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The historian who uncovered the ADL’s secret plot against the far-right John Birch Society
(JTA) — A historian leafing through files in an archive discovered how a Jewish organization helped bring down an influential far-right extremist movement in the United States in the 1960s and ’70s by going undercover and acting as self-appointed spies.
The discovery of the Anti-Defamation League’s covert operation targeting the John Birch Society is the basis of a chapter in a new book by political historian Matthew Dallek of George Washington University. Published in March, “Birchers: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right” is Dallek’s fourth book. It examines the roots of today’s emboldened conservative movement in the United States.
“Birchers” is a history of a group that at its height numbered as many as 100,000 members and “mobilized a loyal army of activists” in a campaign against what it saw as a vast communist conspiracy. He also examines how the Birchers’ mission to defend Christianity and capitalism morphed into a radical anti-civil rights agenda that groups like the ADL saw as an existential threat.
Dallek, who grew up in a Reform Jewish household in Los Angeles, recently sat with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency to discuss the rise of the Birchers, how the ADL infiltrated their ranks and whether such tactics are justified in the name of fighting extremism.
The conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.
JTA: Before we get into the Jewish aspect of the book, meaning the chapter on the Anti-Defamation League’s relationship with the John Birch Society, let’s take a step back. Who are so-called Birchers? Why do they matter?
Mathew Dallek: The John Birch Society was a household name in the 1960s, becoming the emblem of far-right extremism. It didn’t have huge numbers, but it did penetrate the culture and the national consciousness. Its leader, Robert Welch, had argued at one point that President Dwight Eisenhower was a dedicated agent of a communist conspiracy taking over the United States. Welch formed the John Birch Society to educate the American people about the nature of the communist threat.
In its heyday, the group had about 60,000 to 100,000 members, organized into small chapters. They sent out literature trying to give members roadmaps or ideas for what they could do. They believed a mass education of the public was needed because traditional two-party politics was not going to be very effective at exposing the communist threat. They would form front groups such as Impeach Earl Warren [the Supreme Court’s chief justice] or Support Your Local Police. They tried to ban certain books that they viewed as socialistic from being used in schools. Some Birchers ran for school board seats and protested at libraries.
Critics feared that the Birchers were a growing fascist or authoritarian group and that if they were not sidelined politically and culturally then the country could be overrun. The Nation magazine wrote that Birchers essentially had given their followers an invitation to engage in civil war, guerrilla-style. Those fears sparked a big debate about democracy. How does one sustain democracy and, at the height of the Cold War and in the shadow of World War II, Nazi fascist Germany, and the Holocaust?
As you were researching, you came across a trove of historical internal documents from the ADL in the archives of the American Jewish Historical Society in New York. Why did you devote a chapter to what you found in those documents? What did those files reveal to you about the John Birch Society?
These papers are a goldmine. They’re this incredible and often detailed window into the far-right and, in particular, the John Birch Society. They show the ADL had an extensive, multi-dimensional counterintelligence operation that they were running against the Birch Society.
People knew at the time that the ADL was attending events where Birchers were speaking. But the ADL also had undercover agents with code names, who were able to infiltrate the society’s headquarters in Belmont, Massachusetts, and various chapter officers. They dug up financial and employment information about individual Birchers. And they not only used the material for their own newsletters and press releases, but they also fed information to the media.
Another layer is about a debate that’s been going on: Were the Birchers racist and antisemitic? The Birch Society always insisted that they did not tolerate white supremacy and didn’t want any KKK members. They said they accepted people of all faiths and races. And it’s true that they did have a handful of Jewish and Black members.
But what the ADL found was that a lot of hate was bubbling up from the grassroots and also leaking out from the top. The ADL was able to document this in a systematic way.
Some critics of the ADL today say the organization has strayed from its mission by focusing not just on antisemitism but on a wider array of causes. But from reading your work, it sounds like the ADL even then took an expansive view of its role, examining not just direct attacks on Jews but also how the political environment can jeopardize Jews. Am I getting that right, and why did the ADL devote so many resources to a group like the John Birch Society?
