PREPARED STATEMENT OF RABBI SEYMOUR SIEGEL My name is Seymour Siegel. I am an ordained rabbi who now serves as Professor of Fthics and Theology at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. I have the honor also to be the President of the American Jewish Forum, a group of Jewish citizens dedicated to the furtherance of conservative political principles. I have come here this morning to speak in the name of a Tradition which has valued education and religious worship throughout its long history. The talmudic rabbis, in a famous statement, affirm that the world stands on three things: the learning and practice of Torah; the worship and service of God; and on the doing of deeds of kindness to our fellow men. Indeed the three things are intertwined. An education interfused with reverence for the Divine, will lead human beings to deal kindly with each other. It is because of this, that I appear before you this morning to support the S.J. Resolution 199 which seeks to restore the freedom of our citizens to offer prayer in public schools and institutions. THE IMPORTANCE OF PRAYER how to pray. es The human being is the only creature who prays. In prayer, we acknowledge our dependence on a Power greater than our own. We perfect our character; tablish a relationship between heaven and earth. It is prayer that makes us human. In the words of a great teacher of modern Judaism: "Prayer may not save us. It can make us worthy to be saved." From a religious point of view it is inconceivable that education be considered complete without being taught A man may master all of science, literature, and history, if he does not know how to establish a dialogue with God, if he has not learned how to revere life and life's Creator-- he has not fully developed his humanity. An educational institution which neglects training in prayer has overlooked an indispensible aspect of human growth and development. It is because of this, that as far as I know, no educational system until relatively recent times did not include religious worship as part of its activities and curriculum. PRAYER IN PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS AND SCHOOLS In the United States most public events begin with prayer. The Senate and the House of Representatives began their deliberations this morning with prayer. Inaugurations, sessions of the Supreme Court, thanksgiving declarations, all invoke God's presence and ask for His guidance. President Reagan, in calling for the passage of the proposed amendment quoted the words of Benjamin Franklin to the Constitutional Convention: I beg leave to move-- that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessings on our deliberations, be held in this Assembly every It hardly seems logical that the very convention that was responsible for the Constitution would have viewed with favor the elimination of prayer from public schools when it ordained that its own sessions commence each day with a request for Divine assistance and blessings. Whatever the meaning of the First Amendment which prohibits the establishment of a state religion, it certainly did not mean the separation of religion from public institutions and functions. If we are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights, we are bidden to acknowledge our Creator in the pursuit of deepening our understanding and practice of these rights. It is frequently argued that religion is a private matter which should be limited in its expression in homes, churches and synagogues. Those who argue this way do not, I suggest, properly understand the basis of our Judeo-Christian religious tradition. Religion is not a privatsache, reserved for sacred space. Biblical religion, if anything, demands to be acknowledged in all aspects of life; When thou sittest in thy house, when thou walkest by the way, when thou sittest down and when thou risest up. A religion which is limited by the walls of houses of worship or in the seclusion of one's own home is less than a religion. Where else but in the places where the character of the next generation is formed; where the laws that govern the land are crafted; and where the decisions which decide the fate of nations are made should the fact that we are a nation "under God" be concretely acknowledged? THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS There has been a long tradition of including some form of public prayer in the public schools ever since their inception. The most striking evidence of this is the fact that the Massachusetts Board of Education, headed by Horace Mann removed sectarian instruction from the schools, but prescribed a program of "daily Bible readings, devotional exercises and the constant inculcation of the Thus the very founder of the American public school precepts of morality." system favored the inclusion of religious devotions into the curriculum of the institutions. For 170 years after the adoption of the First Amendment, prayer was permitted in the public schools. In our own epoch, when we have given over to the public schools many functions that were once the province of home and other institutions, we cannot in good conscience see the schools as places only for the imparting of information. Schools, where most children spend a good part of their day, are crucial in the formation of character as well as the inculcation of ideals, world views and moral values. There can be no education without the imparting of a more basic outlook on the nature of things. If any positive expression of religion is banned from the schools on the grounds of First Amendment guarantees, the public schools will become (As they already have become in many parts of our nation) proponents of a secular point of view. Just as nature abhors a vacuum, so the human soul cannot remain empty of spiritual values. If it is not nurtured by our traditional