Reform Rabbi Conference Endorses Alien Sanctuary Movement

Saying that it had to choose between “the law of the land or moral conscience,” the Central Conference of American Rabbis has endorsed the sanctuary movement at its 96th annual convention.

In so doing, the more than 500 Reform rabbis endorsed civil disobedience for the first time, although they left it to the individual rabbi and congregation to decide whether to harbor Central American refugees.

The rabbis committed themselves to changing the Reagan Administration’s opposition to sanctuaries, but in the meantime they said that congregations “must be prepared to take the consequences.”

Among other actions this week, the rabbis passed a resolution condemning restrictions on Soviet Jews, noting that only 896 were granted exit visas in 1984. The resolution recommended their group send at least two rabbis to visit the Soviet Union each year and endorsed detente, because “the condition of Soviet Jewry is profoundly related to the state of East-West tensions.”

The rabbis voted, after heated debate, to refer to a committee a resolution recommending elimination of traditional Friday evening worship services.

The resolution was sponsored by the outgoing president, W. Gunther Plaut, who said that only 6% to 10% of Reform Jews attend Friday evening services. He suggested expanding the Saturday morning services now held at many synagogues, or moving the Friday evening services from synagogues to private homes.

On a matter still disturbing Jewish groups outside of the Reform movement, a Conservative Jewish leader appealed to the Reform rabbis to reverse their stand, taken a few years ago, to acknowledge that Jewishness can be passed from the father, as well as from the mother, to an offspring. Jewish tradition has long recognized only the mother’s lineage in mixed marriages to protect the status of the children of such unions.