Compulsory Sunday observance laws violate the principle of religious liberty, declared a statement of position issued today jointly by all the constituent organizations of the Synagogue Council of America and the National Community Relations Advisory Council.
The erection of religious statues or the placing of religious symbols on publicly owned property, likewise represent serious impairments of the principle of separation of church and state, the same organizations declared. They also affirmed their opposition to the asking of questions about religious affiliation or belief in the course of federal population censuses.
Affiliated with these two coordinating agencies combined are the congregational and rabbinic bodies of the Conservative, Orthodox, and Reform movements in Judaism–the United Synagogue of America and Rabbinical Assembly of America; the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America and Rabbinical Council of America; the Union of American Hebrew Congregations and Central Conference of American Rabbis; together with the American Jewish Congress, Jewish Labor Committee, and Jewish War Veterans of the U.S.; and thirty-nine Jewish councils in major cities throughout the United States.
The position opposing asking of questions about religion in the census was adopted some time prior to the decision by the United States Census Bureau to drop a proposed plan for seeking such information in connection with the 1960 census. Many representations were made to the Bureau of the Census and to the United States Department of Commerce, prior to the announcement last December 12 by Census Director Burgess that the plan for a question of religious affiliation had been dropped.
Regarding the erection of religious symbols on publicly owned property, the Jewish organizations declared that this “constitutes in effect a dedication of the premises to one sect or creed, to the exclusion of others.” The evils inherent in such display of religious symbols on public property, they continued, “are substantially aggravated when religious statues or symbols are placed on public school premises.
“In such cases, sensitive and defenseless children, rather than mature adults, are principally affected. Moreover, attendance at school is not voluntary but is by compulsion of law. To compel children to obtain their secular education in an atmosphere charged with a religion violative of their beliefs is to deny them their full religious liberty as well as to breach the relationship of confidence and trust that should mark their school experience.”
In opposing Sunday observance laws, the Jewish groups declared that, at the same time, they “regard as salutary laws requiring gaingully occupied persons to observe one day of rest in each week,” but they held “that the choice of the day to be so observed should be a matter of individual preference.”
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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.
