The Central Conference of American Rabbis was told yesterday of plans for substantial revision of the American Reform movement’s Union Prayer-book to make it “more congruent to the needs of contemporary man.”
Rabbi Joseph Narot, chairman of the CCAR committee on liturgy, told the 500 Reform rabbis at the 78th annual meeting of the CCAR that the present Reform Prayer book was last revised 30 years ago “before the Nazi holocaust, before the atomic bomb and before the space age.” He said these developments had raised “theological and moral questions” requiring “new and more relevant liturgical creations.”
The committee presented a survey of Reform rabbinical attitudes toward the Prayer book, which was performed by Rabbi Jack Bemporad, director of the CCAR Commission on Worship, and Dr. Emanuel Denby, director of research for Fairleigh Dickinson University. Rabbi Bemporad said the study had found that most Reform rabbis were sharply critical of the Prayerbook.
A split developed over a proposal for creation of a draft category, “the selective conscientious objector,” so that Americans other than pacifists would have the right not to be inducted into military service.
The Justice and Peace Committee of the Reform rabbinical group said that with such status “a man may not be a committed pacifist but may decide that a particular military engagement in which our country is involved is one to which he cannot morally subscribe.” The CCAR includes many members, particularly its president, Rabbi Jacob J. Weinstein, who have been among the most active foes among the American clergy against the United States involvement in the Vietnam war.
However, Rabbi Selwyn Ruslander of Dayton, Ohio, chairman of the Commission on Jewish Chaplaincy, criticized the proposal declaring that “no democracy can function in this type of atmosphere.” He warned that the concept of conscientious objector was “so highly ambiguous it can only be interpreted by an individual who can decide for himself that which is good and that which is evil.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
