The House Judiciary Committee opened today its fourth week of hearings on 147 proposals to amend the Constitution to permit prayers and Bible-reading in the public schools banned by a Supreme Court ruling. The hearings were originally scheduled to last two weeks.
Rabbi Maurice Eisendrath, president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, was one of today’s witnesses. He told the committee that the proposed amendments would amount to “a dangerous experiment upon American liberties. ” Citing American Jewry’s traditional support of the principle of church-state separation, he said: “American Judaism and all other faiths have flourished in this free land precisely because here, as nowhere before in the history of the world, church and state were clearly separated.”
Dr. Jefferson B. Fordham, dean of the University of Pennsylvania law school, told the committee today that the proposed amendments were not necessary. He characterized as “sheer nonsense” charges made by proponents who say that the backers of the Supreme Court ruling are “anti-religions.”
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