Rabbinical Council Issues Statement on American Social Problems; Hits Discrimination

Expressing the hope that the new labor law will be reasonably administered without reversing the course of progress in labor-management relations, Dr. Manuel Laderman of Denver, Colorado, chairman of the Social Justice Commission of the Rabbinical Council of America, organization of some 350 Orthodox Rabbis, today issued a statement on the views of the Commission concerning social problems prevalent in American life.

The statement stresses the need of “a critical approach to our own deficiencies” and urges Americans to encourage the attempts being made throughout the country to eliminate discrimination because of race, color and creed in the industrial and educational fields of endeavor, deplores the removal of barriers against high prices and urges cooperation with the government to bring the cost of living within the reach of most people.

“Old sources of ill-will in the field of race relations, from which Americans have too easily turned their eyes, are receiving international attention,” the statement says. “Those whose purpose it is to malign America use the discriminations against some of our citizens as a brush to tar our country’s good name. The noble intention of being helpful to the less fortunate nations elsewhere is being obscured by revelations of the inequalities that have existed unchallenged within our borders. A more critical approach to our own age-old deficiencies would lift American prestige everywhere and would improve the democratic status of our people. It must, therefore, become our duty to encourage the attempts to improve the lot of the negro, to remove quotas in our colleges, to open up areas of employment, to eliminate restrictions on housing and the great host of discords which mar the American scene.”