New realities are emerging for every ethnic minority in America, and the Jewish community is no exception.
At the annual plenum of the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council, held here Feb. 13-17, Jewish community relations professionals grappled with the implications of those changes.
The mood was hopeful and energetic, and most of the 400 professionals attending seemed to share the faith that Jewish communal relations work will continue to play a central role in the effort to make America a country comfortable for all minorities.
But the challenges, acknowledged plenum participants, are daunting.
Jewish community relations professionals–those on the front lines of intergroup and ethnic tensions — struggle to find their niche within the ever-changing dynamic among the ethnic and religious groups to whom they represent Jewish interests.
At the same time, they must continue to define their role within the Jewish community, whose interests are served by the relationships they create with other groups.
The multi-ethnic mosaic of America and its emerging minorities presents a spate of potential new coalition partners, and a more complex community relations picture than the one historically faced by the Jewish community.
But as Jewish communal leaders grapple with the disturbing demographic trends documented in the 1990 National Jewish Population Survey, the place of community relations work on the Jewish agenda is being fundamentally questioned.
“The community relations function in the Jewish community is being downgraded, to the serious detriment of the Jewish community,” said Earl Raab, in remarks which opened the plenum.
Raab is director of the Nathan Perlmutter Institute at Brandeis University in Boston.
The central tension, he said, is between the “integrative” impulse of most American Jews, and the “separatist” nature of strengthening Jewish identity.
INTERGROUP WORK NOT SEEN AS PRIORITY
Intergroup work is viewed by the Jewish community as a defensive measure, so it is not seen as a high priority in a time when the community feels secure.
As a result, the plenum was dominated by talk of curtailed funding and new, sometimes unclear, priorities being generated by federations.
There was much informal discussion of coping with downsized staffs and having to choose carefully what areas of community relations work are going to be addressed, and what will have to be ignored.
Another of the primary tasks these professionals are confronting is recruiting Jews to be part of the community relations effort.
“The Jewish community is interested in PACs (political action committees) and direct access to congressmen,” said Alice Abrams of Cincinnati, in a session on “Building and Maintaining Grass-Roots Political Involvement.”
Jews “don’t seem to realize that contributions won’t buy as much” political capital as personal involvement will, she said.
Steven Windmueller, director of the Los Angeles JCRC, noted that the nature of volunteering has changed for Jews.
“Interest is short-term, project based. Younger Jews especially feel the need to do mitzvot, but want short-term demands.”
Just as important to these JCRC professionals as the internal problems are the changing dynamics among ethnic groups which, in many places, have led to a reassessment of existing relationships.
The future, say the professionals, lies not in dialogues and in statements, but in action.
“When are we going to stop writing statements and start taking action?” asked Gary Rubin, director of national affairs for the American Jewish Committee.
“There’s no more time to talk,” said Nancy Kaufman, executive director of the Boston JCRC, at a session on African American-Jewish relations.
“We’re trying to find a continuum for involvement” rather than cope from crisis to crisis, she said. “We have to stop talking to the same old leaders and find a new message.”
‘GOOD WITH PRESS RELEASES’
“We’re good with press releases, fair with dialogues and very poor in dealing with issues of primary interest to the black community,” said Rabbi Lynn Landsberg of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, at the same session.
“Let’s get our hands dirty, be there wherever we are needed, with literacy and anti-poverty programs, championing issues in the legislative arena,” she said.
In a separate session, one devoted to “Ethnic Relations in Crisis,” Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District of Columbia’s delegate to Congress and a life-long civil rights activist, spoke of precisely how the Jewish community has been and can be useful on the legislative front.
The Jewish community’s relatively strong connections to presidential administrations has been valuable on issues of concern to both blacks and Jews, she said.
She cited Jewish efforts on behalf of the 1991 Civil Rights Bill.
When the president was saying that it was only about “quotas, quotas, quotas, you talked back to President Bush, saying this is not about quotas and we know what they are. And that’s when he began to listen,” recalled Norton.
“It is time for you to take up that battle for maintaining religious harmony again,” she said.
In an effort not just to revitalize existing relationships, but to form new ones, as well, NJCRAC conducted sessions with the presidents of a national Moslem group, Mahmoud Abu-Saud of the American Muslim Council, and of a Latino organization, Raoul Yzaguirre of La Raza.
In Detroit, “new partnerships” have included joining with the Arab, Chaldean and Polish communities to encourage respect for diversity through the public schools, according to David Gad-Harf, director of the JCRC there.
The common agenda between Jews and these other groups “is broad,” said Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center, citing the battles against bigotry, poverty, joblessness, hunger and homelessness.
“Make no mistake about it. Our destiny is bound up with each other’s,” he said.
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