The House Judiciary Committee’s hearings on proposed constitutional amendments, which would remove the Supreme Court’s ban against prayers and Bible-reading in the public schools, were seen here today as likely to be stretched out into six weeks. Originally, the hearings, being conducted under the chairmanship of Rep. Emanuel Celler, New York Democrat, were scheduled to last two weeks. The hearings go into their second week tomorrow, but there is a very long list of witnesses to be heard.
This weekend, opponents and proponents of constitutional amendments clashed repeatedly before the committee. Rabbi Irwin M. Blank, of Tenafly, N.J., representing the Synagogue Council of America, told the body that any public school prayer of the type advocated by those who favor an amendment “would necessarily be so devoid of any real spiritual content that it would come dangerously close to irreverence and blasphemy.” He said that voluntary participation in classroom religious exercises by children was “an illusory concept.”
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