Four Orthodox Jewish organizations issued a joint statement today opposing ratification of the women’s rights amendment “until adequate protection for our religious rights be written into it.” The organizations said they wanted “clear, specific guarantees that our religious freedom and practices shall in no way be jeopardized.”
They declared: “It is bitterly ironic that at this season of the Passover, commemorating the Jewish people’s freedom from Egyptian tyranny, we are for the first time ever in our beloved United States of America threatened with curtailment of our religious liberty.” This, they said, would be accomplished by the “impairing” of their right to recognize “the uniqueness of the respective roles of men and women.”
The statement was signed by the Rabbinical Alliance of America, the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the United States and Canada, the Rabbinical Council of the Sephardic Syrian and Near Eastern Jewish Community in America, and the Metropolitan Board of Orthodox Rabbis. They said they and “freedom-loving Americans of other religious persuasions” were “not prepared to see religious rights in America harmed by politicians hurriedly pursuing the latest political fad.”
THREATENS ORTHODOX PRACTICES
In additional comments to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Rabbi Abraham Gross, president of the Rabbinical Alliance, and Rabbi David B. Hollander, vice president of the Alliance and president of the Metropolitan Board, said the bill, “in its present language, directly threatens our rights to continue practicing our faith as we have for the past three centuries in America.”
They listed the bar against Orthodox women rabbis and cantors, equal job opportunities in Orthodox synagogues and integrated seating rights in synagogues as being threatened by the amendment. Rabbi Hollander said mixed public rest rooms were “a reasonable possibility” under the amendment, as was the drafting of young Orthodox women into the Armed Forces which “is bound to promote the kind of behavior and attitude to morality inconsistent with Jewish standards.”
On the synagogue seating issue. Rabbi Hollander said it could be beaten in court, but “we don’t want the litigation.” He said the Orthodox were “100 percent in favor of equal rights,” but added: “We deny that women in America are discriminated against.”
The women’s rights amendment, which significantly broadens the interpretation of women’s job rights and also applies to fringe benefits recently passed both houses of Congress by overwhelming margins, and several of the 38 required State Legislature ratifications have already been recorded. Asked why their “Emergency National Coalition of Rabbis in Defense of Religious Liberties” was formed only today, Rabbi Hollander said: “That shows how inefficient we are. It’s administrative lethargy.”
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.
