25th Anniversary of Religious Action Center

59th General Assembly
November 1987
Chicago, Illinois

We congratulate the Commission on Social Action of Reform Judaism on the 25th Anniversary of the Emily and Kivie Kaplan Religious Action Center in Washington, D.C.

The Religious Action Center has become a unique institution, being the only Jewish center in the world devoted exclusively to social justice.

The Religious Action Center has fulfilled the vision of its founders. It has become a rallying point for interreligious and inter-racial coalitions, a training ground for talented young Jews, a center for Jewish scholarship and strategic planning. It has become a center of great strength for Israel, Soviet Jewry, and Jewish rights, and it has fortified the struggle for human rights, social justice and peace for all persons.

Through the Religious Action Center, the Reform Movement has translated its highest values into the possibility of a better, more compassionate America and a peaceful world.

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the Union of American Hebrew Congregations:

  1. Commends the Religious Action Center for its twenty-five years of creative endeavor and towering achievements.
  2. Expresses its delight that the Center's guiding spirit, Albert Vorspan, is to receive the Union's highest honor, the Maurice N. Eisendrath Bearer of Light award. It was he, above all others, who "fired and forged" the Religious Action Center into that vital vibrant institution it has become.
  3. Expresses its determination that the Center's work shall continue, and that its influence be deepened by probing; by strengthening the day to day work with our synagogues and their social action committees, "ever more effectively" the Jewish roots of our social activism. By continuing to extend its scope to encompass not only Reform, but all the other branches of Judaism.