Ajcommittee and Temple Emanuel Urged to Participate in Anti-war Activity

Victor Levin, a member of the Radical Jewish Union at Columbia University, called yesterday upon the American Jewish Committee to open their offices to anti-war activity, establish draft counselling centers, and offer legal counsel to protect young Jewish war resisters. He also urged the delegates attending the AJCommittee’s 64th annual meeting this weekend to contribute $100,000 to the legal defense of the Black Panther Party, and an additional $250,000 for what he termed a center for creative Jewish living. Mr. Levin, a graduate student of anthropology at Columbia University, had been invited by the AJCommittee to address its session after he and Rabbi A. Bruce Goldman, the rabbinical advisor to the RJU, were arrested Friday evening on charges of disrupting services at Temple Emanuel, the largest Reform congregation in the world. Rabbi Goldman and Mr. Levin were part of a group of young people who had come to the synagogue to protest the war in Southeast Asia and to present a number of demands to the congregation. During his address to the AJCommittee, Mr. Levin also urged the human relations agency to use its influence to demand “unilateral and immediate withdrawal from Cambodia.” The student added, “Jews must speak up. Jews must support their brothers.”

On Friday evening, members of the RJU were escorted out of the sanctuary of Temple Emanuel after they disrupted the services by interjecting demands to “Remember Kent State University” where four students had been killed on May 4 by Ohio National Guardsmen, and “Withdraw all American troops from Southeast Asia.” Midway through the service, Mr. Levin shouted that the temple was ignoring the fact that “our brothers are dying in the street.” The demonstration took place after Dr. Nathan Perilman, senior rabbi of the Reform congregation, told the RJU that he would call the police to deal with any attempt by the Jewish activists to seize the pulpit. Rabbi Perilman said that no student or other laymen had ever spoken from the temple’s pulpit. He offered to let the RJU address the congregants during the hour-long vesper services but the student group rejected this alternative. After the arrest, Rabbi Goldman said members of the group would return to the synagogue in another demonstration to protest the “outrageous action for one Jew to ask for the arrest of another in the sanctuary.” He asserted that this had “never before happened in a synagogue in this country.” Jews have a right to Interrupt services to speak of imperative needs concerning the Jewish community. Rabbi Goldman and Mr. Levin will have a preliminary court hearing Wednesday. Prior to the start of the demonstration, some 20 members of the Jewish Defense League staged a counter-demonstration in front of the synagogue. They marched in a circle, carrying Israeli flags and chanting “Down with Panther sympathizers.”