Nearly 20 of the foremost Jewish religious, civic, fraternal and defense organizations in the United States were scheduled here today to play a highly significant role in the development of an all-American program of action, in which religiously committed Americans of all faiths, lay and clerical, will “speak with one voice on racial issues to their fellow citizens and the world.”
The occasion will be the first National Conference on Religion and Race, to open four days of sessions here tomorrow, to be attended by representatives of more than 70 American organizations of the Jewish, Protestant and Catholic faiths.
This will be the first time in the history of the United states that such an all-American gathering will be held. Upward of 800 representatives, about one-third of them Jewish, began gathering here tonight in preparation for tomorrow’s opening meeting. The formal conference conveners are the Synagogue Council of America, which represents the rabbinical and congregational organizations of Reform, Orthodox and Conservative Jewry in the United States; the Department of Racial and Cultural Relations of the National Council of Churches (Protestant); and the Social Action Department of the National Catholic Welfare Conference.
In the organization of the National Conference on Religion and Race, at the plenary sessions to be held here, in a series of four major forums and in 12 work-groups, Jews are represented equally with Protestants and Catholics. The formal convening call had been signed by Rabbi Julius Mark, president of the Synagogue Council of America, along with Protestant and Catholic leaders of equal distinction.
The Rev. Dr. Benjamin E. Mays, president of Morehouse College, Atlanta, is Conference chairman, and the three vice-chairmen include Rabbi Ferdinand M. Isserman, of Temple Israel, St. Louis. Program chairman of the conference is Rabbi Mare H. Tannenbaum, of New York, the American Jewish Committee’s director of inter-religious affairs.
JEWISH INTEREST IN PARLEY EXPLAINED BY RELIGIOUS LEADERS
Dr. Mark and Philip Hiat, executive vice-president of the Synagogue Council of America, issued statements today spelling out the Jewish interest in the conference. The parley, said Dr. Mark, “will make itself felt in every phase of American life, and mark the beginning of a serious attempt to change the existing order of race relations and affect a more Just balance among all the people of the United States.”
Dr. Hiat, asserting that “the problem of race relations is one of the great moral imperatives of our time,” said the convocation “will be a working meeting to test practical programs and to perfect new techniques to break down further the walls that separate men of different races and different religion. It will not eliminate differences, only the hostile separation.”
Rabbi Tannenhaum in a pre-conference statement, asserted that Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox and Jewish leadership, Negro and white alike, “mean business.” “They are determined,” he said, “to assume moral leadership in this area as never before.”
Jewish organizations listed as conference participants are: American Jewish Committee; American Jewish Congress; Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith; B’nai B’rith; Jewish Labor Committee; National Community Relations Advisory Council; National Conference of Synagogue Youth of the Union Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America.
Also National Council of Jewish Women, National Federations of Temple Sisterhoods and of Temple Youth of the UAHC, National Women’s League of the United Synagogue of America, Rabbinical Assembly, Rabbinical Council of America, Union of American Hebrew Congregations, Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, United Synagogue of America, and the United Synagogue Youth.
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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.
