Celebrating 80 years ...

When President Franklin Delano Roosevelt died, synagogue services were held locally in his honor. The announcement and a memorial to him were on the cover of the April 13, 1945, issue of the Jewish Western Bulletin.

Described as a “humanitarian, champion of freedom and peace,” he was compared to Moses who brought Jews the Ten Commandments, as Roosevelt enunciated “the Four Freedoms.” And, “[j]ust as Moses, our great and sorely tried leader was not vouchsafed the happiness to see the end of his labors fulfilled, so too Roosevelt, that great and heavily burdened, very human American, has not been granted the happiness to view the victorious ending of one of the mightiest struggles of human history, which is so close to being achieved, and to which in so great measure, his foresight, his courage and his steadfastness have contributed.”

As Jews, the article concluded, “we will say as we feel, ‘A man of God has passed.’”

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