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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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Yiddish study and research in Amsterdam — a long history
אַמסטערדאַם און די ייִדישע שפּראַך האָבן אַ לאַנגע בשותּפֿותדיקע געשיכטע. ווייניק מענטשן ווייסן אַז ייִדיש־רעדערס לעבן אין האָלאַנד זײַט דעם 17טן יאָרהונדערט, און אַז זײַט דעם מיטן צװאַנציקסטן יאָרהונדערט װערט די שפּראַך געפֿאָרשט און, מיט איבעררײַסן, געלערנט, אינעם אַמסטערדאַמער אוניװערסיטעט.
לעצטנס האָט זיך געענדיקט די דרױסנדיקע סובװענץ, וואָס האָט געשטיצט די ייִדיש־פּראָגראַם אינעם אוניווערסיטעט און דעם קומענדיקן זמן װעט מען קײן ייִדיש־קורסן נישט לערנען. אַ נײַע דערװײַליקע לײזונג איז, דאַכט זיך נאָענט, נאָר די דאָצענטן און סטודענטן האָפֿן אַז די פֿאַקולטעט־פֿאַרװאַלטונג װעט װאָס פֿריִער גיבן די ייִדישע שפּראַך אַ פֿעסטן אָרט אין דער לערן־פּראָגראַם.
ס׳איז דאָ אַ סך צו דערציילן וועגן דער געשיכטע פֿון ייִדיש אין אַמסטערדאַם. אינעם 17טן און 18טן יאָרהונדערט איז די שטאָט געװען דער װעלטצענטער פֿון דער ייִדישער דרוקאַרבעט. די סאַמע ערשטע ייִדישע צײַטונג, די „דינסטאַגישע און פֿרײַטאַגישע קוראַנטן“, האָט מען טאַקע געדרוקט אין אַמסטערדאַם אין 1686 און 1687.
אין משך פֿונעם 19טן יאָרהונדערט, אונטער דער השפּעה פֿון דער דעמאָלט אײַנגעפֿירטער האָלענדישער שפּראַך־געזעץ־געבונג, איז דער דיאַלעקט מערבֿ־ייִדיש בהדרגהדיק פֿאַרשװוּנדן געװאָרן. לויטן געזעץ האָט מען קינדער געדאַרפֿט לערנען בלױז אױף האָלענדיש און די דרשות אין שיל האָט מען געמוזט האַלטן אױף האָלענדיש.
סוף 19טן יאָרהונדערט האָט זיך דער מצבֿ געביטן ווען ייִדישע אימיגראַנטן פֿון מיזרח־אײראָפּע האָבן מיטגעבראַכט זייער מיזרח־ייִדישן דיאַלעקט. ביזן הײַנטיקן טאָג קען מען הערן די השפּעה פֿון האָלענדיש ייִדיש אױף דער אַמסטערדאַמער גאַס ווי, צום בײַשפּיל, אינעם באַקאַנטן צונאָמען פֿון דער שטאָט אַמסטערדאַם: „מקום“ (אָרט).
דער אַרבעטער־קולטור־פֿאַראײן „אַנסקי“, וואָס איז געגרינדעט געוואָרן אין 1920, איז אַזש ביז אין די 1970ער יאָרן געװען אַ װיכטיקער קולטור־צענטער פֿאַר די ייִדיש־רעדערס אין האָלאַנד. דרײַ פֿערטל פֿון די ייִדן אין לאַנד האָבן נישט איבערגעלעבט דעם חורבן. פֿון דעסטוועגן איז אין האָלאַנד נאָך דער צװײטער װעלט־מלחמה אַלע מאָל געװען אַ קלײנער סכום ייִדיש־רעדערס. עד־היום לערנט מען אַ טייל פֿון די לעקציעס אין דער פֿרומער ייִדישער שול „חדר“ אױף ייִדיש.
