Rabbi Ferdinand M. Isserman of Temple Israel, St. Louis, was one of the principal speakers at the first mass meeting of Michigan members of the National Union for Social Justice, held here last night. He was on the platform upon the invitation of Father Charles E. Coughlin, radio priest founder of the organization which claims a membership of 8,500,000 qualified voters throughout the country.
Following is the full text of Rabbi Isserman’s address:
"All over the world, Jews are celebrating this night, the close of the Passover festival, which commemorates the emancipation of the ancient Hebrews from the tyranny of the Pharaohs. Rejoicing in their divinely achieved freedom, they crossed the Red Sea and exultingly marched into the desert to receive the Ten Commandments, the cornerstone of civilized morality. In that ancient ethical code, the ideal of social justice found expression. From Sinai to this day, social justice has been part of the religious tradition of Judaism. At the hands of the prophets, it received immortal articulation. Hear again the words of Isaiah, read for centuries in the synagogue on the Day of Atonement, the most important day in the Jewish religious calendar: ‘Is not this the fast that I have chosen? To loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke? Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry and that thou bring the poor, that are cast out, to thy house? When thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?’
"From the teachers of Israel, the social justice principle entered into the soul of Jesus and thus was woven into the fabric of the Catholic and Protestant tradition. The social justice encyclicals of Popes, the proclamations of Protestant church bodies, the statements of rabbis and synagogue organizations are merely the extended shadows of the social idealism of these Hebrew spiritual giants. The Central Conference of American Rabbis, in keeping with Judaism’s finest tradition, drew up a program of social justice before the depression, which maintained that human rights take precedence over property rights, and urged the recognition of the principles of collective bargaining; a living wage; unemployment, sickness and disability insurance; old-age and mothers’ pensions; the five-day week; the protection of women in industry, and voiced opposition against child labor.
"Like most of my colleagues in the rabbinate, I have been an advocate of social justice since my ordination. Having served as a member of the Social Justice Commission of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, and five years ago having been the organizer, and still being the chairman of the St. Louis Commission of Social Justice, I accepted the invitation of the Rev. Father Charles E. Coughlin to speak with a Protestant clergyman, some congressmen and himself on the necessity for social justice before this meeting.
"I am not a member of the National Union for Social Justice, but in sympathy with much though not all of its program. I speak as an individual, representing no organization, inspired by my faith to serve my followers of all creeds.
"In order to be here tonight, I had to absent myself from the Passover services in my own congregation this morning. But how better could I celebrate the festival of freedom than by raising my voice in behalf of social justice? Is it not true that without freedom there can be no justice? When Moses dared to champion the cause of the oppressed slaves in Egypt, even though he was a member of the royal house, he was compelled to flee into exile. If, among the slaves, there had been prophetic spirits, they could not have raised their voices on behalf of social justice in the face of Pharaoh’s tyranny.
"Even as in those days, so the modern Pharaohs, whom we now call dictators, rule with an iron hand and with a reign of terror. With democracy lying prostrate, with liberty sneered at as an outworn superstition in lands where these Pharaohs rule, the champions of social justice are either terror-stricken or bemoan their fate in concentration camps. If it were not for the liberty and democracy that prevail in America, and that with the help of God will continue to prevail in our land, this meeting and the national organization which sponsored it, would not have been possible.
"We who believe in social justice, no matter how we differ on the application of these principles to the American scene, must be one in the determination to maintain at all costs, and at all sacrifices, the principles of democracy and of liberty, not only sacred because of the sacrifice of our heroic fathers, but also because without them reaction would remain unchallenged, greed and avarice would rule undisturbed, and the woes of suffering men would continue. Lest we be led astray by Fascist whisperings that freedom and democracy are inefficient media of government in a complex industrial civilization, we must remember that wherever democracy has been destroyed, it has been destroyed not to help the common man, but further to degrade and enslave him. I would rather be a beggar in rags eating a dry morsel, the master of my destiny and the captain of my soul, than a sleek, well-fed, pampered, servile hireling, goose-stepping to the whims and caprices of a dictator or despot.
"Moses, a prince in Egypt, preferred starvation in the desert with freedom to royalty with acquiescence in oppression, injustice and slavery. The first plank in the program of any social justice group must be a rededication to and a declaration of faith in democracy and liberty.
"In this vast continent, which a kind and generous Destiny has entrusted to our safe-keeping, there is no moral and no practical reason why millions of persons should be the wards of private or governmental charity, and millions of others should live continuously on the border line of starvation, while factories are idle and fields lie fallow.
"We suffer not from over-production, but from under-consumption. We have not been as generous in distributing the bounties of nature as Providence has been with us. Who stretched this country from the Atlantic to the Pacific? Who ploughed the courses of its rivers? Who raised its beetling mountains? Who filled its hills with mineral wealth? Who put coal in its mines and oil in its lands? Not man, but God, working through nature, preparing through arduous centuries the abundance now within our grasp.
"We must in the administration of this vast domain be as generous as was God in endowing it. We must, by applying the principles of social justice to our economy, guarantee to every man, woman and child, born and living under our azure skies, the fundamentals of existence, the opportunity for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. To the rights guaranteed to us in the constitution, we must add a new moral charter, the right of every individual to a job and to freedom from economic insecurity as far as the limitations of our resources permit. These can be attained through the American scheme of government without the importation of any foreign political ‘isms.’
"If this National Union for Social Justice will rally to maintain democracy, and if it will endeavor to secure social justice for men and women of all creeds, of all denominations, of all races, if its program will equally include black and white, Catholic and Protestant, Jew and Christian, native and foreign-born, if it will be animated not with malice but with mercy, not with hate but with love, not with frenzy but with reason, not with fear but with faith, then it may become a great instrument in establishing a new order of social justice in the United States, and thus blaze a trail of hope for the children of men everywhere. If this will be its hallowed purpose, from which it will allow no temporary advantage to swerve it, then it may become a historic movement and gain the acclaim of history and the blessing of God."
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
