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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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When Hate Hides Behind Nuance, Babka and Protest Cannot Rise Half‑Baked
A Breads Bakery location in New York City. Photo: ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
This weekend, a crowd wrapped around the corner of 63rd and Broadway in New York City, lining up for babka and bread at Breads Bakery. But this wasn’t the usual pre-Shabbat rush. It was a quiet show of solidarity with the Israeli-owned bakery, after union activists urged it to sever ties with Israel.
A line for pastries became a reminder that antisemitism doesn’t always announce itself with slurs or slogans. Sometimes it appears in smaller, more familiar spaces — through pressures and demands that seem benign on the surface.
When New York City’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, revoked a series of executive orders aimed at combating antisemitism, the justification was familiar: overly broad, insufficiently nuanced, potentially chilling to free speech. For many Jews in this city — especially those who are visibly Jewish or openly supportive of Israel — this reversal did not feel like balance restored. It felt like protection withdrawn.
New York is home to the largest Jewish population outside of Israel, and Mamdani’s decision came at a moment when antisemitic threats are rising nationally and globally, when synagogues and schools require armed guards, and when fear is not theoretical but lived.
One word — nuance — has stayed with me.
Not long before the mayor’s announcement, a friend objected to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism: Too broad, too political, not nuanced enough. I had heard the argument before — but hearing it again, now, felt revealing.
Can we fight hate in the language of nuance?
For decades, we have treated language as a tool of moral repair. We revised terminology to be more inclusive, more precise, and more humane. We expanded our understanding of gender and identity. Language evolved to widen the circle of belonging.
Names matter. If language shapes how people are seen — and how they see themselves — then these changes matter.
But somewhere along the way, the project of inclusion began to drift.
Refining language stopped functioning as a starting point for justice and became a substitute for it. Linguistic correction began to stand in for moral and institutional accountability. We treated vocabulary changes as progress, even when the underlying structures remained unchanged.
We changed the words without changing the world.
As we focused on more delicate modifiers and culturally sensitive phrasing, we also became cautious in how we described injustice — so cautious that we often avoided confronting it at all. Language became a tool to minimize, camouflage, or justify inaction.
Nowhere is this clearer than in how we talk about antisemitism.
At a time when antisemitic incidents are rising, the insistence on narrower definitions and softer language feels less like rigor and more like retreat. Definitions tighten just as hostility becomes more explicit, more public, and more emboldened.
And the question lingers: Are we blurring the reality of antisemitism out of fear that naming it clearly will constrain legitimate criticism of Israel? Are we reinforcing old tropes equating Zionism with racism, legitimizing a wave of boycotts and, increasingly, outright acts of violence against Jews?
Would we ask other marginalized communities to soften the words used to describe the hatred aimed at them?
If we would not ask it of others, why do we ask it of Jews?
Outside of Breads Bakery, the protest didn’t sound like a protest. No bullhorns, no chants — just a line of New Yorkers waiting for pastries to push back against a union’s demand that the bakery cut ties with Israel. It turns out that you can fight antisemitism with babka.
But the gesture can be quiet only if the definition is not. We cannot fight what we don’t hear, and we cannot hear what we refuse to name. When antisemitism hides behind nuance, policy, or the polite language of activism, clarity stops being optional. Even a line for babka can become a battleground against hate — but only if the hate is named plainly. Buying bread may seem like a Beijing form of activism, but when the message it sends is clear, hate can no longer hide in the shadow of nuance.
Gillian Granoff is a New York–based writer focused on Jewish identity, the Israel–diaspora relationship, and the challenges of navigating antisemitism after October 7. Her work draws on personal experience and time spent in Israel, bringing cultural insight and emotional clarity to her essays. She holds a degree in Comparative Literature from Brown University and spent more than a decade as a senior reporter for Education Update, an award-winning New York education newspaper.
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Somali Regions Reject Mogadishu’s Move to Cut Ties With UAE
People hold the flag of Somaliland during the parade in Hargeisa, Somaliland, May 18, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Tiksa Negeri
Three self-governing regions in Somalia that have close relations with the United Arab Emirates have dismissed a decision this week by the central government to sever ties with the UAE, a long-term sponsor.
On Monday Somalia annulled all agreements with the UAE, including in the field of security, accusing the Gulf country, which has trained and funded Somalia’s army and invested in its ports, of undermining Somalia’s national sovereignty.
