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4.2.12 WC: 191694 2995 disrupt the 7 day Sabbatical cycle. 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. °° 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. 318 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_017405