דער אינטערעס צו דער שפּראַך האַלט אין איין װאַקסן. אַ צאָל װעלטלעכע ייִדיש־רעדערס, װאָס אַ גרױסער טײל פֿון זײ האָבן זיך געלערנט די שפּראַך ווי דערוואַקסענע, באַטײליקן זיך הײַנט אין ייִדיש־לײענקרײַזן אין פֿאַרשיידענע שטעט. במשך פֿון די לעצטע 20 יאָר זענען אַ רײ קלאַסישע ייִדישע ליטעראַרישע װערק איבערגעזעצט געװאָרן אױף האָלענדיש. עס װערט אַרױסגעגעבן די ליטעראַרישע צײַטשריפֿט „די גאָלדענע פּאַװע“ (דער המשך פֿונעם אַמאָליקן זשורנאַל „גרינע מדינה“) און די שפּראַכקורסן אינעם אַמסטערדאַמער אוניװערסיטעט האָבן זיך די פֿאַרגאַנגענע פֿיר יאָר אַרױסגעװיזן פּאָפּולער ביז גאָר.
זײַט די 1960ער יאָרן האָט זיך אַמסטערדאַם אויך אַנטװיקלט ווי אַ לעבעדיקער און פּראָדוקטיװער פֿאָרשצענטער פֿון דער ייִדישער שפּראַך. טאָגטעגלעך אַרבעט מען איבערן סאַמע גרעסטן צוויישפּראַכיקן ייִדישן װערטערבוך — דעם אָנלײַן „ייִדיש־האָלענדישן װערטערבוך“, צונויפֿגעשטעלט פֿון יוסטוס וואַן דער קאַמפּ. אָנהייב מײַ זענען אַרײַנהאַקערס אָנגעפֿאַלן אויפֿן ווערק אָבער הײַנט איז עס שוין ווידער צוטריטלעך. װאַן דער קאַמפּ האָט געזאָגט, אַז קײן דאַטן זענען, צום גליק, נישט פֿאַרלױרן געגאַנגען.
במשך פֿון דער געשיכטע האָבן אַ רײ ייִדיש־רעדערס אין אַמסטערדאַם געזאַמלט אָרטיקע ייִדישע אױסדרוקן און וועלטסווערטלעך. אין מיטן 19טן יאָרהונדערט האָט יונה ל. פֿאָרזאַנגער צונויפֿגעקליבן חנעװדיקע װערטלעך פֿון די האלענדישע ייִדן און זײ געניצט אין אַ מעשׂה װעגן די איבערלעבונגען פֿון אַן אָרעמען גאַסן־מוזיקאַנט. אַ סך פֿון די שפּריכװערטער זענען שפּעטער אַריבער אױף האָלענדיש, לדוגמא „זײַן תּחת ברענט, מוז ער אױף די בלאָסטערס זיצן“ (װער עס טוט שלעכטס, מוז „טראָגן“ די קאָנסעקװענצן).
אין אַנדערע אױסדרוקן זענען ייִדיש און האָלענדיש צונױפֿגעמישט געװאָרן, ווי למשל אין דעם װערטל װאָס כאַראַקטעריזירט די באַציִונגען אין דער אַמסטערדאַמער ייִדישער קהילה: „װען קהל שפּילט דע באַס (בעל־הבית), שנעלט מער דער פּרנס פֿאָר דען נאַז.“ (װען קהל שאַפֿט זיך, שנעלט מען דעם פּרנס אין דער נאָז.)
אין אַ סך ייִדישע שטיבער קען מען געפֿינען האַרטאָג בײמס ביכער װעגן דעם האָלענדיש־ייִדישן װאָקאַבולאַר. ביים, אַ האָלענדישער לערער היסטאָריקער, האָט צונױפֿגעשטעלט אַ װערטערביכל פֿונעם האָלענדישן ייִדיש (Resten van een taal) און אַ זאַמלונג אױסדרוקן און שפּריכװערטער (Jerosche). די צװײ ביכער זענען געװען באַליבט בײַם ברײטן ייִדישן עולם.