So, a few things: It’s the late ’50s and ’60s, and a civil rights coalition is emerging. Benjamin Epstein, the national director of the ADL, was friendly with Thurgood Marshall, the Supreme Court justice, and Martin Luther King. John F. Kennedy went to an ADL event and praised the ADL for speaking out very strongly in defense of democracy and pushing for the equal treatment of all Americans.
Isadore Zack, who helped lead the spy operation, at one point wrote to his colleagues that it was only in a democracy that the Jewish community has been allowed to flourish and so, if you want to defend Jewish Americans, you also have to defend democracy.
There certainly were other threats at the time, but the Birch Society was seen by liberal critics, including the ADL, as a very secretive group that promoted conspiracy theories about communists who often became conflated with Jews.
Would you consider the ADL successful in its campaign against the Birchers?
They were successful. They used surreptitious and in some cases underhanded means to expose the antisemitism and the racism and also interest in violence or the violent rhetoric of the Birch Society in the 1960s.
The ADL was at the tip of the spear of a liberal coalition that included the White House, sometimes the Department of Justice, depending on the issue, the NAACP, Americans for Democratic Action, labor unions, the union-backed Group Research Inc., which was tracking the far-right as well. The ADL was one of the most, if not the most effective at constraining and discrediting the society.
Clearly, however, the Birchers’ ideas never died. They lived on and made a comeback.
It’s somewhat ironic that you reveal the existence of this spying apparatus devoted to targeting an extremist and antisemitic group in the 1960s given the infamy the ADL would earn in a later era, the 1990s, for allegations that they colluded with police agencies in San Francisco to spy on and harass political activists. They eventually settled with the Arab American, Black and American Indian groups that brought a federal civil suit. I know you didn’t study these revelations, which are outside the scope of your book, but could you perhaps reflect on why undercover tactics were seen as necessary or justified?
It’s important to remember that in the mid-20th century, law enforcement in the United States was often led by antisemites or people who were much more concerned with alleged internal communist threats — the threat from the left.
From the ADL’s vantage point, one could not rely on the government entities that were by law and by design supposed to protect Jewish Americans. There was a sense that this work had to be done, at least in part, outside of the parameters of the government.
When I first discovered the ADL’s spying, I didn’t quite know what to make of it. But I realized they weren’t just spying to spy, they exposed a lot of scary things, with echoes in our own times — like easy access to firearms, a hatred of the government, a denigration and defamation of minority groups. And this was all happening in the shadow of the Holocaust and World War II. I became much more sympathetic; they were very effective, and they had a vision of equality of treatment for all Americans.
It’s obviously controversial. I try not to shy away from it. But they had a lot of good reasons to fight back right and to fight back in this nonviolent way.
That last thought brings to mind another, right-wing Jewish group that existed in this era of taking things into our own hands, that did use violence, explosives even.
You mean the Jewish Defense League, led by Meir Kahane.
Yes, exactly.
He was a Bircher. Toward the end of my book, I mention that he was a member for a while, under his alias Michael King.
Antisemitism is on the rise, and lots of initiatives are being organized to address it, both by existing groups like the ADL and new ones. The ADL’s budget has almost doubled over the past seven years. I am seeing Jews talk of fighting back and taking things into their own hands. And we are in this politically precarious movement in American history, all of which suggests parallels to the era you examined. What kind of wisdom can we glean from examining the ADL’s secret and public fight against the John Birch Society as people who care about the issues affecting Jews today?
A lot of liberals in the 1960s and a lot of the leadership at the ADL grasped the axiom that things can always get worse.
In 2015-2016, you’ll recall, there was Trump’s demonization of Mexican immigrants, and the so-called “alt-right” around him and his campaign and expressions of vitriol by people like Steve Bannon.
There was an assumption among a lot of Americans and among a lot of Jewish Americans that the fringe right — the antisemites, the explicit racists, the white supremacists — that there’s not a majority for them and they can never achieve power.
If you go back and you look at Trump’s closing 2016 campaign ad, it’s textbook antisemitism. He flashes on screen these wealthy Jewish international bankers, and he argues that basically, there’s a conspiracy of these global elites who are stealing the wealth of honest Americans. There’s also 2017, the white supremacists in Charlottesville, who said “Jews will not replace us” and Trump saying there are fine people on both sides.
