• "Suppose the Mother Were Jewish":Leo Pfeffer, the American Jewish Congress, and the Problem of Religious Protection Law¹
• Susan A. Glenn (bio)

When the Executive Committee of the National Community Relations Advisory Council met in New York City in January 1956 to discuss issues of concern to the Jewish community, a heated debate erupted over the adoption of children born to women of one religious group by couples from a different religious group. Rabbi Israel Klavan, who represented the Orthodox Rabbinical Council, declared that any attempt to formulate a "Jewish position" would have to consider "the well-established principle of Jewish law that one who is born a Jew remains a Jew throughout his life." Constitutional law expert Leo Pfeffer (1909–1993), the American Jewish Congress's most formidable church-state litigator, replied that, "having been an Orthodox Jew throughout his life," he understood the importance of "the principle" that "a child born of a Jewish mother is, under traditional Jewish law, a Jew." However, cautioned Pfeffer, "the constitutional government of the United States, under which we all live, and under which our rights to observe and practice our respective religions are protected, is a secular government, without interest or concern for the religious laws to which its citizens may choose to adhere." It must be remembered, he added, that "the security of the Jewish group in its free practice of the Jewish faith rests upon the maintenance of this unconcern or indifference of government toward religion."²

This heated exchange was a continuing salvo in the American Jewish Congress's controversial mid-century campaign to challenge the constitutionality of laws and judicial practices that made it difficult and sometimes impossible for couples to adopt children born to mothers [End Page 467] whose religion differed from theirs. Pfeffer, whose personal devotion to Judaism was "intense and unshakable,"³ played a leading role in this campaign to loosen the grip of religious restrictions on adoption—a campaign, his Jewish critics charged, that would make it possible for Christians to adopt "Jewish-born" children.

In the 1950s Pfeffer earned a reputation as what one political scientist called the "dominant individual force in managing the flow of church-state litigation" and the figure responsible for turning the American Jewish Congress into the nation's "unrivaled organizational force" in bringing First Amendment cases "up the judicial ladder to the Supreme Court."⁴ Another scholar described Pfeffer as the dominant force in the "entire universe" of church-state litigation, noting that he "advised, planned, rehearsed, helped, and argued more church-state cases than any other attorney of his generation."⁵ The scholarship on Leo Pfeffer focuses on his constitutional challenges to religion in the public schools, state aid to parochial schools, tax exemptions for churches and synagogues, and discriminatory Sunday closing laws.

In this article, I examine an arena of Pfeffer's jurisprudence that has largely been ignored: his daring forays into the religious minefield of child adoption and custody law. Pfeffer singled out child adoption as the most challenging of all church-state issues. In his 1953 opus, Church, State, and Freedom, Pfeffer wrote: "Probably no problem in the area of the relationship of religion and state is more difficult of equitable solution than that arising out of the desire of a couple of one religious faith to adopt a child born into another faith."⁶ Religion was the most [End Page 468] litigated issue in child adoption in the 1950s. Both historically distinct from and analogous to later debates about the adoption and fostering of African American and Indigenous children, the contest over religion involved competing claims about whose children belonged where.⁷ Pfeffer theorized the problem when he depicted transreligious adoption as a highly competitive, "emotion-laden" struggle involving children, parents, communities, and religious groups all "striving for judicial recognition."⁸ By 1970, Pfeffer's decades-long campaign to change the laws governing adoption had borne fruit. But his fervent desire to see the Supreme Court declare that "prohibitory" adoption statutes and legal rulings that made religion (or lack thereof) the decisive factor in adoptions were unconstitutional under the Establishment and Free Exercise clauses was never realized.⁹

This article makes...

• “假设母亲是犹太人”：Leo Pfeffer、美国犹太人大会和宗教保护法问题¹
• 苏珊·A·格伦（简介）

1956 年 1 月，当全国社区关系咨询委员会执行委员会在纽约开会讨论犹太社区关心的问题时，关于来自不同宗教团体的夫妇收养同一宗教团体的妇女所生的孩子的问题爆发了激烈的争论。宗教团体。代表东正教拉比理事会的以色列拉比·克拉万宣称，任何制定“犹太立场”的尝试都必须考虑“犹太法律中既定的原则，即生为犹太人的人终其一生都是犹太人”。宪法专家利奥·普费弗（Leo Pfeffer，1909-1993）是美国犹太大会上最令人敬畏的教会与国家诉讼律师，他回答说，“他一生都是一名正统犹太人”，他理解“孩子出生”这一“原则”的重要性。根据传统犹太法律，犹太母亲就是犹太人。” 然而，普费弗警告说，“我们所有人都生活在美国宪法政府之下，我们遵守和实践各自宗教的权利受到保护，它是一个世俗政府，对宗教法律不感兴趣或不关心。其公民可以选择遵守。” 他补充说，必须记住，“犹太群体自由实践犹太信仰的安全取决于政府对宗教的这种漠不关心或漠不关心。” ²

这种激烈的交流是美国犹太人大会在本世纪中叶发起的一项颇具争议的运动，该运动旨在挑战法律和司法实践的合宪性，这些运动使得夫妇很难甚至有时不可能收养母亲宗教信仰不同的孩子[结束第467页] 。他们的。普费弗个人对犹太教的忠诚是“强烈且不可动摇的” ³，他在这场放松收养宗教限制的运动中发挥了主导作用——他的犹太批评者指责说，这项运动将使基督徒有可能收养“犹太出生的”孩子。

在 20 世纪 50 年代，普费弗赢得了一位政治学家所称的“管理教会与国家诉讼流程中的主导个人力量”的声誉，并负责将美国犹太人大会变成国家“无与伦比的组织力量”，以实现第一修正案案件“上升至最高法院”。⁴另一位学者将普费弗描述为“整个政教领域”诉讼的主导力量，并指出他“比同时代的任何其他律师提供了更多的建议、计划、排练、帮助和辩论的政教案件”。⁵对利奥·普费弗 (Leo Pfeffer) 的奖学金主要集中在他对公立学校宗教的宪法挑战、国家对教会学校的援助、教堂和犹太教堂的免税以及歧视性周日闭馆法。

在本文中，我研究了普费弗法理学中一个基本上被忽视的领域：他大胆涉足儿童收养和监护法的宗教雷区。普费弗指出儿童收养是所有教会与国家问题中最具挑战性的问题。普费弗在他 1953 年的著作《教会、国家和自由》中写道：“在宗教与国家的关系领域，可能没有什么问题比由同一宗教信仰的一对夫妇的愿望所产生的问题更难公平解决了。收养一个出生于另一种信仰的孩子。” ⁶宗教是20 世纪 50 年代儿童收养中争议最多的[结束第 468 页]问题。宗教之争在历史上既不同于后来关于收养和抚养非裔美国人和土著儿童的争论，又相似，都涉及关于谁的孩子属于哪里的争论。⁷普费弗将这个问题理论化，他将跨宗教收养描述为一场高度竞争、“充满情感”的斗争，涉及儿童、父母、社区和宗教团体，所有这些都“争取司法承认”。⁸到 1970 年，普费弗长达数十年的改变收养法律的运动取得了成果。但他热切希望看到最高法院宣布“禁止性”收养法规和法律裁决使宗教（或缺乏宗教）成为收养的决定性因素，根据建国和自由行使条款违宪，这一愿望从未实现。⁹

这篇文章让...