זײַט 1964 זענען אַ צאָל געניטע ייִדיש־לערערס געווען אויפֿן פֿאַקולטעט פֿונעם אוניווערסיטעט: צו ערשט, לעאָ פֿוקס, און דערנאָך — רענאַ פֿוקס מאַנספֿעלד. אין 2005 האָט שלמה בערגער פֿאַרנומען די פּראָפֿעסור „ייִדישע שפּראַך און קולטור“ ביז ער איז ניפֿטר געװאָרן אין 2015.
אַ רײ דיסערטאַציעס װעגן ייִדיש זענען די פֿאַרגאַנגענע יאָרצענדליקער פֿאַרטײדיקט געװאָרן. הילדע פּאַך האָט געפֿאָרשט די ערשטע ייִדישע צײַטונג אין האָלאַנד, „די דינסטאַגישע און פֿרײַטאַגישע קוראַנטן“. באַרט װאַלעט האָט אַנאַליזירט די ייִדישע היסטאָריאָגראַפֿיע אין האָלאַנד; זײַדמאַן מאַוער האָט אָנגעשריבן אַ דאָקטאָר־אַרבעט װעגן פֿרי־מאָדערנער מעדיצינישער ליטעראַטור און אָקערשט האָט מאַריאַנע אָסטינג באַקומען אַ דאָקטאָראַט פֿאַר איר שטודיע װעגן דעם ניסתּרס ראָמאַן „די משפּחה מאַשבער“.
אין אַן אַרטיקל אינעם „פֿאָרװערטס“ דעם פֿאַרגאַנגענעם מײַ האָט פֿיליפּ שוואַרץ געשריבן אַז די אַמסטערדאַמער פֿאָרשערס פֿון ייִדיש און ייִדישע לימודים האָבן זיך ביז אַהער אײַנגעשפּאַרט „אין העלפֿאַנדבײן־טורעמס“. איך בין נישט מסכּים. אַדרבא, עס זענען כּסדר געװען און אַנטשטאַנען נײַע פֿאַרבינדונגען צװישן ייִדיש־רעדערס און דער ייִדיש־פֿאָרשונג און צװישן דער ייִדישער קולטור־ירושה און דער לעבעדיקער שפּראַך.
פֿון 2023 ביז 2025 האָבן די אַמסטערדאַמער ייִדיש־סטודענטן אין אײנעם מיט זײַדמאַן מאַוער צוגעגרייט און אויפֿגעפֿירט פּורים־שפּילן אױף ייִדיש: קודם־כּל אין אַ קלאַסצימער אין אוניװערסיטעט, און אין 2025 — אין טעאַטער. זײ האָבן באַװיזן צוצוציִען צוקוקערס פֿון האָלאַנד, דײַטשלאַנד און ישׂראל. אינעם פּראָיעקט „די ייִדישע שטאָט“ האָבן פֿאָרשערס און אײַנװױנערס פֿון אַמסטערדאַם צוזאַמענגעאַרבעט, פּובליקירט פּאָדקאַסטן און מיט עפֿנלטעכן סוכּה־פּראָיעקט אין 2023 און 2024 ממש צוריק אַרײַנגעשטעלט די ייִדישע געשיכטע אין שטאָט.
אַ סך סטודענטן און לערער זענען שטאַרק אַנטוישט וואָס מע האָט אָפּגעשאַפֿן די ייִדיש־קורסן און זײַדמאַן מאַוער וועט אָנהייבנדיק אין סעפּטעמבער לערנען אינעם בר־אילן אוניװערסיטעט אין ישׂראל.
„די ייִדישע שפּראַך איז אַן אינטעגראַלער טײל פֿון די ייִדישע לימודים אינעם אַמסטערדאַמער אוניװערסיטעט,“ האָט געזאָגט באַרט װאַלעט, אַ פּראָפֿעסאָר דאָרט פֿון ייִדישע לימודים. „כּדי אױפֿצוזיגלען די רײַכע אַמסטערדאַמער ייִדישע קאָלעקציעס קען מען זיך נישט באַגײן אָן אַ קענשאַפֿט פֿון דער ייִדישער שפּראַך.“
אירענע זװיפּ, אַ פּראָפֿעסאָרין פֿון העברעיִש און אַראַמיש, האָט צוגעגעבן אַז זי און אַנדערע האָבן גוטע האָפֿענונגען אױף פֿינאַנציעלן שטיץ דורך ברײטהאַרציקע יחידים.
