Resolution Adopted by the CCAR

SOCIAL JUSTICE (TEACHING)

Digests of resolutions adopted by the
Central Conference of American Rabbis
between 1889 and 1974

1. Your Commission on Justice and Peace acknowledges with humility that its greatest failure to date has been in the area of implementing the social idealism of our people within our own congregations. With exceptions as notable as they are rare, we have limited ourselves to lofty pronouncements, but have not devised ways and means of teaching the practical application of these pronouncements to our people or of activating them in the search for a more decent society.

The practical work we do in our communities and even more the non-partisan political activity to which we can stimulate our congregants as an expression of their Jewish prophetic zeal will be both a manifest of our sincerity and a determinant of our effectiveness. We have always properly insisted that Judaism is a way of life. This must be as true in the areas represented by this Commission as with respect to ritual observance and to ethical conduct generally.

We would urge most strongly, therefore, that a major program in next year's Conference schedule be devoted to the reporting in detail of successful committees on public affairs already in operation within our Congregations and specific practical proposals for the extension of such activity among the groups which the members of this Conference have the high privilege of serving. (1951, p. 107)

2. See Rabbi, Freedom of, Sec. 6 (1953).