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Soviet Jewry protest leaders in San Francisco secretly recruited help from Jews for Jesus, FBI file says
(JTA) – Organizers of protests on behalf of Soviet Jewry in San Francisco in the early 1970s might have bolstered crowds by secretly recruiting participants from Jews for Jesus.
The explosive revelation that Jewish leaders turned to a Christian missionary group for help appears in a 1973 FBI memo that the Jewish Telegraphic Agency recently obtained through a freedom of information request.
The FBI file details an apparent relationship between Martin Rosen, the founder of Jews for Jesus, and Joel Brooks and Harold Light, two prominent San Francisco Jewish leaders at the fore of local efforts in the movement to get Soviet authorities to end restrictions on the emigration of the country’s Jewish population. The relationship outlined in the declassified memo has not appeared in scholarship on the Soviet Jewry movement, nor is it known to activists of the movement who were interviewed by JTA. Light, Brooks and Rosen are deceased.
If the FBI’s intelligence is accurate, a successful and cherished social movement that unified much of the global Jewish community in common purpose for decades relied at least to some extent in San Francisco on the support of a group, rejected by nearly all of that community, whose mission is to proselytize to Jews.
“The first thing I thought of was, I’m reading something from ‘The Twilight Zone’ — in my many years in the Soviet Jewry movement, I don’t know if I’ve seen a document as strange as this,” said Morey Schapira, who served in leadership positions in the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry, the Bay Area Council for Soviet Jews, and the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews. “The idea of working with a slimy group like Jews for Jesus, it’s beyond my comprehension.”
The public can request any FBI files that may exist pertaining to deceased individuals. An FBI memo relating Rosen arrived last November in response to one of about 50 freedom of information requests on prominent figures in recent Jewish history submitted by JTA almost two years ago. Most of JTA’s requests are still pending. TO DOWNLOAD THE FBI FILE, CLICK HERE.
Dated May 24, 1973, and written by an FBI informant whose name was redacted by staff at the U.S. National Archive, the memo focuses on Brooks, who was the Northern California director of the American Jewish Congress for about 30 years starting in 1967.
“[Brooks] has heavily utilized the services of the young Jews in the Jews for Jesus group,” the informant wrote. “[He] has used these services to turn out people in his Soviet Jewry demonstrations.”
The informant also cites Brooks as saying that Light, leader of the Bay Area Council for Soviet Jewry, used members of Jews for Jesus in a “hush-hush way” to distribute leaflets and participate in demonstrations.
The memo spells out why such an arrangement would be best kept out of the public eye.
“All of this, of course, is secret, because organized Jewish groups, and the various rabbinical councils have proclaimed that Jews for Jesus are no longer Jews but have become apostates, and should not be palled around with, nor buried in Jewish cemeteries,” the informant writes.
Martin “Moishe” Rosen, founder of Jews for Jesus in 1975. (Denver Post via Getty Images)
The upside for Rosen was obvious: His group would gain a foothold in a popular Jewish movement, offering a potential avenue toward legitimacy and a pool of possible recruits. In his 1974 memoir, titled “Jews for Jesus,” Rosen openly discussed being accepted into the movement by Jewish organizers, but he did so without naming Brooks, Light or any others.
He wrote that Jews for Jesus were invited because of their reputation as the “best qualified, best disciplined demonstrators in the San Francisco community. We’ve had more experience than other Jewish groups and are familiar with the applicable laws and regulations.”
Rosen’s group committed to not use the demonstrations as an opportunity to evangelize and didn’t bring any Christian literature or wear outfits that would identify them, according to the memoir.
“Many Jews for Jesus believe in the freedom of Soviet Jewry just as strongly as any other Jews, and we want to be as effective as possible when we demonstrate to support that cause,” Rosen wrote.
To Schapira, who led the Bay Area Council for Soviet Jews for years and knew both Brooks and Light, however, it’s unclear why the Soviet Jewry movement would have wanted or needed Jews for Jesus. Schapira didn’t recall it ever being especially difficult to turn out demonstrators organically. There didn’t seem to be a need to resort to secret deals.
“If you look at the picture of the rallies in those days, they even had people like [American folk music legend] Joan Baez,” Schapira said. “They developed a relationship with her and she would come to the rally and bring her guitar and sing songs for freedom.”
He added, “If we needed an instant rally, we were a grassroots organization and we could produce 10 or 12 people, which might be enough to send a message to the Russians and get some publicity in the local papers.”
At least a few people in the Bay Area’s Jewish community caught wind of the secret relationship between Brooks and Jews for Jesus at the time, according to the memo.
