58
Friday, September 14, 1984 THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
FRONT LINES
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The separation principle:
THE JEWISH NEWS
bringing it home
BY M. J. ROSENBERG
Special to The Jewish News
For some of us, the mixing of
"church and state" has a very per-
sonal aspect. I remember — as a
child growing up in the late 1950s
— the discomfort I felt when our
public school class recited_ the
Lord's Prayer. I remember mouth-
ing the words (I wouldn't sing
them) to a hymn we sang every
morning called "Fairest Lord
Jesus." It was a pretty song. But
the three Jewish kids in a Kings-
ton, N.Y. classroom just couldn't
sing "Jesus is fairer, Jesus is
purer."
Today it all seems rather re-
markable. How could they have
inflicted that kind of discomfort
on children? How could they make
us feel so estranged from our
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Rosenberg writes for "Near East
Report," a publication of the
American Israel Public Affairs
Committee
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classmates, so odd and vulnera-
ble? But they did. And they did it
innocently. The teachers and
school administrators just didn't
know any better. With less than a
dozen Jewish children in school,
they felt no special sensitivity
toward the tiny _non-Christian
minority in their midst.
That all ended when the Sup-
reme Court ruled that organized
prayer in public school was un-
constitutional. Jewish kids (and
others) would not have to stand —
hearts pounding in their chests —
while their outsider status was
proclaimed to the world. After a
while, school Christmas trees
were removed as well. Before
long, even Christmas vacation be-
came "winter recess" and Easter
"spring recess."
I can't imagine that anyone was
harmed when organized prayer
was removed from the schools.
The religious Christian could
pray at home, as the religious Jew
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had been doing all along. The big
difference was that Jewish kids
were no longer made to feel like
outsiders. They, too, were part of
America.
The last half-century has seen a
similar move away from specifi-
cally Christian politics. As late as
In a sense, America's
leaders helped foster
the illusion -- which
Jews were only too
happy to believe —
that Americans were
divided among three
major religions .. .
the 1920s, the William Jennings
Bryan political style was still ac-
ceptable. Thirty years after his
"Cross of Gold" speech, his wing of
the Democratic Party was still
around — fighting Al Smith and
anti-prohibitionists to the tune of
"Onward Christian Soldiers."
Neither Jews nor Roman
Catholics felt welcome in the
Democratic Party until Smith and
FDR made it clear that the Demo-
cratic Party was not exclusively
Protestant — and not exclusively
Christian either.
Successive national political
leaders — Democrats and Repub-
licans alike — avoided any
suggestion that being American
meant being Christian. Every
Jew felt a little bit, more secure
when politicians referred to the
"Judeo-Christian" tradition and
appended the words "or
synagogue" to their occasional
statements about the value of
church-going.
In a sense, America's leaders
helped foster the illusion — which
Jews were only too happy to be-
lieve — that Americans were di-
vided among three religions: Pro-
testant, Catholic and Jewish. It
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