Remarks at the Dedication of the Washington Hebrew Congregation Temple.

Ladies and gentlemen:

A few moments ago, before this service began, I was privileged to meet some of the distinguished members of this congregation in the library. Several of them voiced a word of amazement that the President of the United States should attend a service of a faith not his own and, in spite of other preoccupations, come both to the religious service and to the dedication of this great Temple.

I personally think that this is natural. There is nothing unique or particularly extraordinary about it. This country is a spiritual organism. Let us go back for a moment to its founding. The men who led the revolution against England well understood that they were fighting for spiritual values.

Do you recall such words as "Taxation without representation is tyranny"? They did not say taxation was wrong. Indeed, they knew its need--possibly as well as we do. But without representation, without being a part of the authority that levies those taxes, it became tyranny. "I know not what others may do," said Patrick Henry, "but as for me, give me liberty or give me death."

Liberty--a spiritual value. They claimed these. They fought for them. They died for them. And they gave us this nation.

Now, wherein was their claim for these rights, these spiritual rights of man? You find them in the Declaration of Independence. "We hold that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights," said they.

These rights, then, come not because we have emigrated to this great and glorious land, crowded with God's resources, not because we have been more fortunate than our brethren elsewhere, but because each is a child of God. And any true American must recognize in another American those fights endowed by God, because if we don't, we are not true to the concepts of the men who wrote the Declaration of Independence.

Consequently, today the President of the United States, the official head of the country, is after all the official head of a great nation that is religious in its background and has a spiritual foundation on which to stand. Therefore, it is entirely fitting and in keeping with his Office that he should come to such a great and significant event in the lives of one part of the great faiths that have made this country what it is, to pay his respects to that faith, and to this event and to the people who have made it possible.

This building--a house of worship--will bring to many thousands in the future and through the years a renewed appreciation of the fact that they do have the rights that this country confers upon them, because that country was born and has existed in the knowledge that God is the source of all power.

If this great Temple continues to serve in that way, if its officials--its rabbis--continue to bring home to the hearts of all people who here come to worship that we owe all in the end to the Almighty and not merely to the good fortune of our birth, then it will indeed have served a noble purpose and one that we may all salute with great joy--with great satisfaction.

One more word about the rights that we enjoy. It is not enough to know that God gave those rights to you and to your neighbor. It is well to remember this also: you may not protect those rights only for yourself. You must protect them for all, or your own will be lost.

The Boston Tea Party took place, of course, in the Boston Harbor, and Massachusetts was the scene of the first outbreak of our Revolutionary War. But had not the other Colonies recognized that if Massachusetts went under, they also went under; that if the rights of Massachusetts and her citizens could be destroyed and trampled under foot, theirs also would suffer a like fate, then there would have been no successful war and no eventual United States.

And so I say I come here in great pride in the capacity of official head--temporarily--of this country, to pay my respects to all who have built it, to all the good that shall come out of it, and to offer my felicitations to each member of this congregation who will have such an inspiring place hereafter to come for their worship.

So my little part in the dedication of this Temple is merely to say it is a most gratifying thing to me, both personally and officially, that it is a completed building.

Thank you.