The American Jewish Congress charged today that a purportedly non-denominational prayer recited at an assembly in the Netcong high school yesterday was in fact sectarian and demanded that the local board of education discontinue such practices at once because they are “improper, divisive and harmful.”
Netcong is one of two New Jersey townships accused by the state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union of evading the 1962 Supreme Court decision barring prayers in public schools. In Sayreville, N.J. public schools yesterday, 6,500 students were given a two minute “meditation” period to pray silently if they wished. The Netcong prayer service took place in the high school gymnasium before the start of classes. Attendance was said to have been voluntary and the blessing read was culled from the Congressional Record.
But Rabbi Israel Dresner, of Springfield, N.J., president of the New Jersey Region of the AJ Congress, claimed that the prayer which concluded with the words, “In the Redeemer’s name we pray” was “unacceptable to those not of the Christian faith.” Netcong is a community of 3,500, mainly Roman Catholic and Italian. It is not known if there are Jewish students enrolled in the high school.
Rabbi Dresner said in a telegram to Palmer N. Stracco, president of the Netcong school board that “Jewish children and others whose religious background forbids them to participate in the kind of religious ceremony sponsored by the Netcong schools are placed in a cruel and intolerable dilemma. They must either participate in religious ceremonies of a plainly Christian, sectarian character or subject themselves to being singled out as different and unwilling to conform to the plainly expressed desires of the school authorities.” Rabbi Dresner said further that “the fact that the prayer reading is advertised as ‘voluntary’ makes the dilemma for the Jewish child worse rather than better. It leaves him with full responsibility for the decision as to whether to violate his conscience and expose himself to the penalties of non-conformity. No child of any faith should be placed in that position.”
Rabbi Dresner said this situation was “impermissible legally or educationally and we urge you to terminate the practice immediately in accordance with the oath you took to uphold the U.S. and New Jersey constitutions.”
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