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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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There’s something rotten in our approach to antisemitism. Tucker Carlson exposed it
The federal government has cracked down on antisemitism from the left, while ignoring or justifying antisemitism on the right. That’s a cold, hard and very uncomfortable fact.
After anti-Israel protests swept campuses amid Israel’s military response to the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack, Congressional panels subjected university administrators to withering public cross-examinations over antisemitism. President Donald Trump’s administration levied millions in fines, and withheld or threatened to cancel billions in federal funding, including to university medical research.
It was a quick and harsh reaction to protests that, in some cases, veered into antisemitism and singled out Jewish students. “Nobody gets the right to harass their fellow students,” Vice President J.D. Vance said at the peak of the student protests. “Nobody gets a right to set up 10 encampments and turn their college campuses into garbage dumps. And nobody gets the right to block their fellow students from attending class.”
Contrast that to Vance’s reaction earlier this month, when the conservative broadcaster Tucker Carlson hosted the far-right activist Nick Fuentes on his popular podcast, kicking off a massive debate about the mainstreaming of extremist views on the right.
Fuentes, who has expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin and called for the execution of “perfidious Jews,” told Carlson that the great challenge to American social harmony is “organized Jewry.” Carlson didn’t push back. And when asked for comment, Vance said he didn’t want to take part in Republican “infighting.”
Trump, too, declined to join the Carlson critics.“I mean, if he wants to interview Nick Fuentes, I don’t know much about him, but if he wants to do it. Get the word out. Let them,” Trump told reporters.
Get the word out? What, exactly, is going on?
Ignoring horseshoe theory, at our peril
Defenders of this lopsided response might argue that the administration actually has leverage over universities in the form of billions of taxpayer dollars. The government has legal recourse to hold colleges and individual students accountable.
Carlson’s choice to play nice with Nazis, on the other hand, is a matter of free speech — even if it is ominous, incendiary speech. What action could the government take against a privately-funded podcaster?
The obvious answer is: At least condemn it. But that has not happened at any level of this administration.
Carlson himself, in a long new interview with a New York Times reporter, downplayed Fuentes’ overt antisemitic statements and positioned himself as someone who, like Fuentes, merely questions U.S. policy toward Israel.
“Mr. Carlson said he abhors antisemitism and that he has numerous Jewish friends who share his qualms with the Israeli government,” wrote the Times reporter.
If that sounds awfully familiar, it’s because anti-Israel protesters at the other extreme say much the same things. Some of their best friends are Jewish, and they too hate what Israel’s leaders are doing.
American Jews are witnessing the horseshoe theory of politics in real time — the idea that the far-left and the far-right bend more toward each other than to the center. The ideology that the extremes are converging on is that Jews are the problem.
Both extremes, beginning with outrage at Israel, have a propensity to slide into overtly anitsemitic conspiracy theories that blame Israel for the Iraq War, 9/11, NYPD violence, manipulating Congress, and the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.
Meanwhile, the political leaders who can confront both these extremes through words and policy, only seem to be hammering away at one side: the left.
A virus among young conservatives
The organized Jewish community, too, is highly attuned to instances on the left when anti-Israel attitudes bend toward outright Jew hatred. The most vocal critics of New York’s Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani accused him of just that — fomenting antisemitism and supporting antisemites in opposing Israel.
Immediately after Mamdani’s election, the ADL announced it was debuting a special program to monitor his administration for antisemitism.
But the ample evidence that a growing segment of the right is slipping back into the well-worn alliance that characterized the United States in the 1930s, when isolationists and antisemites made common cause against the Jews, doesn’t raise the same institutional alarms.
Trump has engaged with the extremist right, where antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment have both flourished for years, since the beginning of his first presidential run. Yet his Jewish supporters have given him far more leeway than they would ever think of giving Mamdani.
Meanwhile, that antisemitic segment of the conservative movement has quietly expanded, and found increasing tolerance in mainstream conservative spaces. The conservative analyst Ron Dreher wrote recently that he estimates some 30 to 40% of the Republican Gen Z’ers who work in official Washington are Fuentes fans.
Antisemitism “is spreading like a virus among religious conservatives of the Zoomer generation,” he wrote.
Antisemitism for me, but not for thee
That boom might explain the disparity between Trump and Vance’s stance on college protesters and on Carlson and Fuentes.
Like so much else in our polarized society, antisemitism itself has become politicized. Your Jew-hatred is abhorrent, the thinking goes, but mine is free speech. Yours must be prosecuted. But I’m just asking questions.