„די געשיכטע פֿון ייִדיש אין אַמסטערדאַם האָט זיך נאָך לאַנג נישט געענדיקט,“ האָט וואַלעט געזאָגט.
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A smaller, scarred Maccabiah Games opens in Israel, carrying the weight of Oct. 7 and war
(JTA) — JERUSALEM — Just days before the start of the Maccabiah Games, the Jewish sports competition held every four years in Israel, Australia was officially out of the competition.
Australia had canceled its official delegation — typically one of the largest — during Israel’s war with Iran. In early June, its organizing group said it could not flout the Australian government’s designation of Israel as a danger zone.
But on Sunday, with the war on hold amid peace deals announced by the United States, Maccabi Australia reversed course. On Wednesday, 14 Australian athletes marched behind the Australian flag into Teddy Stadium in Jerusalem, where they are competing in six sports across two weeks of play.
Australia’s about-face reflects the uncertainty that has plagued the quadrennial “Jewish Olympics” for more than a year, diminishing the number of athletes and countries participating and making it unusually challenging for their supporters to attend from abroad. Organizers say about 5,000 athletes are competing from 55 countries, compared to 10,000 in 2022, when U.S. President Joe Biden joined the opening festivities.
The 2022 Games marked a triumphal return after a year’s delay due to the pandemic. This year’s competition, too, followed a delay: Three weeks before play was set to start in 2025, organizers understood there was no way to bring thousands of Jewish athletes to Israel. Israel was at war with Iran, the government had declared an emergency, and airlines had stopped flying. They postponed — never expecting that conditions would be similar in the months ahead of the Games.
“We were sure that things would be much better by now,” said Roy Hessing, Maccabiah’s chief executive. “The only really good thing that has happened since then is that all the hostages are back.”
Signs of the postponement, and the wrenching years since the last Maccabiah, were omnipresent at Wednesday night’s opening event, starting with the logo for the Games, which features a “25.”
Former hostages took part in the ceremony, including IDF spotter Daniella Gilboa and the American-Israeli soldier Edan Alexander, who both performed with Israeli singer-songwriter Idan Raichel.
The ceremony also included wounded soldiers and representatives of Irgun Nechei Zahal, Israel’s official organization for disabled veterans, as well as recognition of several athletes, including swimmer Eden Zimri, who were killed on Oct. 7.
Members of the French delegation carried shirts featuring Dan Elkayam, their football teammate who was killed in December’s shooting attack on a Hanukkah celebration in Sydney.
“Welcome to your home away from home,” Israeli President Isaac Herzog told attendees. “Your gathering together in Jerusalem, in this beautiful event, fills us with pride and charges this stadium with magnificent energy. … Each of you here is a winner, and I know you will have a great Maccabiah together, in unity and in love of Israel.”
In a sign of Israel’s internal tensions, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu drew both applause and audible boos as he took the podium. The ceremony took place on the eve of the 1000th day since Oct. 7, with an election looming and the vast majority of Israelis critical of Netanyahu’s refusal to open a state commission of inquiry into the failures that led to the historic attack.
Netanyahu said he had “only one message” for attendees: “In the face of antisemitism, stand tall, stand proud, do not bend, do not bow, stand strong, stand together, and together we shall win. You are all winners here, we shall be winners in the world.”
Hessing said the decision to postpone rather than cancel the Games was essential as the event has only grown more important for Jewish communities abroad, where he said “antisemitism is raging,” and for Israelis still living with the fallout of Oct. 7 and the wars that followed.
“We must have some events that will give us some joy and hope,” he said.
About 3,000 athletes arrived from the Diaspora, joined by about 2,000 Israelis. Taiwan and the Philippines sent athletes for the first time, while the largest overseas delegation came from the United States, with more than 900 athletes, ranging in age from 14 to 87.
