City’s Anti-poverty Agencies Charged with Discrimination Against Jews

A group of Brooklyn rabbis and Jewish community workers charged today that the city’s anti-poverty agencies were guilty of “blatant discrimination” against Jews generally and against Jews in Crown Heights in particular. Crown Heights is one of the city’s 26 officially-designated poverty areas and has been the scene of sharp differences between Jews and blacks over funding of anti-poverty projects for the section. Crown Heights is one of two of the areas where Jews have substantial representation on the local community corporations through which anti-poverty funds are channeled by the Council Against Poverty, the policy-making city agency for poverty programs, and the Community Development Agency, the operating arm of the Council. On July 20, the offices of the Crown Heights Jewish Community Council, an umbrella agency for Jewish organizations and synagogues in the area, was wrecked by a firebomb. Mayor John V. Lindsay paid a personal visit to the scene and promised intensive action to find the vandals and to provide city aid in re-building the burned-out office. In a statement scheduled for distribution today at city Hall, in connection with a protest visit by the 30 rabbis and communal workers, Rabbi Sholom Gorodetsky. Crown Heights representative on the Council Against Poverty, declared:

“The situation in regard to discrimination against people of the Jewish faith in general and residents of Crown Heights in particular has reached proportions of grave concern.” The group charged there was a “conspiracy” by a “militant few” to drive all Jews out of Crown Heights. Rabbi Gorodetsky added that “so-called responsible people who are supposed to represent various ethnic groups in the Council Against Poverty” are “In fact blatantly indifferent and outright discriminatory against the Jewish people.” He charged that such statements as “It’s not my fault you were born Jewish” were “unfortunately very common and to be expected at most of the meetings of the Council” he had attended. He said a list of six demands had been prepared for presentation to Councilman Theodore Silverman, who represents the section on the City Council. One of the demands, he said, was for apprehension of an individual who “assaulted” Elliot Rosman, a Jew, who is manpower director of the Crown Heights Community Corp. He charged that Rosman was assaulted on Aug. 27 at a summer festival in Prospect Park, sponsored by the community corporation as part of its program this year.

David Garber, executive director of a newly-formed Association of Jewish Community and Anti-Poverty Workers, charged the CDA with “insensitivity toward the Jewish delegate agencies which are funded by the CDA.” He cited, as an example, “the fact that although numerous requests were made by Jewish delegate agencies for funds for spot announcements and advertisements” for elections to Community Corporations scheduled for next week “such as those granted to other minorities, they were not even granted the courtesy of a reply, let alone the funds themselves.” Rabbi Arnold Wolf, chairman of the Crown Heights Jewish Community Council, expressed “dismay that after two months of a so-called city dragnet to apprehend the bombers, no significant leads have been uncovered.” Other demands prepared for submission to Mr. Silverman urge a stop to the purported conspiracy to drive Jews out of Crown Heights; arrest of those responsible for the fire-bombing; immediate reconstruction for the fire-bombed office; and a stop to “the blatant discrimination” charged against the Council Against Poverty and the CDA. The CDA was charged specifically with bias in allocation of funds for the forthcoming poverty agency elections and in day to day contact with Operation Belfrye, an anti-poverty project being carried out by the Crown Heights Jewish Community Council.