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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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Israel Reprimands Spain Over Blowing Up of Netanyahu Effigy
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez speaks during a press conference after attending a special summit of European Union leaders to discuss transatlantic relations, in Brussels, Belgium, Jan. 23, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Yves Herman
Israel said on Saturday it had reprimanded Spain‘s most senior diplomat in Tel Aviv over the blowing up of a giant effigy of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a Spanish town this week.
The seven-meter (23-foot) figure was packed with 14 kilograms (31 lbs.) of gunpowder in El Burgo, a small town near the southern city of Malaga, in a decades-old ceremony on April 5, its Mayor Maria Dolores Narvaez told local television.
“The appalling antisemitic hatred on display here is a direct result of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s government’s systemic incitement,” Israel‘s Foreign Ministry said in a statement on X which highlighted a video clip.
Reuters was not immediately able to verify the video.
“The Spanish government is committed to fighting against antisemitism and any form of hate or discrimination. As such we totally reject any insidious allegation which suggests the contrary,” a Spanish Foreign Ministry source said in response.
El Burgo’s Mayor Narvaez said the town has previously used effigies of US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin during the annual event.
Spain has been an outspoken critic of the US and Israeli military campaigns in Iran and Lebanon, despite US threats to punish uncooperative NATO allies.
Spain and Israel have been embroiled in a long-running diplomatic row which began over the Gaza war. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said a Spanish ban on aircraft and ships carrying weapons to Israel from its ports or airspace due to Israel‘s military offensive was antisemitic.
Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares accused Israel of violating international law and the two-week ceasefire after a massive wave of airstrikes across Lebanon this week. Netanyahu said on Wednesday that Lebanon was not part of the ceasefire and Israel‘s military was continuing to strike Hezbollah with force.
Sanchez, who has emerged as a leading opponent of the Iran war, has closed Spanish airspace to any aircraft involved in a confrontation he has described as reckless and illegal.
Iran has repeatedly praised Spain in recent weeks for its hostile posture toward the US and Israel.
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Why Vanderbilt Is Getting Jewish Life Right and Others Aren’t
Vanderbilt University. Photo: Wiki Commons.
This spring, at Vanderbilt University, more than 600 students gathered for a Passover seder – not in a campus center or dining hall, but on the football field at FirstBank Stadium. A space built for spectacle, rivalry, and school pride was transformed, for one evening, into something sacred.
The symbolism matters. So does the scale. And so does the timing of it all.
One week before the seder, Bloomberg reported that Vanderbilt’s regular-decision acceptance rate for the Class of 2030 had dropped to 2.9 percent – lower than Harvard, lower than Princeton, lower than schools that have spent a century cultivating their selectivity mystique. The headline named the obvious: Vanderbilt has become more competitive “as it avoids the campus controversies that have engulfed many top schools.” Tucked inside that dry admissions sentence is one of the most important stories in American higher education. Jewish families already understand what the data are now beginning to confirm. The market for talented students has spoken – and it is now speaking loudly in Nashville.
This is not just an admissions story. It is a case study in how institutional trust is built – and lost. When universities fail to enforce their own norms or articulate clear moral boundaries, they do not simply generate bad headlines. They trigger exit. Students and families, especially those with the most options, respond not to rhetoric but to signals: Who is in charge? What is tolerated? What kind of community am I entering?
In that sense, what is happening at Vanderbilt is not accidental. It is the result of institutional choices the market is now rewarding.
For generations, ambitious Jewish parents knew the college roadmap by heart: Harvard, Columbia, Penn, Yale – the great northeastern institutions that once excluded Jews with official quotas, then welcomed them, and then watched as Jewish students helped build them into world-class research universities. These schools were more than prestigious. They were symbols of arrival, of the great American bargain: work hard, achieve, belong. They were, in a very real sense, home.
That roadmap is breaking down. And Jewish families are not waiting for institutions to fix themselves.
The Atlantic has documented the shift: Jewish students leaving elite northeastern campuses and heading south – to Vanderbilt, Tulane, Emory, and the University of Florida. The numbers are striking. Vanderbilt now enrolls more than 1,000 Jewish students, roughly 15 percent of undergraduates. Clemson’s Hillel has quadrupled in size. The University of Florida has seen a 50 percent surge in Jewish student participation since 2021, its 6,500 Jewish undergraduates making it one of the largest Jewish student populations in the country. Tulane’s Jewish population is now over 30 percent of undergraduates — one of the highest concentrations anywhere. By Hillel estimates, Southern Methodist University now has more Jewish undergraduates than Harvard.
At the other end of the pipeline, the institutions these families are leaving are telling a different story. Hillel International reports that Jewish enrollment at Harvard, Columbia, Penn, and Cornell has declined in recent years. At Ramaz, the storied Modern Orthodox high school on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, a class that would typically send a dozen or more students to Columbia sent none. Not one. For the first time in living memory. For families who have sent children to Columbia for three generations, that is not a data point. It is a rupture.
