Rabbi Max J. Routtenberg, Temple Bnai Sholom, Rockville Center, N.Y., was unanimously elected president today of the Rabbinical Assembly of America by 500 rabbis attending the 64th annual convention of the Conservative rabbinical body.
The delegates reaffirmed the organization’s endorsement of the civil rights bill now before Congress and urged its members to take all necessary steps to move the Senate to passage of the bill without crippling amendments.
The delegates, in another resolution, expressed deep concern “over the plight of our Jewish brethren in the Soviet Union” and expressed their determination to protest the plight of Soviet Jewry. They added, in the resolution, that “the time for universal protest and action to this end is long overdue.”
The administration of the Rabbinical Assembly was urged by the convention to implement the following recommendations with regard to Soviet Jewry: 1. Appoint a continuing committee as liaison between the Rabbinical Assembly and other national bodies; 2. Convene a special conference of the Rabbinical Assembly within the year to analyze, study and discuss the problem of the treatment of Jews in the Soviet Union; 3. Set aside a session of the 1965 convention to survey the situation and the progress that has been made with regard to the status of the Jews in the Soviet Union.
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