Jewish Leader Responds Favorably to Letter from President Benson

A conservative Jewish leader in the United States has said he is “heartened” by a recent letter from President Ezra Taft Benson regarding the Brigham Young University study center being built in Jerusalem.

Franklin D. Kreutzer, international president of the United Synagogue of America, the congregational arm of conservative Judaism, responded to a letter from President Benson referring to previous statements by BYU officials. The Jewish leader’s remarks were quoted in a United Press International wire story.

In the letter, dated February 4, President Benson pointed out that BYU officials “have given assurance time and again, both orally and in writing” that the facility “will not be used for proselyting purposes.”

President Benson explained BYU officials have repeatedly stated that the BYU Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies on Mt. Scopus “will be used exclusively for the Study Abroad program of the university, which has been conducted in Jerusalem since 1968.”

Expressing support for the project, Nathan Perlmutter, U.S. national director of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, said there is “an absence of evidence that Israeli Jews have converted to Mormonism” during the years that the BYU program has been operating in Israel.

Perlmutter said objections to the university’s plans reminded him of restrictions placed on the construction of Jewish synagogues in the thirteenth century, and called the attitudes “medieval.”

“What counts, what really counts, is that made-by-Christians medievalism of (the) thirteenth century not be adopted by Jews, not in this already excessively punished century, and surely not in the city that should be a light unto all cities.”