Rabbinical Assembly Leader Defends Inaugural Planners for Omitting Rabbi at Ceremony

Rabbi Stanley Rabinowitz, president of the Rabbinical Assembly, differed today with Rabbi Marc H. Tanenbaum, interreligious affairs director of the American Jewish Committee, for criticizing the decision not to include a rabbi in the religious segment of the ceremony inaugurating President-elect Jimmy Carter and Vice President-elect Walter Mondale. Rabinowitz said it would be appropriate to have only one clergyman, representing all faiths, deliver an “appropriate prayer.”

It was announced last week that United Methodist Bishop William Cannon of Atlanta would give the invocation and Catholic Archbishop John Roach of Minneapolis would offer the benediction. Tanenbaum said that “given the fact that over the past five inaugurations it became an established American institution that the four major religious communities were part and parcel of the mainstream of American society.” the decision to exclude representatives of Judaism and Greek Orthodoxy “cannot but lead to misunderstanding and in many cases even to resentment.”

REJECTS CLERICAL NUMBERS GAME

Rabinowitz, referring to what he termed the “clerical numbers game” said: “All the prayers are addressed to the One God. Why not one prayer in behalf of all America proclaiming our common gratitude for the blessings and bounties of freedom and invoking our prayerful hopes for the fulfillment of American ideals?” Continuing, the Washington rabbi stated:

“There is really no need for more than one clergyman to reflect the sentiments of all Americans. We are one nation under God. For this one clergyman to represent all faiths, the phraseology of his prayer must be broad enough to enable all Americans of all faiths to identify with it. The prayer must be offered in the name of the Deity who is the God of all humanity, and must be free of any doxology or formula that may flow from the ritual of any single faith, It is to be hoped that the two clergymen selected this year to participate in the Inaugural Service will be no less sensitive to the Americans who are not of their denominations.” Recalling that at the last five inaugurations there were four clergy- men of different faiths, including a Jew. Rabinowitz offered additional defense of the inaugural planners. He noted that the four clergymen’s prayers made “the inaugural ceremony seem as though it were primarily a prayer service and only incidentally a ceremony of state” and that “an outdoor ceremony on a cold January morning is hardly a setting conducive to instilling a spiritual mood sufficient to appreciate four sometimes lengthy prayers.”