President Reagan signed a joint Congressional resolution yesterday proclaiming November 12, 1983 as Anti-Defamation League Day in honor of the 70th anniversary of the organization founded by B’nai B’rith.
A spokesman for Rep. Jerry Patterson (D. Calif,), who initiated the legislation for the resolution, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that only two percent of resolutions designating such days are passed by both houses of Congress. Both the House and the Senate approved the resolution last week.
The resolution praises the ADL for having “since its inception … worked to strengthen the democratic under-pinnings of American society and to establish a harmonious unity of friendship and understanding amidst this nations religious, racial and ethnic diversity.”
ADL was also praised for having “combatted, counteracted and educated against anti-Semitism, racism, and the extremists of totalitarianism” and for representing the “special concerns and interests of the American Jewish community in upholding human rights and civil liberties in this country and throughout the world.”
Patterson, in introducing the resolution on the floor of the House, noted that the “basic tenets” of the ADL are embodied in a statement by the poet Walt Whitman that “whoever degrades another degrades me.”
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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.