The sense that democracy is incredibly fragile is not just a theory or a concept: It’s an actuality, the sense as well, that the United States has only been a multiracial democracy for not very long and a haven for Jews for not that long either.
The work that the ADL and the NAACP and other groups did to try to constrain and discredit as fringe and extremist still goes on today. It’s harder to do for all sorts of reasons today including social media and the loss of faith in institutions. But it still goes on. You see the importance of institutional guardrails including the Department of Justice that is prosecuting 1,000 Jan. 6 insurrectionists.
The last thing I’ll say is that one of the admirable things in the 1960s about the ADL and the liberal coalition it belonged to is that it built support for landmark legislation like the Immigration Act of 1965, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of ’65. And a coalition eventually fell apart, but it was powerful, reminding us why Jewish American groups should care about or focus on issues that don’t directly affect Jewish people.
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Trump’s new White House ballroom architect is a Jewish immigrant who has advocated for refugees
(JTA) — After parting ways with the first architect hired to carry out his vision for the White House’s East Wing, President Donald Trump has picked a replacement — turning to a firm run by prominent Jewish architect who once called on Trump to keep the country’s doors open to refugees and immigrants.
Shalom Baranes was born soon after his parents fled Libya amid antisemitic sentiment there, coming to the United States as a child with the help of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, now known as HIAS. He rose to prominence as an architect in Washington, D.C., where he has designed both private and government buildings, including the Pentagon, that trend toward the modern.
The White House confirmed on Friday that it had chosen his firm, Shalom Baranes Associates, to continue the East Wing project, centered around the ballroom that Trump wishes to construct. Trump clashed with the first architect on the job over the ballroom’s size.
“Shalom is an accomplished architect whose work has shaped the architectural identity of our nation’s capital for decades, and his experience will be a great asset to the completion of this project,” a White House spokesman, Davis Ingle, said in a statement on Friday.
The firm did not immediately publicly confirm its attachment to the project, and Baranes did not reply to a Jewish Telegraphic Agency request for comment.
Baranes’ selection stands out in an administration that has typically favored partisan and ideological loyalists. Baranes is a repeated donor to Democratic candidates who has openly advocated against one of Trump’s signature policies, his efforts to limit refugee admissions.
In 2017, two months into Trump’s first term, Baranes penned an op-ed for the Washington Post about the new president’s travel ban. Trump had declared a ban on migrants from seven mostly Muslim countries and refugees from around the world soon after taking office, igniting wide opposition including from Jewish groups.
“The anti-immigrant sentiment I feel today is nothing new to me,” he wrote. “When my Jewish parents arrived in the United States just a few years after fleeing persecution in an Arab regime, it was as difficult for them to be accepted here as it is for Muslims now.”
Baranes laid out his criticism gingerly while saying he hoped the travel ban would be short-lived.
“As I watch the news and see families struggling to leave their countries and escape tyranny, I wonder who among them will make it to our shores and become part of the next generation of researchers, teachers, inventors, real estate developers and, yes, architects,” he wrote. “My hope is that the Trump administration will take actions to ensure that the travel ban is indeed temporary, so that good, hard-working individuals fleeing tyranny can find a new home as I did — and that each of them will be given the same opportunity to help build this great nation that I had.”
Among the Jewish groups to lobby against Trump’s travel ban was HIAS, the organization that had helped Baranes and his family come to the United States. HIAS declined to comment on his selection as White House architect but said through a spokesperson that the organization was working to respond to Trump’s crackdown on refugees, which the president renewed last week after an Afghan refugee shot and killed a member of the National Guard in Washington.
To those who are familiar with Baranes’ style, he is a surprising pick for more than just because of his personal politics. His designs typically trend toward the modern, not the gilded classical style that Trump favors. He also has said he prefers to think carefully before tackling a project — an impossibility when it comes to the White House ballroom, which is already mid-construction.
“You have to wonder why he would risk a stellar career and near pristine reputation for a project that could possibly end up in disaster. He could be publicly fired and castigated by the developer-in-chief or ostracized among his colleagues and clients,” wrote Douglas Freuhling, the editor in chief of the Washington Business Journal, on Friday.
