Emphasizing that he speaks for 50,000 American Jews affiliated with 70 Young Israel synagogues, Pincus Iseson, national president of the Young Israel movement, today issued a statement deploring the advance publicity given to Dr. Kinsey’s book on American women.
“These advance releases and, judging by them, the book itself will do incalculable harm to the morals of adolescents and adults alike,” the statement says. “A book of this kind belongs properly only in the hands of clergymen, physicians and educators. The laity will see in this book only another addition to an already too extensive pornographic literature and will infer from the statistics contained in it justification for immoral actions heretofore properly condemned.
“without taking issue with the scientific validity of Dr. Kinsey’s findings, we feel that the publicizing of these statistics instead of encouraging greater watchfulness and moral restraint, will have the reverse effect and result in a further breakdown of chastity and the purity of the home life, the pillars of our American civilization.
“The danger of this report is amply evidenced by the fact that many reviewers have stated that it should become the basis for decisive downward revisions of the American law and moral code, thus giving sanction to sex license. Moral standards of necessity are the goal toward which human practices must aim. Their lowering will therefore, lead only to a further deterioration of conduct,” the statement concludes.
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.