Somalia did not provide further explanation of its reasons for the move. Mogadishu is investigating allegations that the UAE whisked a separatist leader out of Yemen via Somalia. Separately, the UAE has been linked to Israel’s recognition last month of Somaliland, a breakaway region of northern Somalia, as an independent state.
The UAE‘s Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Somalia’s decision. The UAE has longstanding interests in the Horn of Africa and Red Sea regions, where it has frequently vied with other wealthy Gulf states for influence.
Somaliland and two semi-autonomous states, Puntland in the north and Jubbaland in the south, said they would not recognize the decision by Mogadishu to cut ties with the UAE.
“Somalia’s daydreaming changes nothing … The UAE is here to stay, no matter what a weak administration in Mogadishu says,” Khadar Hussein Abdi, Minister of the Presidency of the Republic of Somaliland, said late on Monday.
The Jubbaland regional government said Mogadishu’s decision was “null and void” and existing “security and development agreements will continue to exist.”
Puntland said the decision would have no impact on relations between it and the UAE, including over the coastal city of Bosaso where a subsidiary of the UAE‘s DP World has a 30-year concession to run the port.
EXPANDING INFLUENCE
The UAE has long leveraged its wealth to expand its influence across the Horn of Africa, using a mix of economic, military and diplomatic clout to exert regional power.
For decades Somalia’s federal government has possessed only limited authority across the country, and has failed to defeat Islamist militants, despite years of international support, including African peacekeepers and US air strikes.
The UAE trained hundreds of Somali troops from 2014-2018, and still covers salaries and provides logistics for around 3,400 Somali military police and special forces troops in and around the capital, according to senior Somali sources.
It has also forged bonds directly with regional governments, committing hundreds of millions of dollars to ports and military infrastructure on the coast along global shipping routes.
Two Somali officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy, told Reuters that in place of UAE military funding the country could turn to the UAE‘s wealthy Gulf rivals Qatar or Saudi Arabia for help.
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Syria’s Kurds Protest Aleppo Violence as Fears of Wider Conflict Grow
Syrian Kurds attend a protest in solidarity with the people in the neighborhood of Sheikh Maksoud and Ashrafiya, as the last Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fighters left the Syrian city of Aleppo on Sunday, state-run Ekhbariya TV said, following a ceasefire deal that allowed evacuations after days of deadly clashes, in Qamishli, Syria, Jan. 13, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Orhan Qereman
Several thousand people marched under the rain in northeast Syria on Tuesday to protest the expulsion of Kurdish fighters from the city of Aleppo the previous week after days of deadly clashes.
The violence in Aleppo has deepened one of the main faultlines in Syria, where President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s promise to unify the country under one leadership after 14 years of war has faced resistance from Kurdish forces wary of his Islamist-led government.
Five days of fighting left at least 23 people dead, according to Syria’s health ministry, and saw more than 150,000 flee the two Kurdish-run pockets of the city. The last Kurdish fighters left Aleppo in the early hours of Jan. 11.
On Tuesday, several thousand Syrian Kurds protested in the northeastern city of Qamishli. They carried banners bearing the logos of Kurdish forces and faces of Kurdish fighters who died in the battles – some of whom had detonated explosive-laden belts as government forces closed in.
FEARS OF WIDER CONFLICT
Other posters featured the faces of Sharaa and Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, crossed out with red “X”s and carrying the caption “Killers of the Kurdish people.”
Turkey accuses the Syrian Democratic Forces – the main Kurdish fighting force which runs a semi-autonomous zone in northeast Syria – of links to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which Ankara considers a terrorist organization.
Many Kurds say last week’s bloodshed has deepened their skepticism about Sharaa’s promises to govern for all Syrians.
“If they truly love the Kurds, and if they sincerely say that the Kurds are an official and fundamental component of Syria, then the rights of the Kurdish people must be recognized in the constitution,” said Hassan Muhammad, head of the Council of Religions and Beliefs in Northeast Syria, who attended Tuesday’s protest.
Others worry that the bloodshed will worsen. Syria’s defense ministry on Tuesday declared eastern parts of Aleppo still under SDF control to be a “closed military zone,” and ordered all armed forces in the area to withdraw further east.
Idris al-Khalil, a Qamishli resident who protested on Tuesday, said the Aleppo violence reminded him of the sectarian killings last year of the Alawite minority on Syria’s coast and the Druze minority in the country’s south.
“Regarding the fears of a full-scale war – if they want a full-scale war, the people will suffer even more, and it will lead to division among the peoples of the region, preventing them from living together in peace,” Khalil said.