Jews in American politics: Past and present

Abstract

T response of leaders of the American Jewish Comittee to the crisis of German Jewry in the 1930s found sick and old men, lacking influence in the American political arena, insecure about being Jews and often more busy with business and family than with the plight of German Jewry. In sharp contrast to this period, a very different picture emerges of Jewish leaders and organizations in the 1970s and 1980s. At least four major differences are worth noting. First, a single organization, the American Jewish Committee, had an initial advantage on access and ties to the Roosevelt administration in Washington. It was the major Jewish organization in American politics. There were other establishment organizations on the scene with considerably less influence, including the American Jewish Congress, B'nai B'rith (with its AntiDefamation League), and the Jewish Labor Committee. In the 1970s, there were many Jewish organizations, establishment and grassroots, operating actively on local, regional, and national levels in the struggle for Soviet Jewry. Many had influence and access in Washington, D.C. There was active competition between the grassroots and the establishment and within the establishment. For example, the National Conference for Soviet Jewry (NCSJ) competed (and cooperated) on national and local levels with the Council for Jewish Federations (CJF), National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Councils (NJCRAC), the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and the Coalition for Soviet Jewry as well as with the Union of Councils, representing the grassroots. All of these organizations had varying degrees of access and influence with Congress and the administration. A second significant difference is the quality of leadership. The top echelon of the American Jewish Committee of the 1930s consisted of very wealthy and professionally successful men. Many, however, were older, often sick and over extended; other commitments both professional and personal limited their time and involvement in concerns and activities of the Committee. For example, the Committee failed to find members to represent it "at home and abroad in meetings and conferences on the German Jewish crisis. The wealth and position of its members sometimes enabled contact with Europe and European Jewry, but when business did not permit a trip or vacation, the Committee was not represented." Family concerns also interfered. "In May 1939, realizing that the situation of Jews in Germany was desperate, the Committee wished to schedule additional meetings on Sunday. The plan failed, however, because in the spring so many of the members went to the country for weekends." Most of the organizations in the 1970s and 1980s had an overabundance of qualified and dynamic lay leadership, both men and women, with countless replacements waiting in the wings. Persons active in Jewish organizational life, often persons of means, dominated the lay leadership of the Soviet Jewry advocacy movement in the 1970s. Unlike their counterparts in the 1930s, however, most took leave from their other organizational, professional, and business pursuits and committed themselves full time to the Soviet Jewry advocacy movement. Importantly, tbr many, their personal, peer, and communal status was earned via activism in a particular Jewish organization. Many of these organizations in the 1970s and 1980s had extensive and expanding professional staffs especially in existing and long established organizations like CJF, NJCRAC, American Jewish Committee, American Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), and Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS). In sharp contrast, the ad hoc and newer organizations were hampered by staff shortages reflecting a lack of fiscal stability. The NCSJ, for example, suffered from a shortage of staff throughout which harmed its activities and effectiveness. Third, and most importantly, establishment Jewish leaders during the 1930s were insecure as American Jews. They often refrained from pressing Jewish issues and Jewish causes. They sought Christian allies to fight antiSemitism "without American Jews appearing in...[the struggle])." The American Jewish Committee, for example, adopted "quict diplomacy," "believing it to be