Stephanie Rodgers was a coordinator of the Jewish Defense League, an extremist right-wing Jewish group that was under heavy FBI surveillance. Founded by Rabbi Meir Kahane, the JDL applied its often violent tactics to resist Jews for Jesus’ public campaign to convert Jews. Rodgers visited Brooks’ office ahead of a planned demonstration in front of the Soviet consulate in San Francisco and asked about his connection to Rosen and Jews for Jesus, according to the memo.
After Brooks explained how they had been useful, Rodgers “smiled and was very pleasant on the surface,” the memo says. But at the demonstration, Rodgers and a group of other JDL activists showed up even though they said they would stay away, and they found Rosen in the crowd and proceeded to attack him and “kicked him in the groin.”
JDL regularly disrupted Jews for Jesus events; the organization would ultimately claim responsibility for firebombing a bus operated by Jews for Jesus in Brooklyn and abducting an adherent. In the Bay Area, where both groups were active, tensions were particularly high; the Jewish Defense League would sue the local Jews for Jesus chapter over what it charged was the group’s misuse of the JDL’s name and imagery.
Brooks, meanwhile, had more affable ties with Jews for Jesus. It’s unclear how or when Rosen and Brooks developed a relationship, but Brooks noted in a July 25, 1972, letter he wrote to the office of the American Jewish Congress in New York that their ties had started “some time ago.” The letter is found in the records of the Northern California branch of the American Jewish Congress, which are archived at the University of California Berkeley’s library.
A prominent advocacy group in its heyday, the American Jewish Congress — not to be confused with the American Jewish Committee — took a more liberal political stance than that of Jewish establishment groups on many issues.
Brooks had learned that his organization’s national headquarters wanted to undertake a study of Jews for Jesus and he wished to provide insight. He was under no illusion about the group’s objective: “The sole aim of these men is to enlist new converts to Christianity,” Brooks wrote in the letter.
“Through contact with Rosen I have developed a great deal of insight into how his organization operates, their source of funding, budget, etc. which I wish to share with you,” he added.
Then as now, members of Jews for Jesus and other Messianic groups felt unfairly rejected by the Jewish world, arguing that their Christian beliefs should have a place in the community.
In the early 1970s, when Jews for Jesus’ conversion drive was prominent and well funded, Brooks was perceived as more lenient, according to the foreword to the 2017 book “Converging Destinies: Jews, Christians, and the Mission of God.”
“Brooks tried to keep some of us connected to the Jewish community and Jewish life,” Calvin J. Smith wrote in the foreword. “I remember going with another Jew for Jesus to a Jewish consciousness raising session he held at a home in Marin County in the early 1970s.”
Glenn Richter was one of the founders of the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry and operates as a walking encyclopedia of the movement.
Protestors dressed as prisoners behind bars, alongside a man holding a placard reading “Solidarity with Soviet Jews,” stand together with members of New York’s Jewish community as they take to the streets during the Solidarity Sunday for Soviet Jewry demonstration in protest at the Soviet Union’s treatment of Jewish people, in New York City, April 18, 1975. (Images Press/Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
He said the movement did collaborate with many Christians outside of Jews for Jesus. For example, he said there were Scandinavians, who, on weekend trips to Leningrad (today St. Petersburg), brought in Jewish material that was banned in the Soviet Union. Others set up safe houses in Finland in expectation of fleeing Soviet Jews. And the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews raised millions of dollars from evangelicals to help transport Soviet Jews to Israel.
“Of course, among these goodhearted souls are those who have conversion of Jews in mind, but I suspect most have wanted to fulfill their prophecy of ingathering Jews to Israel so that a Christian messiah could return,” Richter said.
In his eyes, Jews for Jesus represented a red line.
“Our Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry office on Manhattan’s West 72nd Street was down the block from a church with a Jewish Messianic constituency, and we would never, ever, try to work with them,” Richter said.
Andrew Esensten contributed research to this story.
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Jewish Primary School in Paris Vandalized Amid Surge in Antisemitic Attacks
Nearly 200,000 people took to the streets of Paris to protest rising antisemitism. Photo: Reuters/Claire Serie
A Jewish primary school in eastern Paris was vandalized over the weekend, with windows smashed and security equipment damaged, prompting a criminal investigation and renewed outrage among local Jewish leaders as targeted antisemitic attacks continue to escalate.
On Sunday night, a group of unknown individuals attacked the Beth Loubavitch–Beth Hannah primary school in Paris’s 20th arrondissement (district/borough), located on Passage des Saint-Simoniens, French media reported.
