Checkoff at the Synagogue

A religious closed shop was being debated last week by Louisville, Ky.'s Jewish community. The scheme, unprecedented in U.S. ecclesiastical polity: to deny religious rites*--except to the very poor--to local residents not formally affiliated with one of the city's six congregations.

Behind the plan was no rabbi but a husky, 31-year-old physician named Bernard Schneider. Chairman of a self-constituted intercongregational lay committee, he campaigned with the argument that three in every seven Jewish families in Louisville neglected to keep up congregational membership. "We are much more concerned with the civic morale of this Jewish community," said Dr. Schneider, "than about any profit motive involved in acquiring additional members."

By last week the committee had won three synagogues to its plan, two others had promised ratification, and the sixth agreed "in principle." But Rabbi Joseph Rauch of Temple Adath Israel declared: "I am out of sympathy with the entire movement and will not deny my services to anyone."

*Some of them: circumcision, bar mizvah (confirmation), marriage, burial.

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