New York Board of Rabbis to Celebrate 75 Years of Its Existence

Seventy-five years of service in ministering to the spiritual needs of the largest concentration of Jewish population in the world will be celebrated by the New York Board of Rabbis from April 27 to May 9 with an extensive program of dedications, lecture symposiums, study sessions, sermons and a public meeting, it was announced at a press conference here today by Rabbi Emanuel Rackman, president of the board. Dr. Israel Goldstein, who was president of the board when it celebrated its 50th anniversary in 1931, is chairman of the Board’s 75th anniversary jubilee.

Organized in April, 1881, as the New York Board of Jewish Ministers by six rabbis, the New York Board of Rabbis now has more than 700 members, occupying Orthodox, Conservative and Reform synagogue pulpits in the New York metropolitan area, New Jersey, up-state New York and suburban Connecticut. In addition, its specially trained corps of 90 chaplains offers solace and spiritual guidance in more than 170 hospitals, old age homes, prisons and other institutions.

Dr. Goldstein said that he considered the spiritual assistance given to the vast immigration of Jews into the United States between 1881 and 1921 as one of the Board’s most significant contributions to the community. “The Jewish population of New York’s metropolitan area has increased 5,000 percent since 1881, “he asserted. “In its career of seven-and-a-half decades, the New York Board of Rabbis has been the effective spiritual catalytic agent which helped to integrate the unprecedented numbers of Jewish immigrants into the mainstream of American life.”