New York Rabbis Voice Opposition to State Aid for Parochial Schools

The New York Board of Rabbis tonight voiced opposition to the use of public funds, on all levels, for private and parochial school education. Such support, the board declared in a resolution adopted at its 81st annual meeting, would be both a violation of the principle of church-state separation and a “threat to the religious institutions which depend on outside aid to further their programs.”

Rabbi Israel Mowshowitz was elected president of the rabbinical organization which represents Reform, Conservative and Orthodox rabbis. The meeting also adopted a resolution demanding that public schools should be free of religious teachings. It also denounced the New York state Sunday closing laws as penalizing Sabbath-observing Jewish merchants and urged the New York State Legislature “to enact a fair Sabbath law which will no longer discriminate against those who honor the seventh day.”

In another resolution, the rabbis urged “a thoroughgoing study by Jewish and other agencies of the problem of Jewry in the Soviet Union, with a view to taking steps which will ameliorate the lamentable situation of our people there.”

The board asserted that “the curtailment of religious and cultural rights for Jewry behind the Iron Curtain, and the trials and convictions of Jewish leaders on the charge of ‘contact with foreign powers,’ appear to be a serious indication of Soviet intention to separate Russian Jewry from the rest of world Jewry and to impose severe limitations on their spiritual and cultural development.”

The board scored the Arab countries for their refusal to recognize Israel and to seek peace. It urged in a resolution that the United States Government “insist that nothing less than clear-cut demands for direct peace negotiations between the Arabs and Israelis be carried out.”