Regarding the article, “Amid Upheaval, National Council of Young Israel Celebrates 100th” (Nov. 11), the Council is not applying evenly the right to take a disenfranchised branch’s assets. When the Young Israel of Fifth Avenue left the movement to become the 16th Street Synagogue, the Council did not take its assets.
All the arguments as to the legitimacy of the Council taking the assets of a branch which ceases to exist falls by the wayside when we realize that a major Young Israel synagogue in Detroit was forced by demographic realities to close its doors; it merged with a sister Young Israel synagogue about a mile away. The Council, instead of showing compassion, demanded the assets of the defunct synagogue.
We can understand a father’s resentment of a son who gives his assets to a stranger, but no caring parent would resent one child giving his assets to a sister so that both may survive.
The coalition of 45 disaffected synagogues is fed up with the high-handed methods of the Council and its indifference or non-concern with the feeling of its memberships.
Woodmere, L.I.
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