Synagogue Council of America Records

Synagogue Council of America

(1926-1994)

The Synagogue Council of America was proposed at a meeting of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (UAHC), held in St. Louis at the Twenty-Ninth Council of the UAHC, January 19-22, 1925.

Proposed by Dr. David Philipson and Dr. Abram Simon, they called for an organization to promote religious fellowship and cooperation "among the national Jewish congregational organizations" which was "eminently desirable for the advancement of Judaism and of Jewish education in the United States, and for co-operation with other national organizations interested essentially in religion and in religious education."

During deliberation, representatives from the Executive Committee of the UAHC invited members of the United Synagogue of America, the Union of Jewish Orthodox Congregations, the Central Council of American Rabbis, the Rabbinical Assembly of the Jewish Theological Seminary, and the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the United States and Canada to meet with the UAHC to create the Council.

The resolution was approved on June 9, 1925. On November 9, 1926, the Council held its first delegates meeting at New York's Harmonie House. The aims and scope of the organization as determined at this meeting on the day of the meeting with the adoption of the Constitution and By-Laws of the Synagogue Council of America; the preamble of the Constitution identified the Synagogue as the heart of Jewish life, and thus it was necessary that the representatives of the Synagogue should work together to preserve and "foster" Judaism, and, thus, that the Council would be composed of rabbinical and national congregational representatives.

The membership consisted of representatives of the Central Conference of America Rabbis, the Rabbinical Assembly of the United Synagogue of America, the Rabbinical Council of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, and the United Synagogue of America. Other organizations were admitted from time to time, and each organization was entitled to have three members and three alternates, with the alternates allowed to attend all meetings.

Regular officer's (Chairman, two Vice-Chairmen, a Secretary and Treasurer, and an Executive Director) meetings were scheduled for November, February, and May of each year. According to the booklet, "The Synagogue Council of America: Its Origin and Activities," the Synagogue Council of America represented at least one million American Jews.

The SCA attempted to act as a facilitator of activities and dialogue between the branches of American Judaism, as well as to the world outside of Jewish concerns. In this regard, four activities of the SCA serve as a basic primer of action: 1. the repatriation of Jewish sacred objects after WWII; 2. the efforts of the SCA to defend the separation of church and state; 3. the awarding of the Peace and Judaism Award to dignitaries such as President Eisenhower, politician Edward Kennedy and civil rights activist, Martin Luther King, Jr.; and 4. efforts to reconcile the African-American and Jewish communities, encompassing relations between black and white American Jewish populations, as well as Ethiopian Jewry.

During World War II, the SCA worked on behalf of Jewish naval personnel, 1942-1944, to establish the observance of High Holy Days for servicemen. The SCA's Emergency Intercession Committee worked on behalf of European Jews by writing letters, resolutions, and statements lobbying the U.S. government to help European Jews; these efforts were not successful.

After the war, the SCA worked on particular behalf of French Jewry through the Religious Rehabilitation Committee, which strove to adopt synagogues and persons in an effort to rebuild Jewish life in France. In 1845, the Religious Rehabilitation Committee worked to document destroyed or damaged French synagogues, with some photographs of a damaged synagogue in Bitche, France, in the Moselle Department.

In support of these activities, the SCA sent out questionnaires which examined the synagogue buildings, the artifacts within the building in need of new homes, and the number of worshippers still attending the synagogue. Religious objects from these synagogues were redistributed to synagogues throughout the United States, Canada, South Africa and a few South American countries. Articles that were found to be beyond repair were buried in a religious ceremony at Flushing Hills, NY.

In addition, the activities of the Aid to Religious Rehabilitation of French Jewry outlined the needs of the French community in regards to the restoration of Jewish life by working with the Central Consistory of French Jewry for Reestablishing Religious Life.

Between 1949 and 1950, the SCA worked in conjunction with the German Expert Consultants Program of the Office of Military Government for Germany (OMGUS). OMGUS, the military government of Germany led by the United States after WWII, established the Education Cultural Relations Division in conjunction with the American Express Company. The SCA worked with this division of the OMGUS to rehabilitate surviving German Jews. German expert representatives were recruited to plan for reorientation and cultural exchange, with the Religious Affairs Branch of OMGUS recruiting 80 religious experts of various Christian and Jewish affliations to come to the United States to travel and learn about American religious culture. The SCA participated by sponsoring several Jewish religious leaders from Germany.

In the early 1950s, SCA President Norman Salit visited Europe and led SCA-sponsored tour groups to the Continent, and became the first SCA president to visit Israel. In 1958, SCA president Gustave Stern traveled to Japan, where he and his wife met with Prince Mikasa of Japan, who was interested in the Jewish religion and culture.

From 1947-1974, the SCA worked with the National Community Relations Advisory Council (NCRAC) on the Joint Advisory Committee, which targeted uch area as: religion and public education, religious observances in public schools, the separation of church and state, shechita, and blue laws and the Sabbath.

The Joint Committee tackled issues such as: proposed changes to the Bill of Rights and Constitution regarding the codification of the Christian God as supreme in the United States; and issues regarding a United Postal Service release of a 1966 Christmas stamp portraying the Madonna and Child, stating that the image violated the separation of chuch and state, as did the Gideon Society's issuing of Bibles to children in the Detroit public school system.

The 1960s and 1970s brought about the SCA's involvement with the Civil Rights Movement. The Social Action Committee worked on early issues of desegregation, Civil Rights, and 1963 bombings in Birmingham, Alabama. The SCA also participated in the 1963 March on Washington, yet, the SCA's involvement with the Civil Rights Movement reached beyond those issues as the orgainzation worked to create new Jewish perspectives on the relationship of Jews and Blacks, particularly those African-Americans and Africans who claimed Jewish lineage or wanted to convert to Judaism. The Standing Committees, Commissions, and Task Forces (1966-1974) of the SCA tackled social issues such as: social policy, urban affairs and development, black-Jewish relations, and aging and poverty from a Jewish perspective.

For 68 years, the SCA attempted to act as an interpretive voice of the Reform, Conservative and Orthodox American Jewish communities, both within the three communities as well as to the larger population. Ultimately, the organization was overwhelmed by these communities, and disbanded in 1994.

According to the American Jewish Committee:

Relations between the Orthodox and the non-Orthodox movements have been deteriorating....The breakdown of relations has been marked by a new sharpness of rhetoric and an unwillingness to seek common ground...Symbolic of the collapse of dialogue was the demise of the Synagogue Council of America in 1994, the sole body that had, at least nominally, collectively represented all the Jewish religious movements.