A series of recommendations regarding the community relations values of inter-religious activities were made public here today by the National Community Relations Advisory Council, coordinating body of Jewish organizations engaged in fighting anti-Semitism in the United States.
The recommendations were adopted at a three-day conference of the NCRAC Special Committee on Reassessment, dealing with the field of interfaith relationships. The parley was attended by 45 social scientists, rabbis, scholars of religion and Jewish community leaders.
Comprising the Special Committee are representatives of the American Jewish Congress, Jewish Labor Committee, Jewish War Veterans, Union of American Hebrew Congregations, Union of Orthodox Congregations, United Synagogue of America and many of the 30 local Jewish community councils affiliated with the NCRAC. The principal recommendations provide:
1. Particular emphasis should be placed on reaching directly local non-Jewish religious groups and their leaders. Also that there be continued use of interdenominational organizations as a common meeting ground, with full recognition of both their potentialities and their limitations.
2. There should be great emphasis in future programming upon cooperation with non-Jewish religious groups for civic and social advancement, and there be a corresponding de-emphasis of programs, now on the decline, based upon exhortation towards good will.
3. Historical and critical research be conducted upon the relationship between religious doctrines and various forms of anti-Judaism and of anti-Semitism in the United States today in the prespective of the distincitive features of American culture and of the present world situation, in order to guide more closely the fundamental lines of planning inter-religious activity for community relations work today.
4. When differences arise between Jewish and non-Jewish groups on social issues, these should be faced frankly and forthrightly. Jewish groups should continue to express themselves as a religious group with regard to civic issues on the basis of Jewish tradition, and to welcome action on civic issues by Christian groups based upon the Christian gospels.
5. The participation of Jewish religious bodies on the level of national policy for community relations work be increased; there should be a growing role for the synagogue and more effective participation by rabbinical leadership nationally and on the community level.
6. All rabbis and rabbinical students should receive training in community relations philosophy, techniques, and methods, just as all Jewish community relations workers should have a thorough grounding in Jewish tradition.
The three-day conference also recommended that the participation of Jewish religious bodies on the level of national policy for community relations work be increased, and that the responsibilities of the national Jewish religious bodies include the interpreding of Judaism, “by issuing appropriate pronouncements and statements and by conducting appropriate educational activities on an inter-religious nature resting upon a full recognition of the distinctiveness of Judaism and reaffirming the essential plurality of American life.”
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