These are not random fluctuations. They are directional. They are decisions – deliberate, painful, sometimes grieving decisions – made in thousands of kitchens and synagogues and college counseling offices across the Jewish community. Together, they add up to a verdict.
Before this trend had a name, the argument for heading south was cultural rather than existential. Research had already documented the ideological homogeneity of university administrators at elite institutions and the cultural consequences that follow when institutions lose internal diversity of thought. Southern campuses were maintaining a measure of pluralism and civic openness that had largely vanished from their prestigious northern counterparts. Go where you can actually think out loud. Go where being visibly Jewish does not require a daily calculation of social cost. Go where you can thrive.
After October 7, 2023, that argument became urgent in ways I had not fully anticipated.
A 2024 Hillel survey found that 87 percent of Jewish parents said rising antisemitism was affecting their child’s college selection – not just their anxiety about it, but the actual list of schools their children would consider. FIRE’s free-expression data told the same story from inside the campus: before October 7, 13 percent of Jewish Ivy League students reported self-censoring multiple times a week; after October 7, that number spiked to 35 percent. Even after tensions eased, it settled at 19 percent – well above historical norms, and a number that should haunt every administrator who claims to care about free expression.
A campus in which students systematically self-censor is not merely uncomfortable. It is, by definition, failing in its educational mission.
The message was unmistakable: elite campuses had become environments in which Jewish students systematically adjusted how they spoke, dressed, and moved through public space. For many families, that was not a policy problem to be addressed. It was a dealbreaker.
What we are witnessing is a form of institutional sorting. Universities that maintain basic conditions of pluralism, enforce rules consistently, and create space for visible identity formation are attracting students who want to live and learn in those environments. Universities that substitute process for judgment, or ambiguity for leadership, are experiencing a quieter but no less consequential form of decline.
This is how markets work in higher education. Not instantly, and not perfectly – but over time, unmistakably.
As Alexis de Tocqueville observed, institutions shape habits – and over time, those habits shape the institutions that endure.
What distinguishes the southern schools attracting Jewish students is not geography, and it is not the weather. It is governance.
Consider what happened at Vanderbilt in March 2024. When protesters occupied the chancellor’s office in a disruptive hours-long sit-in – assaulting a campus safety officer to gain entry and physically pushing staff members who offered to meet with them – Chancellor Daniel Diermeier did not convene a task force, issue a hedged statement, or wait for the news cycle to move on. He acted. Three students were expelled. One was suspended. More than twenty were placed on disciplinary probation. The university’s provost was explicit: sanctions reflected the “individual circumstances of each student’s conduct” – a signal that adults were in charge and that the rules applied to everyone.
The protestors called it oppressive. What it actually was is governance – something that, at many elite institutions, has become surprisingly rare.
Elsewhere, this kind of administrative clarity had become almost exotic. At campuses across the Northeast and the West Coast, encampments spread, Jewish students were harassed, and institutional responses ranged from equivocation to paralysis. The contrast with Nashville was not subtle. It was instructive. Vanderbilt enforced its own rules. It turned out that was not a small thing. It was, in fact, the decisive thing.
Students noticed. Families noticed. And, as the admissions data now confirm, they responded. A school where the administration means what it says – where Jewish students can attend Shabbat dinners without political calculation, wear a kippah without mapping potential confrontations, speak openly about Israel without pre-gaming the social cost – is a school where talented, ambitious students of all backgrounds want to spend four years.
This is not aspirational. It is the market working.
And yet the football field seder captures something that the governance story alone cannot.
Jewish families are not only fleeing hostility. They are seeking something positive: campuses where Jewish identity is not peripheral, not controversial, not something to be managed or contained, but woven into the shared fabric of student life. Six hundred students on a football field is not just a religious event. It is what sociologists would recognize as successful institutional integration: a minority identity fully visible within, rather than in tension with, the broader community. It is a demonstration of institutional confidence: the university’s statement that Jewish tradition belongs here, at the center, not at the margins. Students feel that distinction immediately.
One student at the seder put it simply: “I belong to Vanderbilt and I love being Jewish.” Chabad.org described the event as part of a broader national trend of seders held in sports arenas to accommodate “massive crowds of proud and confident Jews.”
That sentence contains an entire theory of what Jewish campus life could look like – and a quiet indictment of what it too often does look like at schools that still trade on reputation while failing the students who trusted them. It is not the sentence most Jewish students at elite northeastern universities are saying right now. It should be the standard by which every campus community measures itself.
