Jackson’s No to Jewish Leaders Dismays Organization Heads

The Rev. Jesse Jackson’s apparent refusal to meet with Jewish groups prior to the April 19 New York Democratic primary has prompted statements of dismay from the umbrella organizations that extended the invitations.

Lester Pollack, president of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, and Malcolm Hoenlein, executive director of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, also denied a charge by Jackson’s campaign manager, Gerald Austin, that the Democratic presidential candidate had been invited only to the “harassed” by Jewish leaders.

Austin’s charge, reported Tuesday in The New York Times, is “false, unfortunate and offensive,” Hoenlein said in a statement.

The 44-member Conference of Presidents has hosted five candidates at a series of presidential forums, including Jackson’s rivals, Gov. Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts and Sen. Albert Gore Jr. of Tennessee.

According to Hoenlein, the conference sent invitations to all candidates in October. Jackson’s reply arrived in March in the form of what Hoenlein calls a “terse note saying only that the candidate had no time in his schedule to address our group.”

“We invited Jesse Jackson in good faith. Other candidates accepted the same invitation and were accorded respectful hearings,” said Hoenlein. “The same treatment would be given to Jesse Jackson.”

Hoenlein said the invitation to Jackson still stands.

The New York JCRC, representing 59 local organizations, had invited Jackson to a closed-door meeting with 20 to 25 top New York Jewish leaders. Sessions have previously been held with four Democratic candidates, including Gore.

AIDE’S REMARKS ‘OFFENSIVE’

In the JCRC statement, Pollack said, “In view of his theme of healing, we are dismayed” by Jackson’s decision. He called Austin’s remarks “patently offensive.”

Rabbi Balfour Brickner of the Steven Wise Free Synagogue in Manhattan, who attended a breakfast meeting with Jackson on Monday, said he supported the candidate’s decision not to appear at the Conference of Presidents forum, but thinks he should meet with the New York leaders.

Brickner, who denied an assertion in The New York Times that he was a Jackson “convert,” said he would be glad to set up an ad-hoc committee of Jewish leaders to meet with Jackson.

Jackson, meanwhile, responded for the first time to repeated attacks by New York Mayor Ed Koch, how said that Jews would have to be “crazy” to vote for the candidate.

Speaking at the breakfast meeting Monday, Jackson said Koch’s remarks threaten to rupture race relations and that “we deserve better leadership than that.”

Said Jackson, “To raise up a race or a religious litmus test does not contribute to healing, which is what I’m interested in doing.”

Jewish voters are expected to cast 25 percent of the votes in the Democratic primary. According to recent polls, fewer than 9 percent of the Jewish vote would go to Jackson.