THE FIRST PART of Gittelsohn's career has been outlined in the introduction to Sermon 30 above. In 1953 he moved from Long Island to Temple Israel of Boston, one of the most prestigious Reform congregations in the United States; there he remained until his retirement in 1977. In addition to his role as a congregational rabbi, he was visible as a leader of Jewish organizations on a national level, including as President of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, 1969–71, and as founding President of the Association of Reform Zionists of America (ARZA), 1977–84. Politically outspoken and actively involved in public affairs, he served on governmental commissions pertaining to the penal system and migratory labour. He wrote widely on Jewish issues and theology, his published works including one collection of sermons, Fire in My Bones.

Gittelsohn was one of the first American rabbis of a large urban congregation to condemn from the pulpit the Johnson administration's policy in Vietnam. On the Rosh Hashanah of 1965 on which this sermon was being delivered, the Boston Globe quoted Rabbi Joseph S. Shubow's sermon saying that, through the United Nations, ‘We [the United States] are exerting our fullest powers to bring an end to hatreds, animosities and bloodshed and to restore faith, confidence and peace among the nations.’ There was no New York Times report of any High Holy Day sermon from 1965 relating to the war; the first evidence I could find of any such was in an article published on 12 December 1965, reporting that two New York rabbis had called for an end, through negotiations, to the deeper US involvement. They were Louis C. Gerstein, an Orthodox rabbi at the Sephardi Shearith Israel, and Israel Margolies of the Reform Beth Am, the People's Temple. Margolies was quoted as saying in a sermon, ‘Rarely in the history of world affairs has any country indulged in such a colossal act of self-righteous arrogance as did our United States when we decided for the strife-torn people of South Vietnam that they are better off dead than Red.’