Passover Sermons

“Immortality is a persistent human idea, but the twentieth century men and women must be contented, not with iron-clad guarantees, but with poetic abstractions regarding the future life,” said Rabbi Louis I. Neuman in a Passover sermon to Congregation Rodeph Shalom Friday morning.

Rabbi Newman counseled full development of innate capacities. In this way, he said, by leaving behind us the memory of our works, we may become immortal.

“Merely to have existed, merely to have an integer in the great universal system is also a form of eternality with which modern men and women may consider themselves satisfied. Whatever follows need not make us anxious. Life contains its own purgatories for punishment, and its own heavens for rewards. We must not demand that they exist unendingly.”

THE SERVICE OF WOMEN

“In supporting the synagogue as well as in the rebuilding of Palestine the woman has been conspicuous,” said Rabbi Jacob Katz in a sermon to the Montefiore Hebrew Congregation in the Bronx Friday.

“The woman,” Dr. Katz explained, “was given a position of recognition in Jewish history. Her contributions have been inestimable. In ancient days, Moses sang first and Miriam followed. Today she has the opportunity of leading in the victory of spiritual life through the institution of the synagogue and the school.”

“Would that all religions might stress things they hold in common with emphasis equal to that placed upon the things they have in difference!” Rabbi Israel Goldstein declared in his Friday morning sermon before Congregation B’nai Jeshurun, Eighty-eighth street, west of Broadway.

“Let it be said for Judaism,” Dr. Goldstein went on, “that it has been the first of the great world religions to have sounded the values of human brotherhood and to have conceived of the whole of humanity as one great family under the Fatherhood of God.”

A PLEA FOR PEACE

Sharp criticism of the Army Day celebration and a plea for discontinuance of “the practice of parading under false pretenses” marked the Friday evening sermon of Rabbi William Margolis at Congregation Ohab Zedek, 118 West Ninety-fifth street.

“In the face of our country’s outward manifestations of peace planning, the perennial proclamations of ‘Army Day’ seem bitterly absurd!” Rabbi Margolis said. “What do we celebrate? What do we commemorate? Is is an anniversary of some constructive American contribution? Is it in joyful remembrance of America’s part in world progress that we parade with a festive fanfare of trumpets, flaunting our American flag in patriotic pride?

“What a mockery! We celebrate in this colorful fashion the entrance of our army into a war that drenched the world in human blood. That day should truly be a ‘red letter’ day, set aside for mourning, self-seeking and atonement for America’s shame!”