Special to the JTA Lubavitcher Hasidim Explain Why They Boycotted City Hall-sponsored Confab

A spokesman for the Lubavitcher Hasidic community of Crown Heights today explained that his group had boycotted a recent meeting of the City Hall-sponsared Council on Intergroup Relations due to “the total lack of concern on the part of City Hall for the Jews in Crown Heights.”

Rabbi Shmuel M. Butman, a member of the Crown Heights Jewish community, added in a telephone conversation with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, that City Hall also made “our participation impossible by including at these meetings, extreme, rabble-rousing radicals not representing the Crown Heights community. You cannot expect us to dialogue with people who instigate racial tensions, overt hatred and blatent anti-Semitism,” he said.

Representatives of the Black United Front were invited to attend the meeting of the Council. This organization sponsored the Crown Heights demonstration on July 16, in which 2000 blacks participated, in front of the Lubavitcher World Headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway. The language used by speakers at the rally was termed as inflammatory by Lubavitcher spokesmen and Jewish community relations organizations. The Rev. Herbert Daughtry, chairman of the Coalition of Concerned Leaders and Citizens to Save Our Youth had referred to the activities of “Hasidic terrorists” and called for a boycott of Hasidic stores in the area.

The Council on Intergroup Relations, which met for the first time July 26 at Marymount College in Manhattan, included some 70 representatives of all major racial, religious and ethnic groups in New York City, according to Mike Battenfield of the Mayor’s Press Office.

Formed upon the recommendation of Mayor Edward Koch, with John LaCicero serving as the Mayoral Liaison, the Council seeks to ease racial tensions in local neighborhoods throughout the city. In pursuit of this objective, the Council will rely upon the advice and cooperation of local community leaders to settle neighborhood disputes and to establish an “early warning system” which would deflate potential crises before they erupt, Battenfield said.

Butman, however, noted that “it was unthinkable to us to participate in such meetings at this time.” He said that Lubavitcher leaders would continue to boycott future meetings of the Council until they perceived a change in the Mayor’s attitude and choice of delegates.

HASIDIM URGED TO ATTEND NEXT MEETING

Malcolm Hoenlein, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council, told the JTA that Jewish leaders have urged representatives of the Lubavitcher community to attend the next session of the Council on Intergroup Relations, which will take place on Wednesday, August 9.

Hoenlein noted that, while the concerns of Lubavitcher leaders are certainly understandable, it is important that their absence not be misinterpreted. “In fact,” he said, “it has been the Black United Front which has refused to talk in the past, while the Hasidim have always indicated their readiness to sit down with responsible leaders of the black community.”