Reform Jews Designate April As “jewish Religious Freedom Month”

The nation-wide Combined Campaign for American Re form Judaism today designated April as “Jewish Religious Freedom Month” in honor of the forthcoming Passover holiday and to commemorate the 85th anniversary of Reform Judaism’s emergence in America as “a new birth of freedom for Jewish religious thought, ritual and worship.”

The campaign is the central organization for support of the Reform Jewish Community’s chief national institutions, the Union of American Hebrew Congregations and the Hebrew-Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. The two bodies are the oldest national institutions of Judaism in the Western Hemisphere. A. B. Polinsky, the campaign’s general chairman, said in making the announcement that the 565 Reform congregations of the United States and Canada have been called on to hold special Sabbath services and other religious exercises “keyed to Reform Judaism’s role in spreading Jewish religious liberalism.”