Rabbi Israel Mowshowitz, chairman of the board of the International Synagogue at Kennedy Airport, called for a direct dialogue between Moslem and Jewish, Protestant and Catholic religious leaders, at a special service on Sunday marking the dedication of the synagogue.
More than 1,000 persons filled the new building to hear the rabbi’s plea for an opening of communication among religious leaders of the major faiths “to create a climate for world peace, especially in the Middle East.”
In a demonstration of interfaith unity, Roman Catholic and Protestant clerics, as well as Dr. Bernard E. Donovan, New York City Superintendent of Schools, donned the traditional yarmulkes for the ceremony.
The synagogue stands side by side with the Catholic and Protestant chapels on the Tri-Faith Plaza, adjacent to the lagoon and the fountains in front of the airport’s International Arrival Building. Built at an estimated cost of one million dollars, the synagogue features a 40-foot-high twin stone Tablets of the Law, or Ten Commandments. The chapel is patterned after the first synagogue built in the United States — the Spanish and Portuguese Mill Street Synagogue of 1730, in Newport, R.I.
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.
