Rabbinical Group Urges Political Action Committees in All Synagogues to Protect Jewish Communities

The Rabbinical Council of America, in its Leadership Legislative Conference here last week, adopted a unanimous resolution urging “the establishment of political action committees in every synagogue across the country in order to safeguard and protect the economic and political status of the American Jewish community.”

Elaborating on the Council’s action, Rabbi Louis Bernstein, president of the Rabbinical Council, declared, “such political action committees have become an absolute necessity for the Jewish community, not only to promote legislation which they deem for the well being of the. American community and which will enhance American freedom and the quality of its life, but also to defend the synagogue and the Jewish community from attacks that now threaten its viability, if not its existence.”

The synagogue, he noted, has become “the victim of deteriorating neighborhoods. Its members have abandoned it and it is left alone in the midst of people whom they no longer can serve. Very often these deteriorations take place as a result of direct governmental action that increases the flight of its residents from the area and its deterioration into ethnic ghettos.” Rabbi Bernstein stressed, “It is the purpose of the synagogue political action committees to take early steps to prevent such deterioration and to preserve the character and viability of the community.” Rabbi Bernstein stated that the political action committees will also “impress upon our people not to run from areas which become racially mixed. On the contrary, we must be the ones who demonstrate how well various racial ethnic and minority groups can live together in peace and in harmony.”

Rabbi Fabian Schonfeld, first vice-president of the Council, declared that these committees will also have to cope with the economic and professional pressures which so-called Affirmative Action and Quota Systems have placed upon the Jewish community.”This reverse discrimination causes polarization, bad feeling and what is even more corrosive, destroys the economic basis upon which Jewish communities have been established and have thrived,” he said “It even contributes to the deterioration of Jewish neighborhoods by the mobility which it creates when professional people must travel all across the country to find employment suitable to their abilities.”