But Fruehling noted that a successful build at the White House — one that balances Trump’s tastes with the gravitas of the White House — would be a defining capstone for any architect’s career. “He may just be the perfect architect for the job. For his sake, I hope it turns out that way,” he wrote of Baranes.
Baranes’ portfolio includes multiple synagogue renovations. He donated his services to restore the interior of Sixth & I, the Jewish center in downtown Washington, D.C., when it was reconstructed just over two decades ago.
The post Trump’s new White House ballroom architect is a Jewish immigrant who has advocated for refugees appeared first on The Forward.
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It’s time to reconsider what we know about Jewish birthing rituals
For all living things, birth is our introduction to the world. So it’s a fitting theme for the first exhibit in the Museum at Eldridge Street’s new initiative, “Opening Doors to Intercultural Understanding.”
The multiyear project is centered around three themes: sacred space, sacred community and sacred time. First Light is inspired by sacred time, which focuses on lifecycle events and holidays in the Jewish calendar. The museum staff worked with curator Warren Klein, the director and curator at Herbert & Eileen Bernard Museum of Judaica, to come up with the idea for an exhibit on birth.
“Of course, there’s a universal resonance there,” Amanda Gordon, the museum’s director of public engagement, said. “But really First Light is all about examining Jewish birth traditions and different observance practices, how they’ve evolved, but also different kinds of aesthetic craftsmanship ideas.”
Visitors are first greeted with contemporary paintings from artists Tobi Kahn and Mark Podwal that depict the significance of birth both personally and biblically. Kahn’s abstract painting evokes one of his children’s sonograms through its textured exploration of rounded shapes. This is juxtaposed with Podwal’s depiction of Pharaoh’s daughter finding Moses in the Nile, using a classic Egyptian style to depict the female face looming over baby Moses, almost protectively. Further along in the exhibit are older examples of birth-related rituals both in art and in historic objects.
“These rotating exhibitions,” Gordon said. “They give us a chance to showcase not only cultures outside of Ashkenazi Jewish culture, but also contemporary work. So to have, you know, Tobi’s work and Mark Podwal’s work here in conversation with these pieces from the 19th and 18th century.”
One of the first photographs in the exhibit is of a two-seater bench; one seat is for the sandek, who holds the baby during the bris, and the other is for Elijah the Prophet.
Klein explained that Elijah is imagined to be at every circumcision ceremony, and some communities reserve a seat for him, much like how many families save him a glass of wine during a Passover seder.
“It’s hard to kind of pinpoint where the custom was created,” Klein said. “Across the board, Ashkenazi and Sephardic communities will have a chair reserved for Elijah.”
The exhibit also explores lesser-known traditions; though most people think that Jewish birthing customs are limited to “circumcision or bris milah and that’s it,” Klein said. “It’s truly not.”
For example, there is Pidyon haben, the redemption of the first born son, a tradition that dates back to the days of the high priest, when Israelites had to offer their firstborn sons as priestly assistants. In the era of rabbinic Judaism, the redemption became more symbolic, and families would offer coins on a platter to “purchase” their child back from the rabbi. In the exhibition, a photo of an ornate silver platter filled with coins illustrates the practice.
Although the exhibit could house only a limited number of physical objects, it displays a wide range of customs. There’s a decorative amulet case from the 19th century that once held a prayer to protect its holder from Lilith, a demon — or, according to some stories, Adam’s first wife before Eve — thought to harm the mother and child during labor or right after birth. One glass case hosts a printed prayer book for a German mohel, or ritual circumciser, dated to 1744. What makes this facsimile particularly interesting, Klein explained, is its depiction of women, who are usually not seen in the visual images of the bris.
Klein wanted to make sure women were more represented in this exhibit than they usually are in discussions of Jewish birthing customs. One photograph shows a girl’s baby naming in 20th-century Morocco and another depicts the outfit worn by a female baby at a Greek ceremony.
The exhibit also features a wimpel, a long piece of cloth used to tie the Torah scroll. Traditionally, wimpels are made from the cloth that swaddled a baby during his bris, and are decorated with prayers for the boy to grow strong, learn Torah and get married.