None of this means Vanderbilt is perfect, or that every Jewish student should make the same choice. The point is not to replace one prestige default with another. It is to end the reflex that conflates rankings with belonging – and to recognize that Jewish families have far more agency than the prestige reflex would have them believe.
Vanderbilt now ranks alongside – and in some respects above – the Ivy League institutions that have treated governance as optional and campus culture as someone else’s problem. Its students are just as accomplished. Its faculty just as distinguished. Its outcomes just as strong. The prestige gap that once justified defaulting to a narrow set of northeastern schools has closed – and in some cases, it has reversed.
That is the real story behind the 2.9 percent acceptance rate.
Prestige without belonging is not excellence. It is inertia. And inertia, in higher education as in any other sector, is eventually punished.
The signal has been sent. The only question is who is still willing to ignore it.
Samuel J. Abrams is a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute
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Syria Says It Foiled Hezbollah Plot to Kill Rabbi as Terror Group Faces Intensifying Israeli Strikes in Lebanon
Rescuers work at the site of an Israeli strike in Beirut, Lebanon, April 8, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
The Syrian government has announced that security forces foiled a suspected assassination plot against a rabbi in Damascus, dismantling a five-member terrorist cell allegedly linked to the Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah in a targeted security operation.
According to the Syrian Interior Ministry, authorities identified a woman suspected of attempting to plant an explosive device outside the residence of Rabbi Michael Khoury near the Mariamite Church in the Bab Touma district of the Damascus Old City.
Shortly after security forces managed to safely neutralize the explosive device without causing any damage, they arrested five suspects alleged to have links to the Iran-backed terrorist group Hezbollah and believed to have received military training abroad, including bomb-making and placement techniques, local media reported.
Syrian officials have repeatedly disrupted alleged Hezbollah-linked terrorist plots. Last February, investigations uncovered new details about a cell behind attacks targeting the Mezzeh district and its military airport in Damascus, with early findings indicating ties to foreign entities and identifying the weapons used as originating from Hezbollah.
During the initial investigations, the detained suspects reportedly disclosed links to external parties, with findings indicating that the missiles and launch systems used in the attacks, along with drones seized during the operation, were supplied by Hezbollah.
The suspects also reportedly confessed to preparing to carry out new attacks using drones, before security services thwarted the plan.
Hezbollah denied the claims, calling them “false and fabricated allegations.” The terrorist group added that it had “no presence on Syrian territory” and “no activity, connection, or relationship with any party in Syria.”
Hezbollah had close relations with the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who was ousted in late 2024 by rebel forces and replaced by the current government.
The Syrian government’s efforts to thwart Lebanon-based Hezbollah came after multiple Gulf countries said last month they dismantled terrorist networks linked to the terrorist group.
Meanwhile, Israel has been waging a military campaign against Hezbollah in neighboring southern Lebanon amid the joint US-Israeli war against Iran. While the campaign against Iran did not initially target Hezbollah, the terrorist group quickly joined the conflict in early March by launching rockets against the Jewish state in support of the Iranian regime, leading to ongoing and escalating Israeli retaliation.
As regional tensions continue to rise, direct talks between Israel and Lebanon are set to begin in the United States on Tuesday, marking the first such engagement in 43 years.
With the United States acting as mediator, Israel’s ambassador to Washington, Yechiel Leiter, and Lebanon’s ambassador, Nada Hamada Meoud, are expected to discuss de-escalation along the northern border and mechanisms for a stable ceasefire. Hezbollah is not officially participating in the talks.
According to a statement from the Prime Minister’s Office, the negotiations aim to advance Hezbollah’s disarmament and lay the groundwork for peaceful relations between the two countries.
For its part, Lebanon is demanding that Israel halt both aerial and ground operations and withdraw its forces from southern territory, while also seeking international assistance for reconstruction, particularly in the country’s south.
However, it remains unclear how far the Lebanese government can move against Hezbollah without risking escalation into civil conflict, especially as Israel has signaled it will not withdraw its forces until the group’s threat is eliminated. Beirut has so far failed to dismantle Hezbollah’s arsenal.
Meanwhile, Israel has made clear that the negotiations will proceed under fire, with the Israel Defense Forces continuing strikes in southern Lebanon.
Last week, the IDF confirmed that more than 250 Hezbollah terrorists and commanders were eliminated in what it described as its largest strike in Lebanon, including dozens in Beirut, as part of its ongoing military campaign against the terrorist group.
The IDF said the attacks amounted to a precise and extensive strike on Hezbollah’s command and control systems.
“The elimination of the commanders resulted in a strategic and broad-based damage that affected all dimensions of the organization’s capabilities,” a senior military intelligence official told Israel’s Channel 12.
“These are commanders with rich experience and knowledge that have been cut off. We have not yet finished assessing the impact of the blow and we are discovering additional eliminated terrorists every day,” he continued.