The U.S. cheering section is smaller than it might have been, as scarce and historically costly flights have made it hard for supporters to make the trip. Einav Rabinovitch Fox told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency from her home in Ohio that she and her family had hoped to accompany her son Adam, who is on the U15 football team, to the competition. But she was not eager to bring her family into a war zone, and then she could not secure plane tickets once hostilities ended.
“It was a) really expensive and b) a transportation nightmare,” she said. “It just became impossible.”
At the opening ceremony, a mother who came from Los Angeles to support her son, also on a soccer team, told JTA that she had lucked out by purchasing El Al tickets in 2025, well before prices shot up. But when her husband went to book his own tickets last month, the only options available cost more than $10,000. He stayed home.
In total, organizers expect the Games to bring roughly 9,000 visitors from overseas, many fewer than in 2022.
But Hessing said he was looking on the bright side: “We’re still talking about thousands of tourists that will come to Israel, will support the state of Israel, will be part of amazing ceremonies, amazing trips, volunteering, and the competitions, of course,” he said.
Over the past year, there were many moments when Hessing questioned whether the Games could or should go ahead.
“We had very tough times,” he said, pointing to March’s second round of fighting with Iran and ongoing hostilities on the northern border. “I said to myself, oh my gosh, are we doing the right thing?”
The postponement made the budget harder to close. Propelled in part by war, the dollar fell from about 3.7 shekels last summer to about 2.9 today, reducing the value of money raised abroad, while flight prices climbed sharply amid widespread cancellations and rising oil prices.
The combination raised costs for both the organization and the delegations, forcing the Maccabiah to secure additional funding from the Israeli government, philanthropists and the private sector companies to close the gap.
Meanwhile, it took months of reassurance to persuade some delegation leaders to come to Israel amid security concerns. Then, hundreds of athletes from around the world backed out in March, and some countries were unable to send official delegations because of travel warnings and insurance restrictions tied to Israel’s status as a war zone.
Some athletes from those countries decided to come anyway, Hessing said, competing as individuals rather than as part of a national delegation. But Great Britain canceled its youth delegation, sending only adult athat least a dozen countries that competed last time are not represented this year, including Canada, whose 700 athletes were the fourth-largest delegation in 2022.
“While we are saddened that our more than 300 delegates were unable to take part this year, our Maccabi spirit remains as strong as ever,” Maccabi Canada posted in an Instagram story on Wednesday promoting a livestream of the opening event. “Join us in watching the opening ceremony and cheering on all those competing.”
The only recent precedent for a much smaller Maccabiah, Hessing said, was in 2001, during the Second Intifada, when about 2,000 athletes came as suicide bombings were hitting Israeli buses and cities.
The Maccabiah began in 1932 with 390 Jewish athletes from 18 countries competing. More than nine decades later, Hessing said, the Games are still judged not only by the competitions but by what participants take back with them.
This year, he said, success will mean turning those who chose to come in wartime into “great ambassadors to the state of Israel,” sending them back to their communities “as leaders, as members, with pride, and most important, with a much stronger connection to Israel.”
For many participants, it will be their first time in the country, he said, with first-time visitors typically making up 65% to 70% of the Maccabiah and about 5% later immigrating to Israel.
For Hessing, the first test has already been met. The message he hears most often from athletes and their families is that they are grateful the Maccabiah was happening.
“The first thing people are saying when they land is thank you for not canceling the Games,” he said. “It’s going to be two weeks they will never forget.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Looking for a precedent for the Supreme Court’s decisions? Try Germany in the 1930s.
In October 1936, German law professors held their annual meeting in Berlin. In his welcoming address, the meeting’s chairperson turned to the pressing issue of Jewish influence. “The Jew’s relationship to our intellectual work is parasitical, tactical and commercial,” he warned. Thanks to the Nazi state’s “healthy exorcism” of this malign presence from their profession, though, German “ethnic honor” would triumph over Jewish “cruelty and impudence.”
