Group to Rate Politicians on Jewish Communities ‘rights’ Issue

One of the initial projects of a national Community Security Council, which is now being organized to protect “the rights” of Jewish communities threatened by neighborhood changes and city planning, will be creation of an IEQ–an ethnic and religious quotient–for rating candidates and office-holders on their positions on such issues, a spokesman for the group said today.

Dr. Seymour Siegel, a faculty member of the (Conservative) Jewish Theological Seminary of America, said that an organizing meeting of the new group will be held here on Dec. 26. He added that, despite the fact that the CSC was still in process of formation, there was widespread agreement that such a rating system, similar to that used by Americans for Democratic Action, to evaluate the records of politicians, was an appropriate and needed project for the new agency.

The development of a research group of Jewish academicians–sociologists, statisticians, and political scientists–will be a key effort of the new organization. Creation of the IEQ will be one of its first functions, Dr. Siegel said. He added that they will contribute their academic and professional skills on a volunteer basis. He reported that more than 100 responses had been received from both Jewish and non-Jewish scholars and public officials in response to the provisional group’s first mailing.

Dr. Siegel cited as an example of the range of response within Jewish leadership the enrollment as members of CSC of Rabbi Louis Bernstein, who is scheduled to become president of the Orthodox Rabbinical Council; Dr. Seymour Lachman, vice-president of the New York City Board of Education, and Prof. Jacob Petuchowski, a professor of rabbinics at the Reform Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati.