The 41st annual convention of the Rabbinical Assembly of America yesterday heard its president, Rabbi Leon S. Lang, call for efforts to make Judaism an “elevating and dynamic force,” defense of Palestine and utmost support of American defense.
The more than 200 Conservative rabbis, meeting at Congregation Adath Jeshurun, also listened to a message from President Roosevelt declaring: “I trust that the forthcoming annual convention will be fruitful of wise counsels and constructive action to interpret in twentieth century terms the message which the world has inherited from historic Judaism.”
The major portion of today’s sessions was given over to a consideration of “The Challenge of the World Crisis to Religious Leadership,” with Dr. Reinhold Niebubr presenting the Christian viewpoint and Dr. Louis Finkelstein, president of the Jewish Theological Seminary, the Jewish viewpoint. Last night, Dr. Max Kadushin, Madison, Wis., presented a paper on “The Concept of the Chosen People in Rabbinic Literature” and Prof. Louis Ginzberg, New York, delivered a learned address.
Rabbi Lang called on the American people to “avoid any hysteria, whether for peace or for war,” and asserted that “Americans today have no alternative but to subscribe unreservedly to the principle of total national defense.” He declared that the desire for liberty “imposes upon us, as Jews as well as Americans, a clear duty to support to the utmost our American Government in the measures it now takes to build an effective national defense.”
He stressed the need of “rallying the cooperative strength of American Jewry to make of Judaism an elevating and dynamic force in the lives of our people in our American scene.” To this end he proposed appointment of a commission to edit a standard American Jewish prayer book, a commission on Jewish family living and a new concerted effort to study and implement the extension of Sabbath observance in American Jewish life.
Referring to Palestine, Rabbi Lang said: “This is the critical moment when our brethren have a right to command our most powerful aid in their time of danger. To share with all American in the defense of our American freedoms imposes upon us Jews the selfsame duty to defend with all our energy and material assistance the rights and opportunities of Jews to create an indigenous and national culture through the complete life of a free people in their ancient homeland.”
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.
