Brotherhood Week, sponsored by the National Conference of Christians and Jews and dedicated to furthering mutual understanding among people of different races and creeds, started yesterday in hundreds of communities throughout the country with rabbis, ministers and priests participating in ceremonies marking the opening of the Week of which President Johnson is honorary chairman.
In New York, a Brotherhood Service was held in the synagogue of the 141-year-old Congregation B’nai Jeshurun, at which the Three-Faith Chapels at Kennedy International Airport were honored by religious representatives of all three faiths — Protestant, Catholic and Jewish. Rabbi William Berkowitz, the spiritual leader of the congregation, presented the 21st annual Brotherhood Awards — bronze medallions — of the Men’s Club of the congregation to the sponsoring organizations that built the Chapels. The designated recipients were the Rt. Rev. Monsignor Francis X. FitzGibbon, representing the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn; Dr. G. Barrett Rich, 3rd, for the Protestant Council of the City of New York; and Rabbi Harold H. Gordon, executive director of the New York Board of Rabbis, for the International Synagogue-New York Board of Rabbis. Charles H. Silver, president of the International Synagogue is also president of Congregation B’nai Jeshurun.
Dr. Sterling W. Brown, president of the National Conference of Christians and Jews, said in a statement that “the same methods of education, of dialogue, of teaching, of person-to-person communication and reasoned confrontation which have brought about a new era of ecumenical understanding in America must be applied with even greater vigor to eradicate the poison of racial prejudice that is disrupting our country today.”
President Johnson, in his statement for Brotherhood Week, said, “Brotherhood simply means giving to others the rights, respect and dignity they deserve. It is a concept that was woven into the very fabric of our Constitution and Bill of Rights. In recent years, civil rights legislation has sought even more explicitly to guarantee equality for all Americans regardless of race, color or creed. Unfortunately, the gap between principle and practice still remains. It is our task — and our responsibility — to make certain that the gap is closed.”
Brotherhood Week has been sponsored annually since 1934 by the National Conference, with Americans from the President of the United States through all levels of citizenship, lending support to its observance.
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