“These then would be deposited or used in the synagogue, maybe on his bar mitzvah, maybe on special occasions, and then given to the synagogue almost as a census that this person was a part of the community,” Klein said. “There would be communities that had truly thousands of these.”
“Unfortunately, this is a custom that almost died out after the Holocaust,” Klein said. “There was a resurgence in the 20th century and certain communities still practice it. But it is very rare to find.”
Both Gordon and Klein expressed hope that visitors of all backgrounds would gain something from the exhibit.
“It was my hope that, you know, visitors would come in with their traditions or their kind of preconceived notions on what maybe Jewish birth traditions and customs are,” Klein said. “And to also kind of have some ideas to take with them into their own communities.”
The exhibit First Light: Birth in the Jewish Tradition will be on view at the Museum at Eldridge Street until April 26, 2026.
The post It’s time to reconsider what we know about Jewish birthing rituals appeared first on The Forward.
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White House Releases New National Security Strategy Indicating Renewed Focus on Western Hemisphere
US President Donald Trump speaks at the White House in Washington, DC, US, Sept. 25, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
The White House late on Thursday night released its new “National Security Strategy,” indicating a sharp pivot of the nation’s strategic focus toward the Western Hemisphere while recalibrating US engagement with Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.
The 33-page document only mentions Israel and the Middle East briefly, instead focusing closer to home.
“After years of neglect, the United States will reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere, and to protect our homeland and our access to key geographies throughout the region,” the strategy states. “We will deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our Hemisphere. This ‘Trump Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine is a common-sense and potent restoration of American power and priorities, consistent with American security interests.”
The strategy adds that the Trump administration wants “to ensure that the Western Hemisphere remains reasonably stable and well-governed enough to prevent and discourage mass migration to the
United States; we want a Hemisphere whose governments cooperate with us against narco-terrorists, cartels, and other transnational criminal organizations; we want a Hemisphere that remains free of hostile foreign incursion or ownership of key assets, and that supports critical supply chains; and we want to ensure our continued access to key strategic locations.”
Publication of the strategy came just after the results of a major new defense survey showed that the American public still overwhelmingly supports active US global leadership and robust military strength.
The White House argues in its strategy that more local challenges represent the most urgent threats to US sovereignty and domestic stability. At the same time, the document downplays the view that deep involvement in conflicts abroad advances US interests. While it reaffirms the importance of alliances and deterrence commitments, it rejects the role of Washington as “global policeman,” instead prioritizing a stronger homeland, resilient supply chains, and revitalized domestic industrial capacity. The strategy also calls for major investment in missile-defense capabilities, including a nationwide system sometimes referred to as a “Golden Dome for America,” echoing Israel’s longstanding layered defense architecture.
The White House’s strategy coincides with the release of data from the newly published Reagan National Defense Survey, which finds Americans more supportive of engagement and global leadership than many pundits have suggested. According to the findings, 64 percent of Americans want the US to be more engaged in world affairs, not less, and 87 percent believe maintaining the strongest military in the world is essential. Meanwhile, 71 percent of Americans say global peace is most likely when the US holds clear military superiority. The data also shows strong majorities support defending key allies if attacked, while 68 percent back building a national missile-defense system, reflecting rising concern about long-range threats.
For Israel and the Middle East, the White House strategy signals a recalibrated emphasis on preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, securing vital maritime chokepoints, and supporting Israel’s long-term security, including cooperation on advanced defense technologies.
Public support for the Jewish state remains strong, though there are indications of waning. Sixty-six percent of Americans view Israel as an ally, a decrease from 72 percent the year prior, according to the Reagan survey.
The survey indicates that 60 percent of Americans approved of the June 2025 US airstrike targeting Iranian nuclear infrastructure, though partisan divides remain prevalent. Enhanced pressure on Tehran, including sanctions and cyber measures, garner even broader bipartisan support.
Experts indicate that for Israel, a long-standing partner deeply affected by US posture in both Europe and the Middle East, the strategy’s emphasis on missile defense, deterrence, and countering Iranian ambitions will be particularly reassuring. However, some analysts argue that the strategy’s overall de-emphasis on the Middle East and apparent desire to be less engaged outside the Western Hemisphere could prove problematic for the Jewish state.