Harvard and to
hance his personal status. The see my future in the Academies."
temptation was there, as the inter- International Law, Politics and
view with the Prime Minister had Comparative Government, as
come on the very first leg- of his branches of the social sciences,
tour and undoubtedly could have belong to the new world of nation
been exploited to "good advan
thorities
h
i
i
d
e
r au
ve t
er
states, and
tage" by a man less experienced and texts extensively from the
Sanitized -Approved For,l ,ea"'; s ` j~.000001 ROO0&OG&5 O=fO-6 they senten-
isn image UL -- .,?b..
levels.
 Sanitized ,Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00001 R000300350010-6
0
eiously draw on good old Grotius,
who wrote "De jure Belli Ac
pacis" in 16'_5, with a sly -side-
look at Machiavelli and the Bor-
gias a hundred years earlier.
They are in every way contem-
porary studies, picking up their
terminology and concepts from
the daily events of a society which
since the beginning of this century
doesn't seem to have much time.
to spare for the painstaking meth-
od of the student or scholar.
In the United States, scholars
and teachers have been p g
up a brave show of keeping up?
with a world which with wars and'
revolutions piling helter-skelter heion i
each other, scarcely gives
of the textbooks time to dry, be-
CPYRGHT
l Gore their facts are violently out-
dated.
One of the most popular auth-
ors of these textbooks, recom-
mended to South African students :
in the 'forties, was" Frederick L. i
Schuman, and when I tossed his
name into conversation with Saul
Joftes, it' was fascinating to see
how his face lit up (and so did
mine!). "Why, he interjected,
"Schuman was actually my Pro-
fessor for several years. Have you
ever read his piece on The Scape-
goats' in his `Commonwealth of
Man'? It is actually prefaced with
a'reference to the story of the live
goat sent to Azazel by our Jewish
priests." (Leviticus 16, vlaftir for.
Yom Kippur, of course.)
This facet of Joftes' personality
and this insight- into his aca
demic
sk hit
bluntly whether he isohappier in
the jousting, not all of it always
gallant, involved in Jewish public
life and on the international poll-
libel arena, or whether he perhaps
regrets that he has left the lecture
rooms and libraries for the com-
mittee rooms and platforms.
Sanitized - Approved R000300350010-6
 Sanitized - Approved For `Release : CIA-RDP75-00001 R000300350010-6
CPYRGHT
SOUTHERN AFRICAN JEWISH TIMES, WED., OCT. S. 1966 13
"No," he answered, not at au.
I enjoy my work in Bnai Brith,
even if I came to it by chance."
"Just after the Second World
War ended," he told me, "Frank
Goldman, a personal friend of the
family and a very remarkable
man and Jew, came along with an
offer to me to keep a watching
brief for Bnai Brith at the War
Crime Trials, which were to be a
watershed not only in contempo-
rary Jewish history, but in inter-
national law.
"Goldman then followed this
up with a challenge. `Would I
stay behind in Europe, and from
Paris, reorganise Bnai Brith in
Europe'?
"I accepted and stayed there for
four years."
After that, Saul Joftes, lawyer
and lecturer, began a career of
service to his people. His next
assignment was - to Santiago,
Chile, from where he established
Bnai Brith in practically every
country in South America. In
1953, he was posted to Washing-
ton and promoted to be Director-
General of Bnai Brith's Office of
International Affairs.
This work has enabled Saul
Joftes to operate in two divergent
but closely inter-related spheres,
within the Jewish community out,
side the United States, and attach-
ed to the United States mission to
the United Nations, where Bnai
Brith enjoys representative status.
His career thus turns him into
a globe-trotter with a specific
mission to the Jewish communi-
ties, not only of the Diaspora but
also of Israel, at the same time
as it gives him an entree to the
corridors of influence and power
in Washington and at UNO in
New York,
After many eventful years of
this watching, warning and work-
ing, Saul Joftes has. formulated
a clear and 'unequivocal philoso-
phy of his relationship to his.own
country, the Jewish people and
Israel.
"I am concerned with the wel-
fare of Israel, because it is the
country of my people," he says,
"but it is not the same thing as
claiming that Israelis are, my na-
tion, in the strictly political or
legal sense."
Rejecting any accusation that
Bnai Brith can in any country
work against Zionist interests,
Joftes claims that it is in fact a
singularly important instrument
within the Jewish world and out-
side it for developing Israel.
Joftes was at paihs to explain
to me how through the Hillel
Foundations which Bnai Brith
operates on the American cam-
pus, and would like to establish
at selected South African univer-
sities in the near future, an intel-
lectual Jewish element is drawn
closer to Jewish life and thought,
and therefore to Israel and all that
that country represents in modern
Jewish experience, than by a
frontal Zionist attack.
He dislikes shibboleths like pro-
or anti-Zionist and repudiates the
allegation that by coming to Jew-
ish students, with. a general pro-
gramme such as they have evolved
1 for Hillel, Bnai Brith threatens to
turn the university campus into a
kulturkam.pf" for its Jewish stu-
dents.
"There cannot be any mono-
11ithic programme for the modern
Jew, according to Joftes, and .
that much he seems to have in
common with Dr. Nahum Gold-
man and his disciples, especially
those who rallied round him at
;Brussels a few months ago, when
the fifth assembly of the World
I Jewish Congress was held. Dr.
Goldman's' words-were: "We are
now in a struggle for" the survival
'of a- Jewish people' as a people,
its right to maintain its specific
character as a people, to be united
as a people, to continue to deve-
lop its unique character, not to be
forced to assimilate itself among
the majorities among whom it
lives in the Diaspora, or as the
State of Israel, not to assimilate
in character to all the other States
of our time."
Joftes is convinced that a fra-
ternal service organisation like
Bnai Brith has an important role
to play in that struggle, wherever
it can be joined, and certainly
with whichever environmental
tools it can be fought. Thus he
pointed out to me that whereas in
Israel, Bhai Brith has Hebrew-
speaking lodges, in the U.S. typi-
cally American lodges ("Ameri-
cans are great joinzrs," he added
wryly), in Belgium our lodges,
conduct their affairs in Flemish
and for that matter, I would like'
to see lodges in Oudtshoorn or
Bloemfontein or' some place else,
conduct its meetings in Afrikaans
from time to time."
Basically, of course, Joftes is a
pragmatist in his approach to the
Jewish problems of survival;
whether physical or spiritual, and
relates our problems to the human
and not necessarily the ideal con-
dition. _
Hence, my suggestion at the
head of this profile, that if poll
tics is the art of the possible, he
is an artist of that art, a - Bos-
tonian by training, a. conservative
by inclination and a Jew by oon..
Viction.
Saniti7Prl - Apprn\/Prl Fnr RPItacP - CIA_RnP75_nnnn1Rnnn3nn35nn1 n_A