While always deeply concerned with developments in the Middle East and the nature of United States-Israeli relations, the American Jewish community also devoted considerable energy to many passionate and sometimes controversial issues such as tuition tax credit to parents who send their children to private schools, and prayer in public schools.
A significant and notable development was the November Congressional elections where Jewish candidates fared better than expected and raised by five to a total of 38 seats the number of Jewish legislators in the 98th Congress. However, the Jewish community also lost a close friend and ally when Rep. Benjamin Rosenthal (D.N.Y.) lost his battle with cancer.
In other developments, many Jewish organizations called for a nuclear arms freeze by both the U.S. and the Soviet Union, maintained a vigilant stand in defense of Soviet Jews and the Black Jews of Ethiopia, commemorated the 40th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, and participated in the Gathering of Jewish Holocaust survivors in Washington. By year’s end, a series of suspicious fires destroyed parts of two synagogues and the home of a rabbi in West Hartford, Conn.
THE AMERICAN SCENE:
SEPTEMBER 1982 — The Senate, by a vote of 51-48, defeats an effort to attach a rider permitting officially sanctioned prayer in public schools to a bill raising the national debt ceiling.
The number of Orthodox oriented day schools sponsored by Torah Umesorah, the National Society for Hebrew Day Schools, increases by nine to a total of 495 in the United States.
A study prepared by William Helmreich, professor of sociology and Jewish Studies at City College of New York, indicates that an estimated 9,000 young American Jews above the age of 18 are studying Talmudic lore in yeshivas full time.
OCTOBER — The Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith (ADL) releases a study of television network coverage of the war in Lebanon indicating that the three major networks — NBC, CBS, and ABC — … unwittingly or unconsciously contributed to some distortions and lack of objective perspective in their coverage of the war” from June 4 to September 1, 1982.
The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee receives donations of over $325,000 in cash and an estimated $700,000 in gifts in kind bringing the total committed to Lebanon relief by the JDC to an estimated $1 million.
A group with ties to the extremist rightwing anti-Semitic Liberty Lobby organization is suspected by ADL officials of the distribution of wall posters in the Los Angeles area linking a proposed state handgun registration measure to Nazi atrocities committed against Jews in the Holocaust.
NOVEMBER — Thirty-four Jews are elected to Congress, four to the Senate and 30 to the House. Including the four Jewish Senators whose terms were not up this year, the 98th Congress which takes office in January will have 38 Jews compared to 33 in the current Congress.
Some 3,000 Jewish leaders and activists from the U.S. and Canada attend the four-day 50th anniversary General Assembly of the Council of Jewish Federations in Los Angeles. Israeli Premier Menachem Begin’s scheduled address is suddenly cancelled when his wife, Aliza, dies in Jerusalem.
A resolution proposing action for the immediate reduction in the size and deployment of the nuclear weapons arsenals of both the U.S. and the Soviet Union is adopted by more than 1,200 delegates at the annual national convention of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America.
DECEMBER — Interior Secretary James Watt tells the semiannual meeting of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council that both the victims and the survivors of the Holocaust should be remembered not only by memorials but also by “protecting liberty and spiritual freedom.”
Actress Jane Fonda condemns the “double standard” applied to Israel since the war in Lebanon and attributes this to the tendency of many individuals to have “knee jerk” reactions on behalf of Third World countries.
Rabbi Alexander Schindler, president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, asserts in an address to 300 Reform rabbis that the incorporation of the West Bank into Israel “represents a threat to the Jewish essence of the state and the unity of the Jewish people.”
JANUARY 1983 — A total of 3,050 people make aliya from North America in 1982, representing a 16 percent increase over the number of North Americans who went on aliya in 1981.
After more than doubling for three years in a row, anti-Semitic vandalism in the U.S. declines noticeably in 1982, according to the annual audit conducted by the ADL.
The Jewish Daily Forward, which began publication on April 22, 1897, announces it will cease publication on its Tuesday through Friday basis and would begin publication on a weekly basis.
Benjamin Rosenthal (D.N.Y.), the senior Jewish member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and a staunch supporter of Israel in Congress, dies at the age of 59 after a long battle with cancer. His death reduces the number of Jewish members of Congress to 37.
A commission of prominent American Jews formed to study what the organized U.S. Jewish community did or failed to do to save European Jewry from the Holocaust during the years 1939-1945 makes headlines when it is forced to disband amidst heated controversy. Two weeks later, the commission is reformed minus some key individuals.
FEBRUARY — Two leading pollsters — Harris and Gallup — release separate surveys showing that Americans continue to support Israel in the Mideast conflict and view Israel as the U.S.’ closest ally in the region.
Nine U.S.-based corporations reach agreement with the American Jewish Congress that shareholders will be informed of the extent of the firm’s lobbying efforts on behalf of the 1981 AWACS arms package sale to Saudi Arabia. A number of these firms say they will not lobby on behalf of U.S. Mideast policy in the future.
Nearly 500 Jews and Christians express solidarity with the State of Israel at a National Prayer Breakfast in honor of Israel, sponsored for the second consecutive year by the American Forum for Jewish Christian Cooperation and the Religious Round Table.
The Synagogue Council of America appeals to the U.S. and the Soviet Union to agree to a bilateral and verifiable total cessation of the manufacture and deployment of nuclear weapons.
(Continued Tomorrow)
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