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Preached in City Pulpits

February 26, 1934
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“Religion speaks also in terms of unity and fellowship. We refuse to believe that war is unavoidable, and that progress in unreal. We have confidence that the economic peril can be minimized and eventually banished, if men resolve to do justly and to cooperate in amity. We do not despair of mankind, for we have faith that men of strength, calmfaith that men of strength, calness of Judgment, poise and temperance, can be produced in the hour of trial, today, as in days gone by. If men recover the faith of relegion, they can return to their tasks refreshed and replenished, victorious in spirit, and soon victorious in deed.”

NATIONAL SHOULD CONFESS

In his sermon before the congregation of Temple Ansche Chesed, West End avenue and 100th Street, Rabbi Joseph Zeitlin declared, “Very often a man identifies religion with ceremonial obsevances and other forms of religious practices. However, it is well for us to understand that man’s faith in God can be seen through an appreciation of the events in life that affect both the individual and the human race. History has been interpreted as “His strory’–that is to say, the plan of the Lord, in guiding the lives of men and nations. In the light of what is happening in several foreign countries, it would be well for these supposedly civilized nations to confess their sins and plead for clemency. Let us not fail to see the hand of God in History.”

NEED FOR WASHINGTON

“There is urgent neeed today of the spirit of Washington and Lincoln,” declared Rabbi Alexander Lyons of the Eighth Avenue Temple, Brooklyn, speaking before the congregatin of Temple Beth Emeth, 83 Marlboro road, Brooklyn, on “A Jewish Democracy.”

“Our economic collapse has registered moral selfishness,” Dr. Lyons said. “This spirit is still rampant, Vast numbers of Americans still insist upon viewing national life from the standpoint of their racial extraction, their raligious denmination of a purely partisan religious denomination. The pernicious effect of this appears plainly in personal or corporate antagonisms which in the present world unrest are freighted with serious danger.

“The Jew must act as such only in his religious and charitable activities. In his political life he must be predominantly American. If in civic or national life there are wrongs to be rectified the Jews must. combine and cooperate with like-minded citizens of all identifications to work for the recognition of real worth as a sacred standard of civic success. It is questionable patriotism to seek preferment on the basis of private personal identification. Washington and Lincoln would have discountenanced this. It is antagonistic to our present governmental policy.”

AMERICAN BUSINESS FAULTS

Describing the American Business man to Congregation B’nai Jeshurun, 88th street west of Broadway, Rabbi Israel Goldstein stated that “in one respect American business is to be condemned without any extenuation. The ethical standards in out big businesses have been the lowest of any in the world. Recent Senate investigations have brought out the rettenness, corruption and callousness to moral and ethical considerations which have infested “Big Business” in our country. The banks, the stock market, the utilities, to mention outstanding notorious examples, have been chicanery and graft. Our commarcial advertising is to a large degree built on half truths and lies/

” Big business has consequently lost the respect of the American people and the American businessman has lost the respect of the world. If it required a severe depression such as we have experienced to expose the rottenness rampant in our economic and commercial fields, and if, as a result of the exposures, big business can be sanitated, the depression will prove to be a blessing in disguise.”

THE CHRISTIAN JEWISH MIRACLE

Jewish guilt in connection with the crucifixion of Jesus is to this day based on a deleberate mistranslation by Justin, the apoligist, declared Rabbi William F. Rosenblum of Temple Israel, New York, in a radio address delivered on the Church of the Air over Station WABC yesterday afternoon.

“The people of Jesus are crucified again and again for an act which they did not commit. The legend about their guitlt is still taught to Sunday school children as a fact while the fact of Roman atrocity is never brought to light.”

Reviewing the various economic and political symptoms of universal unrest, Rabbi Rosenblum declared that the factor chilfly responsible for the failure of Western civilizaton to achieve peace is “the warfare that the followers of Jesus have permitted themselves to make upon the people of Jesus. Yes, there have been periods of truce and intermittent armistice, but the two religions which preach peace have not been at peace.”

Dr. Rosenblum concluded his address on “The Christian-Jewish Miracle–Will It Ever Happen” Withd the thought that since this season will witness the coincidence of Passover with Easter Sunday we should at that time “free ourselves from bondage to age-old myth and legend.”

SISTERHOOD PURIM PARTY

The sisterhood of the Park Avenue Synagogue will celebrate Purim at the temple building, 50 East 87 street, tomorrow afternoon. Mrs. Guggenheimer has arranged a program of entertainment.

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