Rabbi Gains Support for His Blast Against Project, Cuny Programs

Rabbi William Berkowitz, newly elected president of the New York Board of Rabbis, gained support today for his attack last week on the Lindsay administration over the controversial low-income housing project in Forest Hills and the Open Admissions and Affirmative Actions programs at City University which he alleged constituted discrimination in reverse against Jews and others.

Adding its voice to the supporters of Rabbi Berkowitz, the United Zionists-Revisionists of America assailed “political leaders who have allowed and fostered the introduction of quotas and discriminatory employment practices at the City University.” Dr. Harry Levi, chairman of the national board of the UZ-RA termed the Affirmative Action Program, designed to maintain ethnic balance in hiring at CUNY, a mandate for “ethnic discrimination.”

PROJECT NOT A JEWISH ISSUE

Earlier, however, Rabbi Maurice N. Eisendrath, president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations and Rabbi Robert J. Marx, director of the New York Federation of Reform Synagogues, issued a joint statement sharply criticizing Rabbi Berkowitz. They said his attack on the Lindsay administration, made during his acceptance speech last Wednesday at the New York Board of Rabbis 91st annual meeting was “objectionable on four grounds.”

According to the Reform leaders, Rabbi Berkowitz made the Forest Hills issue “once again into a Jewish issue” which they contended “it is not.” He “has made it a partisan political issue. It is not,” they said. “He has made it an issue of community control. It is not.” and finally, “Rabbi Berkowitz has made this a practical issue of ethnic protection….It is a moral issue. It is an issue in which our society is given an opportunity to determine whether it will share its blessings with all of its citizens, including the poor. No community of 400,000 is destroyed by moving, at most, 2,000 poor people into a plot of vacant land,” Rabbis Eisendrath and Marx stated.