religious teachings, substitute faiths, formal and informal, will rush in. When people stop believing in something, observed G. K. Chesterton, it is not that they believe in nothing. It means that they believe in anything. More and more American parents are being convinced that public schools which are given the task of driver education, sex education, and family education should also be concerned with the skill indispensible to human growth: the art of prayer. I am convinced by those constitutional scholars who affirm that the intention of the First Amendment to the Constitution was to forbid the establishment of one religion over the other. It did not intend to remove religion altogether from our public life. Those of us who wish to make possible the re-introduction of religious devotions in public schools, if desired by the parents, realize that no great civilization can flourish unless it is built around a central idea-- a core affirmation about life and the universe. Martin Buber, perhaps the greatest Jewish thinker of our century has written: To recognize the nature of what we call a great civilization, In distinction to a thought system, which illuminates and elucidates is the real unit in which again and again the spheres of existence Its fundimental character is always a religious and normative The public school is the central educational institution of our civilization. It has the awesome responsibility of educating the next generation to carry on the great ideas and structures of the American civilization. It cannot, at its peril and ours, neglect to articulate and promote "our supreme principle". I believe that the decisions of the Supreme Court barring religious expression has weakened our public schools as well as our culture. We have, therefore, no recourse except the amendment before us. SUMMARY To summarize therefore, we believe that there can be no true education without religious nurture. The American political system acknowledges the importance of prayer in providing for it in our great national events. The education of children must include religious expression. This was acknowledged from the very beginnings of our history. The First Amendment bars the establishment of one particular religion, not the elimination from public expression any religion. We need a constitutional amendment to make possible the religious freedom available to the American people before the ill-advised decisions of the Supreme Court which prohibited voluntary prayer in the public schools. the current proposed Amendment should be supported. THE AMENDMENT AND THE JEWISH COMMUNITY Therefore, What I have said is the view of many Jewish citizens. However, it would be misleading (and you will hear from others very soon) to deny that the majority of Jewish organizations oppose this Amendment. I believe these views to be misguided. They are based on the view that Jews, a small minority of the American people, will be coerced into participating in religious exercises in the framework of religious traditions they do not accept. Though there is some merit in this apprehension, I believe it is not enough to oppose the intent of the framers of this Amendment. First of all, the proposed Amendment expressly eschews coercion of anyone If Jewish parents or athiest or Catholic parents do not wish to permit their children to join in school prayers, they are protected under this Amendment. to pray. Secondly, the courts have decided to protect those students whose religious convictions make it impossible to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. We should and do respect such rights of conscience. We do not on that basis prohibit the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance. We would hope that school boards around the country should be encouraged and assisted in formulating prayers which could be recited by the vast majority of the children. These kinds of prayers should be crafted so as to take into consideration the feelings and beliefs of Jewish school children as well as other minorities on the population. We should recognize that the strengthening of the religious sentiment in our culture is of such great importance to all of us that the impossibility of some of us, because of reasons of conscience to participate should not be used as a reason to deny to the others their opportunities to exercise their conscience. As the Supreme Court has stated: "We are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being." That, of course, applies to all of us: Protestants, Catholics and Jews. We should make every attempt to infuse our public institutions with religious sentiment which is common to our various traditions. If we cannot do so, we must realize that solutions will not satisfy everybody, but in a democratic society, the great Reinhold Niebuhr pointed out, we try to find provisional solutions to insoluble problems. Forty years ago, a visitor to our country observed the American system and wrote: "Men will more and more realize that there is no meaning in democracy if there is no meaning in anything, and there is no meaning in anything if the universe has not a center of significance and an authority that is the author of our rights. There is truth in every ancient fable, and there is here something of fancy that finds the symbol of the Republic in the bird that bore the bolts of Jove. Owls and bats may wander where they will in darkness and for them as for the skeptics, the universe may have no center...but it was far back in the land of legends, where instincts find their true images, that the cry went forth that freedom is an eagle, whose glory is gazing at the sun." What this Amendment attempts, is to make possible this continued gazing at the sun by our future citizens as they learn that which will enable them to carry on the traditions of American freedom. |
