Anti-Israel sermons delivered by three Washington area clergymen on Palm Sunday have been sharply criticized by other Christian spokesmen and by rabbis and Jewish groups. The main target was the sermon by the Very Rev. Francis B. Sayre, Episcopal-that Dean of Washington Cathedral, who claimed that the once oppressed Israelis have become oppressors of the Arabs in Jerusalem.
Also criticized were Lenten sermons by the Rev. Edward L.R. Elson, Chaplain of the US Senate and Pastor of the National Presbyterian Church and by Bishop Papken Varjabedian, Pastor of St. Mary’s Armenian Apostolic Church in Washington.
Most of the critics compared the blasts against Israel to sermons of a past era when the Easter season was the occasion to denounce Jews from the pulpit and to whip congregants into anti-Semitic excesses. The Rev. Arnold F. Keller, Jr., pastor of the Lutheran Church of the Reformation in Washington and president of the Council of Churches of Greater Washington, referred to the Palm Sunday sermons as “provocative rhetoric.” He was joined in his statement by the Rev. Philip R. Newell, Jr., acting executive director of the Council.
Without mentioning Dean Sayre by name, Pastor Keller and the Rev. Newell said the view expressed on conditions in Jerusalem “simply does not square with the facts.” They added, “This seems to us to serve only to fan embers of prejudice.” Pastor Elson, also unnamed, was criticized for his reference to the Christian Church as the “new Israel,” Inferring that the old Israel of the Jews has been superceded. Their statement characterized as “distressing” and “perplexing” the use of a week holy to both Christians and Jews “to make pronouncements which would inevitably be construed as anti-Judaic.”
ECUMENISM DEALT A CRITICAL BLOW
Rabbi Balfour Brickner, director of the commission on interfaith activities of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations and former Rabbi of Temple Sinai in Washington, called Dean Sayre’s sermon “prejudicial.” He said the Dean’s remarks on Jerusalem were “all too typical of the thoughtless remarks of some Christian spokesmen who know little but really not enough about the current situation in Jerusalem and Israel.”
Rabbi Marc Tannenbaum, director of the inter-religious affairs department of the American Jewish Committee referred to the Palm Sunday sermons as “a moral offense against Judaism and the Jewish people.” He said it was “for Christians to judge the appropriateness of the exploitation of Holy Week and its central message of reconciliation between all men as an occasion for an unfair and inaccurate and one-sided political attack against Israel.”
Rabbi Mitchell Wohlberg of Beth Sholom Synagogue, the largest Orthodox congregation in Washington, denounced Dean Sayre’s remarks as “so vile, so false, and I am sorry to say, so anti-Zionist that one shudders at the thought of it. Talk of ecumenism has been dealt a critical blow.”
The United Zionists-Revisionists of America accused Dean Sayre of “misrepresentation.” A statement issued by its director of public affairs, Prof. Marnin Feinstein, declared that the Arabs of East Jerusalem enjoyed a higher standard of living since the Six-Day War and that Arabs, Christians and Jews had access to their shrines. Feinstein added: “One might remind the Dean that the holy sites are no longer used as latrines as was the case during Arab occupation.”
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