According to local authorities, the perpetrators did not enter the school building, but they did manage to smash windows, damage security equipment, and deface the school’s plaque and Jewish symbols.
The Paris public prosecutor’s office has now opened an investigation into the outrage, treating it as “aggravated damage” committed by a group with religious motives.
Éric Pliez, mayor of Paris’s 20th arrondissement, strongly condemned this latest antisemitic attack, promising swift action to ensure the safety of the local Jewish community.
“These acts are unacceptable and run counter to our values,” Pliez said in a statement. “The safety of our students is our highest priority. Alongside the municipal team, I reaffirm my unwavering opposition to all forms of antisemitism.”
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo also denounced the incident, reaffirming her full solidarity with the local Jewish community.
“I reiterate that these acts of antisemitic hatred, which I condemn with the utmost firmness, have no place in our city or in our Republic,” Hidalgo said in a statement.
Meanwhile, southeast of Paris, French authorities in Lyon are preparing for the trial of a 55-year-old man accused of murdering his 89-year-old Jewish neighbor in 2022, with the court set to determine whether antisemitism was a motivating factor.
Starting Monday, defendant Rachid Kheniche is facing trial after being charged with aggravated murder on religious grounds, even as he denies an antisemitic motive.
In May 2022, Kheniche threw his neighbor, René Hadjadj, from the 17th floor of his building, an act to which he later admitted.
According to the police investigation, Kheniche and his neighbor were having a discussion when the conflict escalated.
At the time, he told investigators that he had tried to strangle Hadjadj but did not realize what he was doing, as he was experiencing a paranoid episode caused by prior drug use.
However, after two psychiatric evaluations, Kheniche was deemed criminally responsible.
Ten days after the murder, the Lyon prosecutor’s office launched a broader investigation to determine whether the act had an antisemitic motive.
With this new trial, only the alleged antisemitic motive is being contested, while the murder itself has already been established.
The National Bureau of Vigilance against Antisemitism and the Jewish Observatory of France have filed a civil suit, with the International League Against Racism and the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France also participating in the case.
“The anti-Jewish nature of the act is fully established, both materially and morally,” Franck Serfati, legal counsel for the groups involved in the suit, said in a statement.
Like most countries across Europe and the broader Western world, France has seen a rise in antisemitic incidents over the last two years, in the wake of the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
According to the French Interior Ministry, the first six months of 2025 saw more than 640 antisemitic incidents, a 27.5 percent decline from the same period in 2024, but a 112.5 percent increase compared to the first half of 2023, before the Oct. 7 atrocities.
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Top US Lawmaker Accuses Illinois Mayor of Not Protecting Jewish Students at Northwestern From Pro-Hamas Encampment
US Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI) speaking at a press conference at the US Capitol, Washington, DC, Nov. 4, 2025. Photo: Michael Brochstein/ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
The chairman of the US House Committee on Education and the Workforce is demanding answers from the mayor of Evanston, Illinois, accusing him of failing to protect Jewish students during a pro-Hamas, anti-Israel encampment at Northwestern University that, lawmakers say. devolved into widespread antisemitic harassment and violence.
In a sharply worded letter dated Jan. 28, US Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI) said Daniel Biss, a Democrat, refused to authorize Evanston police to assist when Northwestern requested help clearing the encampment in April 2024, despite reports of assaults, intimidation, and explicitly antisemitic incidents. Walberg wrote that the decision left the university unable to enforce the law safely, citing committee documents indicating Northwestern lacked sufficient police resources to carry out arrests without city support.
According to the letter, Jewish students reported being spat on, verbally harassed, and told to “go back to Germany” and “get gassed,” while others said they were called “dirty Jew” and “Zionist pig” as they attempted to move across campus. One student wearing a kippah reported being targeted, while another described being assaulted as an encampment member recorded the incident.
Walberg described the environment as a “hotbed of antisemitic harassment and hostility,” rejecting public characterizations of the encampment as peaceful.
Northwestern’s campus, located in Evanston, became a hub of anti-Israel activism following the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, amid the ensuing war in Gaza. The school was ravaged by a series of antisemitic incidents tied to campus protests. Most notably, pro-Hamas activists illegally occupied the Deering Meadow section of campus in May 2024, demanding the university boycott all Israeli entities.
During the tense standoff in the spring 2024, Jewish students reported being physically assaulted and harassed while attempting to navigate campus, including incidents in which students wearing visible Jewish symbols such as a kippah were targeted.