The best hope American Jews have is that enough brave souls from across the political spectrum will step up and speak out, even against their own political tribe, knowing the dark fate of societies that go down this path.
Dreher, in a private meeting with Vance earlier this month, told the vice president that standing up to Nazis and their publicists like Tucker Carlson is not “infighting,” but a fight for the soul of the Republican Party, and of the U.S.
No word on how Vance responded. But can I suggest the ADL monitor him, too?
The post There’s something rotten in our approach to antisemitism. Tucker Carlson exposed it appeared first on The Forward.
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‘My teenager’s going to boarding school. I’m panicked she’ll face antisemitism’
Dear Bintel,
My daughter’s dream, throughout middle school, has been to go to a private boarding high school. I didn’t fight her on it because it was so out of our price range. My plan was to let our finances be the villain. She ended up finding the money herself through grants and scholarships and was accepted.
Now I’m panicking because I’m afraid she’ll experience antisemitism or anti-Israel hate. She experienced that in middle school but she came home and we helped her. I don’t want to hold her back but I worry high school is too young to deal with this alone. She’s very proud of her Jewish and Israeli heritage and wears a Star of David necklace from her grandma everywhere. Any advice?
Signed,
Worried Mama
Dear Mama:
First of all, congratulations on raising an incredible daughter. Self-directed, resourceful, smart — I know plenty of adults who are far less successful at setting goals and realizing their dreams than your amazing teenage girl!
But I also want to recognize something that you don’t bring up, and that’s your heartbreak at losing this golden child. You probably thought you had another four years before this baby bird would leave the nest. Now suddenly she’s flying away much sooner than expected. That’s a huge adjustment for any parent — and it’s not just about your desire to protect her from a potentially hostile world. Many of us grieve when kids leave home, even when those kids are older than yours. You see the empty bedroom, the missing dinner plate, the “one less” member of the family at every gathering, and you just want to cry.
So let’s acknowledge that pain. You weren’t ready for this to happen so soon, and it’s OK to feel sad about it. You’re going to miss her something awful, and I’ve no doubt that no matter how well she does at boarding school — and I bet she will thrive — she’s going to miss you too. But that’s what cellphones are for, right?
Now let’s talk about your antisemitism worries. Your daughter already had to deal with this in middle school, so there’s no guarantee that a local high school would be less problematic than boarding school. The difference, of course, is that when she was living in your house, she had immediate access to your wisdom.
But you’ve already helped her develop coping skills. The proof is that she still proudly wears her Star of David. She’s not afraid. She’s not hiding. She’s ready to take on the world. She knows you’re only a phone call or text away, and you’ll always be there to listen, with unconditional love and support as needed.
Just don’t go overboard with the warnings and advice. Sometimes kids don’t want to burden their parents if they think we’re freaking out about something. They try to protect us by holding back, and that can make it worse for them.
In fact, when you say you’re “panicked” on her behalf, I can’t help but wonder if that’s part of what’s driving her to leave the nest so young. Is it possible she needs some distance from your emotions? I don’t know, but it might be helpful for you to have a few sessions with a therapist about separating your feelings from hers. You need to figure out how to express concern without suffocating her.
You might also reach out to the boarding school’s guidance counselors. I’m sure they’re used to helping parents manage their anxiety over sending a young teen away from home. Perhaps there’s even a parents’ group where veterans who have older kids can share how they’ve coped.
I’d also ask the counselors how the school typically handles student conflicts and bias. Offenses related not only to religion but also to race, ethnicity, politics and gender have unfortunately become commonplace in our world, and every school has had to develop protocols for dealing with these situations. My hope is that you’ll feel comforted knowing what policies are in place to support your daughter, and that the wonderful job you’ve done raising her so far will keep her flying high.
Signed,
Bintel
What do you think? Send your comments to bintel@forward.com or send in a question of your own. And don’t miss a Bintel: Sign up for our Bintel Brief newsletter.
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Some blame Qatar and unions for K-12 antisemitism. Experts say that’s the wrong focus
While antisemitism at colleges and universities gets the most attention, discrimination against young Jewish students is also growing in pernicious ways that often have less to do with nuanced political debates over Israel than outright bullying, including Nazi salutes, jokes about Hamas killing Jews and memes in the online forums where many students socialize.
