In a sermon delivered in 1958, Rabbi Rackman linked the oppression felt by blacks and Jews at the hands of white fraternal social lodges. “It is well known that in all of these fraternal orders there is an appalling lack of brotherhood,” lamented Rabbi Rackman. “Often, Jews and Negroes must organize lodges of their own.”
But Rabbi Rackman was not just about rhetoric. He was deeply concerned that other Orthodox leaders understand the stakes of American civil rights. Consequently, Rabbi Rackman took full advance of his station when the Supreme Court decided Brown v. Board of Education sixty years ago, on May 17, 1954.
The court’s unanimous ruling declared de jure racial segregation illegal. At that time, Rabbi Rackman was chairman of the RCA’s Convention Committee and slated to become the organization’s president at its upcoming convention in Detroit. The gathering was to take place just two months after the landmark court case and Rabbi Rackman sought to sensitize the 600 Orthodox rabbis and leaders to the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement. A year earlier, the RCA had resolved to back school desegregation, but that was not enough for Rabbi Rackman. So he invited Maxwell M. Rabb, associate counsel to President Eisenhower, to keynote the forthcoming conference.
Rabbi Rackman asked Rabb to discuss President Eisenhower’s “approach to civil rights and social security in their broadest meanings.” Moreover, the rabbi hoped that Rabb’s presence might also offer Orthodox rabbinic leaders a much-needed example.
“For a long time Orthodoxy was accused of failure to assimilate modernism with its point of view,” wrote Rabbi Rackman. To remedy this conception among Orthodox leaders, it was Rabbi Rackman’s hope that Rabb – the highest-ranking Jew in the Eisenhower administration – could demonstrate through his words that “the future lies with those who do not feel that America calls for the surrender of one’s religious faith and practices, but rather for greater opportunities to apply that faith and those practices more fully and more meaningfully.”
Rabb did exactly that. He connected the “question of equality of opportunity” to the “interest to all of us who are Jews.” Rabb reminded his rabbinic audience that it was singularly the Jewish people who cannot forget “for we have known the cruel injustice through the centuries of the yellow hat and the yellow badge – of the Pale and the Ghetto – that left us segregated, marked in body and in soul.”
The Brown decision reflected those values, suggested Rabb. “The whole process,” he said about what he believed to be an inherently Jewish mission, “will be greatly accelerated as a result of the decision rendered just two months ago by the Supreme Court of the United States that racial segregation in public schools is unconstitutional.”
Rabb’s remarks were very well received by the RCA. Rabbi Rackman thanked the White House adviser for a “magnificent address” and for making himself available afterward to discuss political issues with convention attendees. “All of this,” wrote Rabbi Rackman, “made a terrific impact on the leaders of our organization.” Although the moment likely held strong short-term influence, its impact probably weakened rather quickly.
Before long, American Orthodoxy forgot about Rabbi Rackman or any other contributor to civil rights. As early as 1968, one Orthodox writer accused his community of “non-involvement” and “disquieting silence.” That sort of historical amnesia had much to do with the Judeo-Christian ethic that captured American culture at midcentury. By the late 1960s, many Jews no longer considered themselves an ethnic minority. In addition, this period also witnessed increased support for Israel and Soviet Jewry, causes that no doubt replaced other righteous endeavors.