Amid the post-Oct. 7 campus protests, the Education and Workforce Committee has been investigating several schools for what lawmakers described as insufficient responses to a surge in antisemitism. Last week, Walberg released documents along with his letter showing what he described as Biss’s failure to protect Northwestern’s Jewish students during the encampment.
Biss called Walberg’s letter a “dishonest political attack” during a news conference at City Hall on Thursday morning.
“But we are here today because that attack is an effort to go at the right to peacefully protest. This is an effort to use the very real danger of antisemitism to advance a political agenda,” Biss said. “I will say that personally, as a Jewish person, as a grandson of Holocaust survivors, I find it deeply, deeply offensive.”
Biss also defended his decision not to intervene in the campus unrest.
“After meticulously assessing the situation through the lens of public safety and the right to peaceful protest, we came to that conclusion,” Biss said. “We believed at the time it was the right decision. I believe today it was the right decision.”
The mayor added that the police department warned at the time that sending city officers to the encampment “might further inflame the situation.”
In May 2024, university president Michael Schill testified in front of the US Congress amid mounting skepticism over efforts to clamp down on campus antisemitism. His administration ultimately ended the encampment by reaching what became known as the “Deering Meadow Agreement” with the pro-Hamas protesters. Terms of the deal included establishing a scholarship for Palestinian undergraduates, contacting potential employers of students who caused recent campus disruptions to insist on their being hired, creating a segregated dormitory hall to be occupied exclusively by students of Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) and Muslim descent, and forming a new advisory committee in which anti-Zionists students and faculty may wield an outsized voice.
Biss touted the deal during his press conference last week, noting it ended the encampment peacefully.
However, the agreement was abolished in November 2025 as part of a deal that the university reached with the Trump administration, which months earlier in April had impounded at least $790 in frozen federal funds over accusations of antisemitism and other discriminatory behavior. Northwestern agrred to pay $75 million and implement measures to protect students from antisemitism in exchange for a resumption of federal funding.
However, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) — an organization that has been scrutinized by US authorities over Hamas — filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Northwestern Graduate Workers for Palestine (GW4P) group to cancel Northwestern’s new antisemitism prevention course, which was implemented as part of the deal. The lawsuit was dropped last month.
In last week’s letter, Walberg alleged that political considerations influenced Biss’s decision not to intervene with police force. Walberg cited testimony from a Northwestern trustee who claimed Biss publicly framed his refusal to provide police support as a way to bolster his progressive credentials, even as the university struggled to maintain order. Internal communications referenced in the letter suggest Northwestern officials feared the city’s position left Jewish students vulnerable during a period of escalating campus unrest nationwide.
Walberg also criticized Biss for recently condemning the federal government’s agreement with Northwestern to restore funding, calling the mayor’s opposition inconsistent with his stated concern about discrimination.
The committee is requesting a formal briefing from Biss on law enforcement coordination and antisemitism in Evanston-area campuses, signaling potential legislative action. Walberg emphasized that Congress has broad constitutional authority to oversee education-related civil rights enforcement, including Title VI protections against religious and ethnic discrimination.
Biss has sought to bolster his reputation with the left flank of the Democratic Party as he runs for Congress himself in Illinois’ 9th District. The mayor has vowed to no longer accept funding from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the foremost pro-Israel lobbying group in the US, and has adopted a platform critical of the Jewish state.
In a campaign news release on Thursday, Biss wrote that Walberg’s letter was a “baseless attack fueled by” AIPAC.
“It’s no coincidence that Rep. Walberg’s letter arrived just eight days before the beginning of early voting in the March primary election,” Biss wrote. “They’re playing cheap political games in service to AIPAC’s right-wing agenda. It is shameful.”
AIPAC’s mission is to foster bipartisan support in Congress for the US-Israel alliance.
Spectators suggest that Biss, who is facing a bruising primary battle with 26-year-old anti-Israel social media personality Kat Abughazaleh, has sought to curry favor with local progressive activists by pushing a harder line against the Jewish state.
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Amid standoff with US, would Iran really attack Israel?
As President Donald Trump weighs ordering military action against Iran — with officials from both sides scheduled to meet Friday to pursue a diplomatic resolution —Tehran has issued a familiar warning: Attack us, and we will strike Israel.
The threat makes little sense. Israel is responsible neither for Iranians’ miseries, which led to major protests last month, nor for any possible attack by the United States. Yet the cynical logic behind the warning is credible. Turning any confrontation with the U.S. into an Arab-Israeli one might change the dynamics by fracturing any regional coalition backing Washington, shifting the narrative to one of resistance.
Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein attempted exactly this in 1991, during the first Gulf War. Facing a broad U.S.-led coalition that included Arab states, he fired Scud missiles at Israel. If Israel had retaliated, those Arab partners would have been forced to choose between coalition discipline and domestic outrage. The alliance might have collapsed.
Israel, urged by the U.S., showed extraordinary restraint: It absorbed the attacks and did not respond. Saddam’s gambit failed, and he was expelled from Kuwait. That precedent may no longer apply. Israel is angrier now, and its accounts with Iran — even after last summer’s brief war — remain overdue.
Those truths, combined with Trump’s rash approach to conflict, could make for a dangerous combination.
From Tehran’s perspective, it is critical that Trump has no apparent appetite for long wars. He wants moments that can be spun as achievements, not long and costly campaigns. And he is generally impatient. After the 12-day-war in June, the Iranian regime was badly exposed, and serious analysts were calling for real surrender terms: an end to enrichment, abandonment of ballistic missiles, and the dismantling of proxy militias including Hezbollah and the Houthis.
Trump instead rushed to declare that everything had been “obliterated” and mused publicly that a deal might no longer be necessary at all, turning his sights elsewhere.
That short attention span creates room for Iranian calculation — in which Israel is apparently factoring.
It is possible that the Iranians are bluffing about attacking Israel. But they may also be threatening to do so as part of a certain logic, which might look like this: as last summer’s war showed, an American strike targeting the nuclear system — which has clearly become Trump’s focus, despite the fact that his initial threats came in response to Iran’s violent crackdown on protesters — is survivable. As a form of symbolic punishment, it can be absorbed. Limited concessions — caps on enrichment, revived nuclear negotiations, even the quiet removal of expendable officials — might preserve the system itself.
But since Trump is unpredictable, and may get carried away, the threat to strike Israel could serve as a way of cautioning Trump to not take things too far. It could be seen as warning that, should he not stick to the script, Iran has the ability to potentially mire him in a far more drawn-out and costly conflict.
If this is the case, the Iranian regime should tread very carefully indeed. That’s because Israel’s interests in this situation diverge fundamentally from those of the U.S. And actually making good on the threats, and handing Israel an excuse to pursue them, might spectacularly backfire.
Trump may want a quick win for his hubristic claims of unparalleled greatness. But for Israel, regime change in Iran is a very serious, real and rational goal. The Islamic Republic is explicitly committed to Israel’s destruction and has spent decades constructing a “ring of fire” around it — Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, militias in Syria and Iraq, precision-guided munitions aimed at Israeli cities.
The benefit of a post-theocratic Iran — one no longer devoted to Israel’s annihilation — would be transformative, not only for Israel but for the Middle East itself.
Yet despite Trump’s initial passion for protecting the Iranian protesters agitating toward regime change, all signs suggest that he is unlikely to really pursue a democratizing project. To do so would go against his own political philosophy, which is centered on his admiration for authoritarians. His real interest is in being seen to have achieved something — even a item much smaller than regime change — which he might argue his predecessors could not.
That is bad news for those who want to see a democratic Iran, and with it, a more stable Middle East with improved prospects for regional peace. Israel is far from alone in that wish.
Across the Arab world, a quiet realignment is underway. Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, and even parts of the broader Sunni establishment increasingly view Iran — not Israel — as the primary source of regional instability. Normalization with Israel is no longer taboo.
So whereas Iran’s playbook assumes Arab outrage will constrain Israeli action, that logic is eroding — giving Israel its own potential ace in the hole.
Moreover, Israelis genuinely yearn for peace with Iran, and they believe that feeling is at least partly reciprocated. Israeli singers performing in Farsi have followings in Iran. The occasional Iranian dissident has visited Israel to much acclaim. The Crown Prince in exile, Reza Pahlavi, has called for a democratic Iran at peace with Israel and the West. There are also more than 200,000 Iranian Jews in Israel, and they remember a different Iran, and consider that its rebirth should be no fantasy.
Israel, in short, is more focused than the U.S., potentially more ruthless where necessary, possibly more patient where required, and far more invested in the outcome with Iran than Trump is ever likely to be. So, counterintuitive as it may seem, provoking the U.S. may be survivable. Provoking Israel would be far more dangerous. Israel’s air force is far larger than the number of attack jets the U.S. has moved into the region. And that air force, backed by stellar intelligence, made mincemeat of Iran’s air defences just last June.
If Tehran is thinking clearly, it may conclude that its safest move is not escalation. Then again, desperate dictators can do very stupid things.
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