Methodist Minister in Omaha Denounces Klan

(Jewish Daily Bulletin)

Rev. Edgar Merrill Brown is the second Omaha minister this week to resign from and denounce the Ku Klux Klan in this section of the country.

The controversies arose from the fact that the Klan is attempting to dictate the course of actions the ministers should take in their pulpits and private life, it is reported.

In a public denunciation of the Klan, Rev. Brown, who is pastor of the Dietz Memorial Methodist Episcopal Church here, declared:

“I will allow no man within or without my Church to dictate to me what my message as a minister of the Gospel shall be. I am opposed to black-listing and boycotting methods used by this organization across the country. This sort of coercion is un-Democratic un-Christian and un-American. I have many friends among the Catholics, Jews and Negroes and other groups in the city of Omaha and refuse to surrender my relationship with them without just cause.”

Rev. J. L. Bebbe, Pastor of the Grave Evangelical Church here, resigned from the Klan last week, challenging, at the time, F. L. Cook, field representative of the organization in Omaha, to a public debate.

STRAUS LIBRARY RECEIVED BY JERUSALEM LIBRARY

The Jewish National and Hebrew University Library in Jerusalem has now received the complete library of the late Oscar Straus of New York which was bequeathed to the Library.

During his life time Oscar Straus had from time to time donated several hundred volumes to the Library and the books which the Library has now acquired number some thousand volumes pertaining to international law, to general history, to political history of America, and history of American Jews.

Among the books received are a series on the foreign relations of the United States, American History and the Report of the American Historical Association; a series of Makers of History, and the publications of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; many Encyclopedias; and also a volume of clippings and copies from different sources concerning the diplomatic correspondence of the United States with Turkey with reference to the Jews dating from 1840-1901.

A new translation of the Psalms has been made by Prof. J. M. P. Smith of the University of Chicago and is soon to be published by the University press.

Prof. Smith divides the Pslams into five books and gives a chapter heading to each Psalm. The second he calls “A Warning to the Nations”; the eighth, “The Dignity of Man and the Glory of God”; the sixteenth, “Faith and Hope”; the nineteenth, “God’s Praise in the Physical and Moral Universe”; the twenty-third, “The Good Shepherd”; the forty-fifth, “A Royal Marriage Song”; the 120th. “A Warning to Liars”; the 130th, “De Profundis.”