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In all history no change in the calendar has ever altered the original days in the weekly cycle, declared Congressman Sol Broom in his address Sunday morning before the convention of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America held at the Yeshivah College, New York City. The sessions of the national convention of the Union and its affiliated organizations, the Rabbinical Council, the Women’s Branch, the Collegiate Branch and the Inter-scholastic League of the Jewish Youth, which opened Saturday evening will be concluded tonight. Dr. Herbert S. Goldstein, president of the Union, opened the convention Saturday night with the presentation of his annual report.
Speaking on the subject of “Calendar Reform and the Wandering Sabbath,” Congressman Bloom declared: “It has remained for big business in this 20th century A. D. to suggest and urge something new under the sun, something which if adopted will revolutionize both secular and religious habits and customs which have prevailed from the time when the memory of man runneth not to the contrary. During all the centuries from the giving of the law at Sinai to the first advent of Christ, not even excepting the period of 70 years captivity in Babylon, the Jews uninterruptedly observed the seventh day of the week as the Sabbath and thus preserved the weekly cycle intact.
“The outstanding feature of the proposed world calendar is that it becomes indirectly even though not designedly an attack upon the Sabbath of the Lord by making it most difficult to continue its observance since that involves maintaining the free running week according to the present calendar.
“To have any value a calendar must possess above all things the virtue of continuity. The calendar which for whatever reason omits an occasional day or two obviously is worthless for the prime purpose for which a calendar is devised as a means of reckoning time accurately.
“This is known as a commercial country in a commercial age. I strongly question if it is sufficiently commercial to permit the acceptance of a new system so revolutionary in its religious aspects, and unless accepted with practically popular unanimity, even as a supposed commercial improvement, it fails.
“The changeability of Easter has long been recognized as an inconvenience, not only from the standpoint of the Christian churches but as a commercial proposition as well. What then shall we say of a wandering Sabbath or a floating Lord’s Day occurring not once in 12 months as in the case of Easter at present but weekly throughout the year?”
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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.