These incidents have prompted a growing interest in countering K-12 antisemitism — the Anti-Defamation League is ramping up pressure on districts and a new political action committee is seeking “pro-Jewish” school board candidates. But alongside these efforts has been a hunt for a boogeyman supposedly driving the problem.
The Foundation for Defense of Democracies, an influential neoconservative think tank, along with Republican lawmakers in Congress have sought to lay the blame on Qatar for “fueling anti-Jewish bigotry in K-12 schools” by, among other things, distributing for years a map of the Middle East to some schools that omitted Israel.
Teachers unions have also come under special scrutiny, especially after a contingent of National Education Association members unsuccessfully tried to cut the union’s ties with the ADL over the summer. Eric Fingerhut, chief executive of the Jewish Federations of North America, went on a self-described “rant against the NEA” from the stage of his organization’s annual conference this week in which he described the union as “invidious” and “one of the biggest, most serious problems that we have.”
This framing presents the plight of young Jewish students as an especially daunting front in the ongoing fight over how Israel is treated in American society; most concerns about both the NEA and Qatar are focused on growing hostility toward Israel.
But away from the conference’s main stage, experts working on the issue had a less conspiratorial outlook.
“It’s exciting to believe that if only we get rid of foreign funding we could solve this problem,” Hindy Poupko, a top lobbyist for the UJA-Federation of New York, said during a Tuesday panel on K-12 antisemitism. “It’s not true.”
Poupko added that some Jewish leaders were painting unions with too broad of a brush in describing them as anti-Israel and she credited the positive relationship Jewish organizations in New York City have with local unions, including the teachers union, for their success in blocking a ceasefire resolution at city council.
***
Rather than a sinister plot to seed classrooms with antisemitism or a political agenda about Israel, Poupko and the other experts suggested the problem was much more prosaic: Teachers have limited time and resources to learn about Jews, Israel and antisemitism.
David Bryfman, chief executive of the Jewish Education Project, said that many teachers simply Google to find information to teach about current events and are increasingly turning to ChatGPT — the artificial intelligence chatbot — to build lesson plans plagued by the flimsy sourcing and false information caused by the bot’s “hallucinations.”
One effective solution has been to provide classroom materials that teachers can easily integrate into their lessons. UJA-Federation distributed lesson plans pegged to Jewish American History Month to New York City schools along with posters of “Jewish heroes,” including authors Judy Blume and Emma Lazarus.
They’ve also promoted an interactive theatrical performance, featuring actors portraying Anne Frank and Martin Luther King Jr. who come to classrooms for a show that weaves together the writings of both figures.
The local Jewish federation in Toronto realized that the only lessons about Jews in many schools centered on the Holocaust, so they wrote materials about ancient Israel that could be worked into the block on “ancient civilizations” taught to every fourth grader, and distributed books about Hanukkah to teachers.
And Bryfman is working on a database of educational resources about Jews and Judaism that teachers can both access directly and that will be given to artificial intelligence models with the hope that, when teachers search online in the future, they’ll turn up more accurate information.
***
None of these are groundbreaking solutions, but I appreciated hearing about them because they provide an important reality check. If we imagine antisemitism to be the result of a malignant conspiracy — Qatar turning teachers into sleeper agents for Hamas, or the NEA seeking to indoctrinate kindergarteners against Israel — the challenge of addressing it can seem insurmountable in the absence of a magic bullet.
Certainly, hanging a poster of Ruth Bader Ginsburg in a middle school hallway isn’t going to solve antisemitism. But these kinds of practical interventions can help make Jewish students feel included at a time when many are feeling stigmatized and isolated.
Poupko said that, at least anecdotally, Jewish students had reported excitement at seeing their school hold an assembly block on Jewish heritage month for the first time, and data has found that Americans who personally know at least a few Jews are less likely to believe antisemitic stereotypes.
That’s the same logic behind a George Washington University project that offers a summer institute for faculty at schools of education at universities around the country, some of whom come in not knowing what the “Hebrew Bible” refers to, according to Ben Jacobs, the professor who runs the program.
And Be the Narrative, a group that trains Jewish students to present basic information about Judaism to their non-Jewish peers, found that 78% of teachers believed the presentations helped reduce antisemitism in their schools.
One throughline in all of these strategies is that they’re focused on working in good faith with teachers and school administrators. This is much harder when organizations view them as enemies rather than potential partners, as Fingerhut was encouraging.
“We can’t out mob the mob,” Poupko said. “Our special sauce is relationships with the people who are actually in positions of power.”
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