Social Justice (Teaching)

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).