Zionist Head Flays Houston Temple for “barring Observers of Traditional Judaism”

The action taken by the reform congregation Beth Israel of Houston, Texas, in voting approval of a “statement of principles” barring from voting membership all believers in “the Rabbinical and Mosaic laws which regulate diet” was branded as a “callous effrontery” toward the concepts of Judaism and an act of intolerance, in a statement issued here today by Dr. Israel Goldstein, president of the Zionist Organization of America. The pledge required from each member also repudiates the Hebrew language as “unintelligible to the vast majority of our co-religionists,” Dr. Goldstein said.

Terming the action of the Houston Congregation “an amazing phenomenon in American Jewish life,” Dr. Goldstein, in his statement, asserts that in voting approval of the pledge the congregation revealed “an inner-demoralization which makes them not only inferior Jews, but inferior Americans.”