Major Jewish organizations continued today to announce their attitudes toward President John F. Kennedy’s proposals for Federal aid to education. The American Jewish Committee and the American Jewish Congress last week endorsed the Kennedy proposals and also backed him in his opposition to giving Federal aid or loans to parochial or private schools.
Hadassah addressed a statement today to both houses of Congress backing President Kennedy’s bill of Federal aid to public schools. With regard to such aid to parochial or private schools, in the form of government loans or grants, the Hadassah statement said that this question “is not properly related” to the pending Administration bill, and should be considered separately on its own merits.
The Central Conference of American Rabbis, national organization of Reform rabbis, in a statement by the organization’s executive vice-president, Rabbi Sidney L. Regner, today affirmed support for the Administration’s bill, and expressed opposition to “the use of Federal funds to provide grants or loans to non-public schools.”
The Conference, declared the Reform statement, “has consistently fought for freedom of religion, and holds that religious liberty is best maintained through the separation of Church and State. We declare that parents have every right to send their children to nonpublic schools, but they do not have the right to do so at government expense.”
On the other hand, Agudas Israel of America, a national Jewish Orthodox movement, declared today that “Orthodox Jewry favors government support of parochial schools, which bears no relationship to the principle of separation of Church and State, since the parochial schools bear the brunt of heavy budgets for secular subjects, which should be covered by the government.” According to Agudah, “the penalizing of Orthodox Jewish parents, by denying their children the benefits of their taxes,” constitutes “a discrimination to which the American Government should call a half.”
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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.
