The annual Solomon Schechter Award of the United Synagogue of America was presented today to the Levittown (Pa.) Jewish Community Center for its activities in behalf of racial integration in the community in the face of mob violence.
The award of the Conservative movement, the first ever presented to one of its 600 congregations for other than strictly synagogal activities, honored the center for its participation last summer in an emergency community-wide group which welcomed and attempted to protect the Myers Family, Negroes who moved into the previously all-white town. The synagogue action in the Myers affair was taken in the expectation, later fulfilled that it would draw the fire of anti-Semites among the anti-integrationists in the community.
The award was accepted by 31-year-old Rabbi William Fierverker, spiritual leader and David Jacobs, president, of the synagogue. Both had been leaders in bringing their congregation into the campaign against intolerance and violence in what the official synagogue citation called an “act of moral courage in its determination to live by the teachings of Judaism and to translate these teachings into guides for ethical conduct.”
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.
