200 Christian Ministers Vow to Sermonize Against Anti-Semitism

Inspired by a Jewish businessman from Burbank, nearly 200 Christian clergy from throughout Southern California pledged Saturday to preach against anti-Semitism by giving at least one sermon a year on the Holocaust.

“We have a moral obligation to make sure it never happens again,” said Dr. R. L. Hymers Jr., pastor of the Fundamentalist Baptist Tabernacle of Hope in downtown Los Angeles and a member of the Committee of Concerned Christians.

The group was formed by Ben Friedman, who last year sent a letter to 2,000 clergy nationwide, asking them to promise to deliver one sermon a year on the Holocaust and anti-Semitism.

“I got back 420 responses,” said Friedman, 67. “It was a wonderful experience for me as a Jewish man. It made a grown man cry.”

Saturday was the first meeting of the group, a luncheon in Studio City which featured Richard C. Halverson, chaplain of the U.S. Senate. About 200 lay people representing various churches also attended. The group is dedicated to combatting anti-Semitism, and various speakers told how they were battling bigotry in their congregations.

“I feel God wants us, who profess our faith in Christ, to do something about” anti-Semitism, Halverson said. “Jews gave us our laws. They gave us our savior. They gave us our faith.”

Friedman, raised in an Orthodox Jewish home and affiliated with Conservative Judaism in Houston before moving to Burbank in 1985, said he was inspired to form the organization after years of speaking to Christian groups about the Holocaust.

“I’ve seen so many Christians come to me in tears and say, ‘What can we do to stop it from happening again?’ I just decided I would help get them started.”

Hymers and several clergy mentioned a report released earlier this month by the Anti-Defamation League reporting an increase in anti-Semitic incidents for the fifth consecutive year in the United States. The report, released Feb. 6, said there were 1,897 reports of anti-Jewish incidents nationwide in 1991, an 11% increase over 1990.

“We’ve got anti-Semitism growing all over,” Hymers said. “Look at the neo-Nazis in Germany and the skinheads in Spain. We’ve got to work to fight this before it’s too late.”

Sam Zelkowicz, 67, a concentration camp survivor living in Ladera Heights who addressed the group, said afterward that the event “restored my faith in humanity” and gave him hope that the Holocaust he experienced as a young man in Poland might never be repeated.

“The next scapegoat might not be Jews. It might be blacks. It might be Koreans. It might be Japanese--hate has many forms,” Zelkowicz said. “But we’re all children of God--we may not agree on how to worship him, but maybe we’ll learn to live together.”