Jewish Spokesmen Blame Nixon Administration for Death of Kent University Students

Albert Vorspan, director of the Social Action Department of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, today blamed the “brutal demagoguery” of the Nixon Administration for instigating the deaths of “the young flowers cut down in Ohio”–the four Kent State University students killed by National Guardsmen Monday. In a UAHC memorial service for the four–three of them known to be Jewish–Mr. Vorspan declared, “We must find the strength to energize the Jewish community in a massive effort to save America. We have slunk from our role as the catalyst of social conscience in American life.” Mr. Vorspan called the current “cancer of malaise (and) despair” the “most irreligious and un-Jewish” attitude possible. “Panicky National Guardsmen pulled the trigger,” he said, “but we all killed them.” He charged President Nixon, Vice-President Spiro T. Agnew and Ohio Gov. James A. Rhodes with “radicalizing and embittering” American youth by having “stereotyped and smeared” dissident students. He said President Nixon “flouts every rule of international law” in pursuing the “madness” of an “endlessly hemorrhaging war.” He said he hoped the Kent State tragedy will prove “a turning point for our nation.”

Rabbi Balfour Brickner, director of UAHC’s interreligious activities, read Mark Twain’s “War Prayer,” a condemnation of “victory for our side” written during the Civil War. Also participating in the service were Rabbi Henry Skirball, director of the National Federation of Temple Youth; Jane Evans, director of the National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods, and Steven Pinsky, student president at Hebrew College’s Jewish Institute of Religion. It was learned today that Jeffrey Glenn Miller, 20, of Plainview, L.I., one of the Kent State victims, was Jewish, as were at least two of the other three –Sandra Lee Scheuer of Youngstown, O., and Allison Krause of Pittsburgh. A memorial service for Mr. Miller was held today at Riverside Chapel in New York. Officiating were Rabbi Julius Goldberg of the Plainview Jewish Center, the Miller family’s Conservative temple, and Rabbi Harold Saperstein, president of the New York Board of Rabbis. Eulogies were delivered by Sen. Charles E. Goodell and Dr. Benjamin Spock.

DEAD STUDENTS AS MUCH VICTIMS OF NATIONAL GUARD BULLETS AS U.S. WAR POLICY

At a service Wednesday at John F. Kennedy High School in Plainview. Democratic United States Senate candidate Theodore C. Sorensen said Mr. Miller had been killed as much by “the authors of our new policy in Indochina” as by National Guard bullets. The deceased was the son of Bernard Miller, a typesetter for the New York Times, and the brother of Russell Miller, 23, a student at Fairleigh Dickinson University, Rutherford, N.J. Mrs. Leonard H. Weiner, president of the National Council of Jewish Women, declared that the four students killed “were the hapless victims of the panic of Ohio Guardsmen and, in a broader, more tragic sense, of the escalation of the war in Southeast Asia.” She urged council members to let Washington know of their “grave concern” over the incident and demand “a cutoff of the funds to continue the war, which has already cost Americans incalculable losses in life, limb and economic balance.” Of a student population of some 15,000 at Kent State University, about 750 are Jewish.

The Jewish Peace Fellowship, which will be participating in Saturday’s mass anti-war rally in Washington, sent telegrams today to President Nixon, Secretary of State William P. Rogers, New York Sens. Charles E. Goodell and Jacob K. Javits and several Congressmen, urging them to prohibit the use of weaponry in handling demonstrations. The cosigners were the Fellowship for Reconciliation, Clergymen and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam, and the Episcopal Peace Fellowship. They called on the officials to combat “the spirit of senseless violence…and join with our spirit of peace.” The other Jewish organizations participating in Saturday’s rally will be the American Jewish Congress, the American Jewish Committee, B’nai B’rith, the UAHC, the Jacobi Society and Sim Shalom.