Rabbinical Assembly Opens; Consultation Among Rabbis Urged

The suggestion that “instruments of consultation” be established among the three wings of religious Judaism in the United States was made here today at the opening session of the four-day 55th annual convention of the Rabbinical Assembly of America association of 600 Conservative rabbis. Rabbi Aaron H. Blumenthal, vice-president of the assembly, told the 300 rabbis at the convention that “it would be highly desirable to establish the instruments of consultation between ourselves and our colleagues to the right and left of us. Heretofore our policy has been to consider only those projects concerning which all three groups might agree.”

Rabbi Harry Halpern, president of the assembly, in his annual report to the convention called for revision of the McCarran-Walter Immigration Act and charged that the dismissal of State Department immigration aide Edward J. Corsi was motivated by the “desire to keep foreigners from our shores.” Rabbi Halpern termed a “tragic error” the United States encouragement of “sabre-rattling” by the Arab states in their relations with Israel. He called for a re-assessment of the U.S. policy towards Israel.

Addressing the same session, Rabbi Simon Greenberg, vice-chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, expressed the belief that “in society generally, insofar as religion is concerned, the less authority that is exercised, the greater the chance that true religion has to flourish.” He saw the assembly as an organization which must strive to “enhance influence rather than authority.” To the extent that is within “the power of conscious human effort and purpose to mold the future, to that extent the future of American Jewry and Judaism is in the hands of its rabbis. Only a dedicated rabbinate of great moral and intellectual stature can hope to give us a dedicated laity,” he asserted.