Rabbi William Berkowitz, re-elected president of the New York Board of Rabbis at the Board’s 92nd annual meeting yesterday, served notice on the next Mayor of New York City to recognize “that Jewish citizens in our city have problems, concerns and rights” which must be dealt with just as those of other citizens. “This is no time to pursue the fiction that there is no Jewish vote,” Rabbi Berkowitz declared in his presidential acceptance address.
Noting that mayoral contenders are already courting the Black vote, the Puerto Rican vote, the Catholic and Protestant votes and the votes of many other ethnic, religious or special interest groups, Rabbi Berkowitz said that Jews “have every right to demand that candidates express their individual stands on…Jewish matters…and we have every right to cast our votes using candidates’ stands on our concerns as one of the criteria for our choice.”
Rabbi Berkowitz, who is spiritual leader of Congregation B’nai Jeshurun, lashed out at ethnic census and quotas in the City University system, rejected the idea of total decentralization of public schools and urged the city government to provide decent housing and schooling for impoverished minority groups in their own neighborhoods instead of spreading the blight of poverty all over the city.
WARNS AGAINST ‘KEY 73’
Rabbi Berkowitz warned against the possible aim of “Key 73” to convert Jews to Christianity. He said if that was one of the aims of the national evangelical program launched this year “we will fight it.”
He warned: “Propaganda for the program and efforts at conversion can and most probably will appear in places where traditionally there should be no such activity…the public schools, the public universities, the armed forces and similar institutions., We must be on guard against this, and should be ready to invoke every legal safe-guard to protect the constitutional separation of church and state that such proselytizing activity would violate.”
Rabbi Berkowitz noted in his address that the N.Y. Board of Rabbis recently adopted a resolution condemning rabbis who perform mixed marriages and called on other rabbinical bodies in the U.S. to pass similar resolutions. “Whatever the rationale for the performance of mixed marriages, we cannot accept a mixed marriage as an authentic Jewish act,” he said.
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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.
