Behind the Headlines; American Jewry Starting to Refocus on Politics at Local and State Levels

The American Jewish community, accustomed to meeting with White House officials and lobbying Capitol Hill, is starting to turn its attention back to neighborhood and statehouse politics.

“The Jewish community is best served in getting involved in the body politic of the country,” said Steve Gutow, executive director of the avowedly partisan National Jewish Democratic Council.

“We’re trying to get our people to work again in the grass roots of Democratic politics, to roll up their sleeves, to have a right to talk policy.”

Gutow was one of several speakers preaching the message of grass-roots political action here at the recent plenum of the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council.

With school boards discussing how to teach religion, state parties passing resolutions about the Middle East and fewer Jewish voters turning out at the polls, the organized Jewish community needs to pay more attention to its political backyard, NJCRAC delegates were told.

Four years ago, supporters of Israel failed to keep a call for Palestinian “self-determination” off the platform of the Washington state Democratic Party, though they succeeded elsewhere.

The fight illustrated the potential price of years of neglecting the political legwork of licking envelopes and pounding the pavement for the easy influence of writing checks, said Gutow.

He observed that only 6 percent of the delegates to the 1988 Democratic National Convention were Jewish, compared to as many as twice that two decades ago.

CHALLENGE OF STAYING NON-PARTISAN

Gutow has been taking his message on the road to local Jewish community relations councils, sharing a platform with Matthew Brooks, who heads the parallel Jewish group for the Republican Party, the National Jewish Coalition.

They have coupled their general encouragement of Jewish political involvement with specific advice on how to serve as delegates for the national party conventions this summer.

Speaking as a team, they help Jewish community relations councils and federations stick to their legal requirement of remaining non-partisan.

Focusing on civic education and voter registration is another legal political outlet for non-profit groups. That tactic is credited with helping defeat David Duke’s quest for the Louisiana governorship in November.

In both Missouri and Minnesota, the Jewish community recently sponsored workshops on how to vote in the state caucuses, which help nominate presidential candidates.

Still, in a Jewish community that still leans well to the left of center maintaining non-partisanship can be tricky.

Lynn Lyss, a vice chair of NJCRAC, described the recent experience in St. Louis, when the Jewish Community Relations Council there organized a workshop on political involvement and the presidential caucus system.

“Looking over the list, we suddenly panicked we weren’t going to have any Republicans,” she said. “We called some of our activists who are Republicans and got about 12” out of a total attendance of 75.

In Minnesota, the pro-Israel community faces a challenge within the Democratic Party, known there as the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party.

“We have a number of strong justice and peace coalitions already mailing out very strong anti-Israel stuff,” said Ardis Wexler, assistant director of the Jewish Community Relations Council-Anti-Defamation League of Minnesota and the Dakotas. She organized two training sessions on how to participate in the March 3 state caucuses.

“The thrust is to get people through the caucus and shepherd through pro-Israel resolutions from the precinct level on up,” she said.

‘HAVE TO START MUCH EARLIER’

But grass-roots politics, say its advocates, is about people as much as platform positions.

“Without being part of the infrastructure, we cannot have sustained power,” said Star Sacks, who chairs the Community Relations Council of the Jewish Federation of Greater Phoenix.

“Our mistake has been waiting until someone is running to Congress, and that’s when we get to know them,” said Lyss of St. Louis. “We have to start much earlier.”

The Jewish community can also increase its local political influence and access by providing candidates for city and country boards and commissions, suggested Barbara Simon, who handles community relations for the Jewish Federation of Portland. Ore.

Simon, until recently a staff assistant for country officials, said local governments are always seeking new people to sit on commissions.

“Write to the local politician, introduce yourself or your organization, indicate that you’re anxious to become involved in civic affairs and want to help place people on boards and commissions,” she advised.

In addition to giving the Jewish community representation in the public arena, “it broadens our perspective in the eyes of the community, indicating that we care about more than just Israel,” said Simon.

On the national level, the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America has undertaken a similar project of supplying interns to congressional offices, said David Luchins, vice president of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America and an assistant to Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.).

‘WE ALL WANT TO BE MACHERS’

Seeking to explain why the Jewish community has been slow to come to grass-roots politics, Luchins suggested that Jewish political traditions are still heavily influenced by the Jewish experience in Europe prior to democratization.

“We’re still fairly used to the norms of another society, where one elite is empowered to negotiate with another elite on our behalf,” he said.

I. Robert Wolfson, executive director of the ADL/Community Relations Committee of the Jewish Federation of Omaha, suggested another reason: “We all want to be machers,” or big shots, he said.

But he said that more recent Jewish practices augur hope for a change.

“People in this room are trained at surviving Jewish institutional politics,” he said. “That’s a great training round for surviving other political endeavors.”