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Remarks of the Vice President at the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Synagogue Council of America, Touro Synagogue, Newport, Rhode Island [Speeches by Others]
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7344162
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Remarks of the Vice President at the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Synagogue Council of America, Touro Synagogue, Newport, Rhode Island [Speeches by Others]
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1976-05-23
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1976
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Digitized from Box 26 of the White House Press Releases at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
SUNDAY, MAY 23, 1976
Office of the Vice President
(Newport, Rhode Island)
REMARKS OF THE VICE PRESIDENT
AT THE
FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE SYNAGOGUE COUNCIL OF AMERICA
TOURO SYNAGOGUE
NEWPORT, RHODE ISLAND
(AT 5:23 P.M. EDT)
Ambassador Linowitz, thank you very much. Chairman
Arthur Burns, Senator Pell, Rabbi Lookstein, Rabbi Seigman,
Rabbi Lewis, and thank you Roberta Peters for your beautiful
renditions, your excellencies, members and friends of the
Touro Synagogue, as a descendant of Roger Williams, I thank
you for the honor and the privilege of allowing me to
participate in this historic gathering, which is one of the
high points of the Bicentennial celebration for our Nation.
To stand in the simple beauty of this historic temple
is to return to the very roots of our Nation. Indeed, there
was a Touro Synagogue before there was a United States of
America.
And Jewish families lived and worshipped here in
Rhode Island over a century before the synagogue was
completed. They chose Rhode Island with good reason, because
the founders of this colony had guaranteed freedom of religion.
Those early Jewish settlers made a decision shared by so many
millions of immigrants of all faiths who arrived on those
shores over the past two centuries. Their loyalty was to the
new land, while, at the same time, they determined to remain
firm in their religious beliefs.
Nowhere has our Nation's commitment to religious
and personal liberty been voiced more eloquently than in the
letter which George Washington wrote to the congregation of
Touro Synagogue, and which Sol Linowitz read so beautifully
and with such feeling, "To bigotry, no sanction. To persecution,
no assistance."
This freedom which our forefathers sought in the new
world benefitted both the people who found it and the land
which extended it. For not only did the openness of American
society offer opportunity for a new life to the poor, the
oppressed and the persecuted, but those who came here, and
their children after them, gave new life to this Nation.
As it says in the dreams of the Hebrew prophets, we have been
enriched by the gathering of the exiles from all over the
world.
The Jewish experience in America is a particularly
vivid illustration of opportunity for the individual being
translated into betterment for all. We could not subtract
the Jewish contribution from American life without impoverishing
our science, our literature, our art, our commerce, our law,
and, indeed, without vastly diminishing America. The Jewish
contribution to the American experience is beyond calculation,
and out of all proportion to the numbers of Jewish Americans
involved.
MORE
Page 2
Today, I would like to discuss the American moral
heritage which created this environment for individual fulfill-
ment which led, in turn, to our Nation's unmatched achievement.
The spiritual and religious forces which inspired our Founding
Fathers and shaped life in America from its very beginning.
These forces inspired the Declaration of Independence and the
Constitution of the United States.
And, most important of all, these spiritual and
religious forces have continued to shape the American
character to this day, a character dominated by such qualities
as respect for the dignity of the individual, kindness,
generosity, neighborliness, equality of opportunity, equality
before the law, a restless energy, a willingness to take risks,
and faith, hope and love. As the Old Testament says, "The
greatest of these is love." The contributions of America
to religious freedom are as monumental as its contributions
to political liberty and economic freedom.
Settled by people of many faiths, the Church of
England, Catholics, Presbyterians, Baptists, Jews, Huguenots,
Quakers and many others, Americans through trial and experience
developed not alone an understanding, but a mutual respect
of one faith for another. And it is this framework of
diversity within unity, of people of so many faiths, which
has been the greatest source of America's strength and
vitality.
Life for our forebears in early America was rugged.
In this testing environment, there developed a belief not alone
in individual rights but an equally firm conviction of
individual responsibility. Survival depended upon
individuals shouldering their responsibilities fully as
much as asserting their ambitions and employing their energies
in their own ways. The individual was held responsible for
his or her actions. They were expected to contribute to
the community.
In young America in struggling communities, people's
moral and religious assertions were judged by their performance.
For his acts, the individual was answerable to himself,
to his God and his community. He could take no refuge in
blaming others or in blaming society for his actions. He
expected to suffer the consequences of his own behavior.
This is the unique essence of American life and character.
Today, the basic principles of America's founding
and its growth, its dedication to human dignity, the spiritual
nature of man, its trust in free individuals taking
responsibility for their actions, are being seriously
challenged. Totalitarian socialist societies have developed
which ignore the concept of man as a spiritual human being.
They repress personal liberty and they forbid religious
freedom. They deny individual economic freedom.
In the present world, centrally-controlled, Marxist
power is on the march throughout the world, supported by
subversion, so-called wars of liberation and growing military
power. Unfortunately, in this period, we have seen some
striking failures of moral example both in public and private
life here at home. It is dangerous. Uncorrected, it can
weaken the moral fiber of our society.
MORE
Page 3
There is a growing tendency in our times to excuse
immoral conduct because we think we understand the forces that
produced it. One suspects there is a connection between this
kind of thinking and the movement away from the basic American
tenet of individual responsibility for one's life and actions.
Every society in the'history of man has had its
strengths and its weaknesses. But no society can endure for
long by allowing criminals to escape penalties for their
crimes by reference to some vague theory or concept of a
collective guilt, or personal stress, or because it is alleged
that "everyone does it."
It is time for all of us, as individual American
citizens, each in the discharge of our several responsibilities,
to reaffirm the basic concepts that a man's moral and religious
assertions are judged by his performance and that he is
answerable for his acts to himself, to his God and to his
community. For only in this way are we going to preserve our
free society, its values, its opportunities, its blessings.
Each of us, as an individual American, must return to the
basic concept of individual responsibility for our own acts
upon which this society was founded.
Your faith, the teachings of Judaism, is based on
a moral vision of mankind, on a reverence for individual
uniqueness and individual dignity. Judaism teaches, too,
that individual dignity and freedom must be accompanied by
an acceptance of moral responsibility on the part of the
individual.
These convictions are so much in keeping with the
moral philosophy of our Nation's Founding Fathers that it is
hardly surprising that Jewish Americans have made such an
enormous contribution to America's emergence as the greatest,
freest Nation on earth.
America is grateful for your spiritual heritage
and for those priceless contributions which you have made
through two centuries of American nationhood. As those who
worshipped here in Touro Synagogue heard in 1776, what all
Americans heard in that fateful year still rings with relevance
today.
The men of the Revolution declared their commitment
to human dignity in these unforgettable words: "With a firm
reliance on the protection of divine Providence we mutually
pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred
honor." Dare we do less today? I think not.
Thank you.
END
(AT 5:35 P.M. EDT)