Rabbi Addresses Protestant Ministers on Religion in Public Schools

A leading Reform rabbi said here today that some compromise on the question of religion in the public schools might be possible if emotionalism can be removed from the discussions.

Rabbi Norman Gerstenfeld of the influential Washington Hebrew Congregation told a meeting of Protestant ministers that “there is a valid place in our public schools for intercultural education which would sympathetically present the variant forms of the Judeo-Christian heritage.” However he warned that there must be guarantee along with it to keep public schools from becoming “religious schools in the sense of teaching ritualistic observance or credal indoctrination.”

Rabbi Gerstenfeld expressed fear that the current controversy might stir up animosity among religious groups. “Let us state our differences not in terms of sectarian conflict but as Americans who respect each other’s right to differ,” he told the Protestant churchmen. The rabbi said that while teaching about religion in the public schools might be acceptable, we should be careful not to stray from the principle that “religious education rightly and competently belongs in the church, the synagogue and the home.”