CCAR President Says Lay Leadership Downgrades Needs of Synagogues

The president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis condemned what he termed the dominant emphasis within the Jewish community of fund-raising and a downgrading of religious institutions “towards the bottom of financial and moral priorities.” Rabbi David Polish, Evanston, ill., told students at the Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of Religion during the Founder’s Day observances, “the power and influence in Jewish life have been transferred with increasing acceleration into the hands of well intentioned and devoted Jews who have the capability of destroying American Jewry out of sheer love for the Jewish people.”

The CCAR president acknowledged that the synagogue must make numerous changes in emphasis to become the viable center of Jewish life in the community. He deplored the situation wherein the synagogue is currently mainly used by Jewish leadership to drain the financial resources of the grass roots Jewish community instead of helping to build the religious institutions to play a central role in Jewish life. “The ultimate hope for Jewish survival,” Rabbi Polish said, “rests upon the synagogue survival, and in this lies the threat that American Jewry and its lay leadership do not see it that way.”