Rabbi Urges Jewish Community to Assert Its Right to Dissent Against War, Repression

In a caustic denunciation of “ruthless repression that threatens America’s freedoms,” Rabbi Maurice N. Eisendrath, President of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, called yesterday upon the Jewish community to resist “this rape of liberty” by invoking its “biblical right of dissent” through “strong and rightful protest.” Declaring that “the bible is packed with champions of dissent,” Rabbi Eisendrath urged his constituency to follow the examples of Abraham, Moses and Nathan because the climate in America today “is more than adequate warrant for placing the highest priority upon preserving the indispensable right of dissent.” The country’s dissenting youth are being “denigrated into the hated minority,” he declared in an address to the board of trustees of the UAHC’s semi-annual meeting last night. Rabbi Eisendrath warned that “there is no sanctuary for Jews today who do not speak up for youth because they are not young, who do not speak up for blacks because we are white who do not speak up for due process, even for Black Panthers, because we are seemingly secure in our affluence.” Continuing, he declared that if the Jewish community allows itself to be gullible enough to imbibe the poison being systematically offered, “we shall wind up the scapegoats we have always been in times of similar reaction. Those few of us who still, pathetically believe that silence is our strongest armor against sophisticated forms of pogroms are as wrong today as they have always been in the past. Whether we like it or not, our fate is inextricably bound up with those other scapegoats–the blacks and the youth–who are consciously, viciously and diabolically being pitted against each other and against us.”