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4.2.12
WC: 191694

disrupt the 7 day Sabbatical cycle.”95

The Orthodox Jewish community was in an uproar about this well intentioned proposal, because it
would change the natural order of when the Jewish Sabbath fell. Under the conventional
calendar, the Sabbath corresponded with Saturday. Under the brave new world proposal, the
Jewish Sabbath could fall on any day of the week. Jews (and Seventh Day Adventists) had fought
hard to recognize Saturday as a day off from most jobs and school activities. The UN proposal
would require Sabbath-observers to be absent from such activities when the Sabbath fell on a
weekday.

At the time I was president of the “Inter-Yeshiva High School Council”—a group I had formed
after the principle of my high school banned me from running for the presidency of the school’s
student body. I used the newly formed organization as the nerve-center for the campaign to stop
the universal calendar. We did not consider the proposal to be anti-Semitic; it was motivated by
benign universalistic aspirations. We regarded it as insensitive to the religious concerns of certain
groups.

In an effort to broaden the opposition, I reached out to Seventh-Day Adventists (who joined our
efforts), Muslims (who seemed less concerned about whether their day of rest corresponded with
the UN’s “Friday”) and other religious groups. The result was a postcard campaign (I still have
the postcard) in which we sent thousands of the following message—where I drafted—to the UN:
Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge
United States Delegation
United Nations, N.Y.

Dear Sir:

As a student of a Hebrew parochial high school in New York, I wish to express my
opposition to the World Calendar Reform proposal soon to come before the United
Nations. This proposal, which would move the Jewish Sabbath to other days of the week,
would have disastrous effects on Jewish religious life, thus impairing the freedom of
religion which we so cherish.
Respectfully yours,

Under Auspices of the Inter-Yeshiva High School Student Council

It was a modest effort by later standards: no marches, sit-ins or lawsuits. But it succeeded. The
UN dropped the proposal and our small group got credit in the media. Here is how the New
York Post—my community’s “newspaper of record” in those days—reported our success beneath
the headline, “Calendar Reform Tops Formosa Issue in Letters to U.N.:”
“World Calendar reform, not Formosa, is the topic provoking most of the letters being
received by Ambassador Lodge, chief U.S. representative at the U.N.

95 Joseph P. Lash, Calendar Reform Tops Formosa Issue in Letter to U.N., N.Y. Post, April 21, 1955, p. 34,
quoting a U.S. note to Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold.

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