A senior official of the New York UJA-Federation urged leaders of Jewish community relations agencies this week “to be educated” and “have a public policy in place” to address the civil liberties issue and emotional implications of the AIDS epidemic.
“We are seven years too late devoting some time to the problem of AIDS in the Jewish community,” said Dr. Jeffrey Solomon, executive director of the Domestic Affairs Division of the UJA-Federation.
He spoke at a forum on AIDS and the Jewish community relations field at the 44th plenary session of the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council here.
“We have accepted misery to too great a degree,” Solomon said, calling for better education to combat misinformation about AIDS.
He said federation day care centers and summer camps faced difficult choices between admitting children known to be infected with the AIDS virus and dealing with parents who feared that their own healthy children might contract the disease through ordinary contact.
“We have to be ready before a child sends in an application. We have to be educated, we have to have a policy in place,” Solomon said.
He cited public opinion polls that found the highest percentage of the population misinformed about how the AIDS virus can be transmitted are people over age 50, He pointed out that “that age corresponds with the age of leadership in federations.”
Solomon urged the delegates at the NJCRAC plenum, representing more than 100 communities throughout the country, to educate their own leadership in order to develop policies responsive to the needs of the AIDS victims.
He said the situation offers “a wonderful opportunity to work in intergroup relations” because the Jewish community and other minority communities share needs and goals on this common issue of concern.
Another speaker at the forum, Lois Waldman, co-director of the American Jewish Congress Commission on Law and Social Action, said, “The Jewish community, traditionally concerned with discrimination, must support the federal laws which prohibit discrimination against AIDS victims.”
Waldman stressed the laws are necessary because “the sheer numbers of people infected by AIDS makes the traditional policy of isolating those with infectious diseases impractical.”
According to Dr. Edward Gomperts, a specialist in hemophilia at the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles, about 50,000 AIDS cases have been reported nationally, and more than I million Americans are infected with the disease.
Waldman identified mandatory testing and screening and violations of confidentiality as issues of human rights concern. Some 35 states have laws prohibiting discrimination against the handicapped, but it is not clear whether they cover AIDS victims, she said.
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