Admiral Stanton W. Salisbury, chairman of the Armed Forces Chaplains Board, addressing the opening session of the 41st biennial assembly of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, today called on leaders of Reform Judaism to “relinquish your rabbis for (military) duty, with the satisfying knowledge that they will bring your home environment and Jewish spiritual guidance to your children in the armed forces.”
Dr. Maurice N. Eisendrath, president of the U.A.H.C., offered a four-point program to encourage the procurement of chaplains: 1. Extension of leaves of absence; 2. Provision of salary differentials; 3. Assurance that pulpits will be returned to the rabbis upon their return from military service; 4. Freezing of pulpits so that if vacancies occur during their absence, the men in the Chaplaincy will not be penalized, but will have an equal opportunity to be considered for those vacancies.
The U.A.H.C. president also urged the convention delegates to petition the U.S. Government for grants-in-aid to Israel. “It is high time,” he declared, “that the ironic contradiction cease between our government’s generous assistance even to Fascist Spain and to other effects and reactionary governments the world over, and its patent and inexcusable failure to allocate out of the billions that we have thus expended such sums as are so desperately needed by the lone bastion of democracy in the Middle East which is Israel.”
Meeting concurrently with the U.A.H.C. are the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods, and the National Association of Temple Secretaries.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.
