Rabbinical Assembly Asks Repeal of 18th Amendment

The Executive Council of the Rabbinical Assembly of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America has adopted a resolution calling for the repeal of the 18th amendment, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency was informed today.

At the same time, however, the Rabbinical Assembly emphasized that it is opposed to making prohibition the principal issue of the present political campaigns, whereas more fundamental and primary issues remain to be solved.

“The Rabbinical Assembly of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America urges the repeal of the 18th Amendment,” says the resolution.

“Careful observation of the workings of the prohibition legislation leads the Rabbinical Assembly to believe that the balance of the good and ill effects is a negative one. While the rabbinical assembly recognizes the good achieved in the abolition of the saloon and does not wish to see its return, yet the negative balance is manifest in the outstanding facts of the breakdown of morale, the growth of social and political hypocrisy, the recession rather than the progress of the temperance movement, the corruption in the administration of prohibition laws and in the very use of the prohibition issue as a means of distracting public attention from more fundamental issues.

“The Rabbinical Assembly looks with the greatest disfavor upon attempts to make the question of prohibition the supreme political and social issue in American life today, thus blinding the eyes of our citizens to the fundamental and primary issues of unemployment, privation, and material and moral suffering in this land,” the resolution concludes.