The chairperson was Carl Schmitt, the political philosopher whose prominence during the Nazi era earned him the moniker of the “crown jurist.” Neither his name nor his jurisprudence was cited by the Supreme Court’s Chief Justice John Roberts in his majority opinion in this week’s ruling in the case of Trump v. Slaughter. Nevertheless, this decision that, by neutering the independence of federal agencies like the FTC and FCC and stretching the already expansive powers of the president, makes for a distinct Schmittian chill.
As a young professor of constitutional law in Weimar Germany, Schmitt was as ambitious as he was accomplished, as prolific in his writings as he was pessimistic about parliamentary democracy. Nevertheless, though critical of the Weimar constitution, Schmitt was even more critical not just of the rise of political violence, but the concomitant rise of the Nazi Party and its leader, Adolf Hitler.
Come 1933, however, when Germany found itself under new management, Schmitt joined the Nazi Party and became one of Hitler’s most ardent advocates — a position that neatly dovetailed with his equally ardent hatred of Jews. As the political theorist Richard Wolin has noted in Theory and Society, Schmitt did not think the Nuremberg Laws went far enough; he demanded that existing marriages between Jews and non-Jews also be annulled and urged his fellow jurists, when quoting from works written by Jews, to label the authors as “Jewish.” (Published during the 2000s, Schmitt’s private diaries are a trove of antisemitic bilge.)
Though Schmitt distanced himself from politics in 1936 — scholars still debate the reasons — he never distanced himself from his support of the Nazi regime or its policies. With the defeat of the Third Reich in 1944, Schmitt was arrested not once, not twice, but three times as a possible candidate for the Nuremberg trials. Though his case was ultimately dismissed, he incurred a lifetime ban from teaching — a sentence that did not prevent the unrepentant Schmitt from continuing to write, transforming himself into the éminence grise of German conservative thought.
Since his death in 1985, Schmitt has enjoyed a growing reputation among arch conservative political and legal theorists — including dozens of applicants to the Heritage Foundation — to the dismay of liberal theorists like the late Jurgen Habermas. Schmitt’s early works in particular — Political Theology, The Concept of the Political, and The Guardian of the Constitution — have much bearing upon the jury-rigged jurisprudence of the six Republican sages who now sit on our Supreme Court.
Political Theology opens with a famous and oracular line: “Sovereign is he who decides the exception.” By this statement, Schmitt locates the source of sovereignty not with the people — after all, he did not write “Sovereign are they” — but with the individual who, by charisma and conviction, lays claim to power. If this sounds familiar, it should: Schmitt was a fan of the 17th century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, whose book The Leviathan, makes the case for an authoritarian ruler.
In a word, Schmitt dismisses the legitimacy of natural law, which posits that our rights are found in human nature. But he also swats away positive law, which affirms that rights, not necessarily found in nature, are established and enforced by the state. For Schmitt, sovereign authority is instead embodied by that charismatic individual who cancels what had been law and employs violence, if necessary, to enforce his power and normalize the situation. Any binding order, Schmitt insists, is based not on natural rights or legal norms, but solely on that individual’s authority.
Such a claim echoes Hobbes’ line from the Leviathan that it “is not Wisdom but Authority that makes a law.” Not that the three justices named to the court by Trump would ever have the chutzpah to describe him as a fount of wisdom. But along with their Republican colleagues, they did have the chutzpah to dismiss nearly a century of legal precedent concerning the powers of independent federal agencies, and instead double down on their earlier decisions that had already, thanks to their dubious unitary executive theory, expanded the executive branch’s powers.
Schmitt’s The Concept of the Political reveals the danger of the fast and furious pace of these court decisions. Schmitt argues that the most fundamental political distinction is that between friends and enemies. This distinction has nothing to do with morality and everything to do with seeking and maintaining power. As the legal scholar Lars Vinx notes, Schmitt insisted that the essence of great leadership is to decide “which approach to legality or its opposite and which set of public enemies is in the interest of the nation.”
Few lines better capture the essence of politics according to Trump, just as it captures the foolishness and fearfulness of the majority on the Supreme Court. For the past 18 months, it has done its best to avoid being labeled a public enemy by our president. That it has so far been successful is a measure of just how far it has failed to defend our same nation and its constitution.
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