Prof. Seymour Siegel of New York, widely known among politically-sophisticated Jews as a staunch political conservative, said today that the recently-formed American Jewish Forum (AJF) hopes to become a national action center for Jews with conservative views.
Siegel, Ralph Simon Professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, in a telephone interview, that the initial meeting which led to formation and incorporation of the AJF as a non-profit, tax-exempt organization, was held last June in Washington, at his initiative. The initial meeting was held at the headquarters of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank, which made facilities available for that meeting.
Siegel said plans called for an office in Washington, a paid staff, sponsorship of conferences and seminars, and a campaign for a “substantial” membership. He said several fundraising events were planned in on effort to raise a $100,000 budget.
Citing the election victory of Ronald Reagan, Siegel said he hoped American Jews would realize that there is now “a new conservative reality and that “they cannot continue to politically be tied to just one party,” the Democrats, and to “the once fashionable ‘liberal view exclusively”
YOUNGER JEWS ATTRACTED
He declared that “a nice group of younger Jews” had been attracted by the AJF in Washington, including some Congressional aides, adding that, even in its present “embryonic” farm, the AJF members “have very good contacts” with the incoming Reagan Administration. This means he said, that AJF members. “can speak to key people in the Reagan Administration and in the new Congress.”
Those present at the meeting included Siegel Michael Rubinoff of the Heritage Foundation, and David Meiselbaum, economics professor at Virginia Polytechnic. Siegel said Meiselbaum had been named acting chairman of the AJF Board of Trustees. He said he was acting president, adding that permanent officers would be named at the first formal conference of the AJF, scheduled for Washington sometime next spring. Elliott Abrams, a former aide to Sen. Henry Jackson D. Wash.), had been named chairman of a committee to organize that conference.
Siegel said the AJF currently has about 50 members, most of them men. He said they include Maxwell Roab, former secretary of President Eisenhower’s Cabinet and currently president of Temple Emanu-El of New York; Abrams and his recent bride, Naomi; and Gertrude Himmelfarb.
AJF HAS THREE AIMS
He said the AJF had three aims: to investigate “in an academic way” the relationship between Jewish traditional thought and conservative political ideologies; to publish materials to disseminate findings to the Jewish community; and to serve as a political education center on conservative ideology for Jews.
Siegel said the AJF plans to sponsor academic conferences, at which papers will be presented and then published for dissemination to the general Jewish public. A regular periodical also is being planned, he said.
He told the JTA that while the AJF will be aligned philosophically with conservatives in both major parties, it will not endorse parties or candidates in order to protect its tax-exempt status and that similar constraints would apply to lobbying for conservative legislation.
Siegel commented that the recently-announced “New Jewish Agenda for the 1980s” (NJA) was a “good sign, because it meant that the Jewish community “is reconsidering its political status.” He said he understood that Prof. Eugene Borowitz, a liberal Reform rabbi and editor of “Sh’ma,” was associated with NJA.
NEW JEWISH AGENDA SETS LIBERAL GOALS
Asked for comment, Borowitz told the JTA he was not formally associated with the NJA, but that he agreed with the liberal goals of the NJA and had sent “a bit of money and allowed them to use my name.” The NJA is holding a four-day national conference at the 4H-Conference Center in Washington. Some 500 Jews from the U.S., Canada, Europe and Israel are expected to be in attendance.
Borowitz said he did not agree with descriptions of the emergence of the NJA as representing a liberal response to asserted evidence of growing conservatism among American Jews and Americans generally. He said that the NJA indicated that “the left in the Jewish community is not dead. On the other hand, it is quite clear that until now we have had very few efforts to think through what the conservative position is.”
He said, as examples, “What is the position of conservative Jews on a constitutional amendment on abortion?” and where can Jews “go along with the Christian evangelical movement and where do we draw the line?”
Borowitz added that “now that the right is in power” as a result of the election of Reagan and a conservative-controlled Senate, it is very important for the Jewish right to define what it stands for. They have told us what they are against: now let them tell us what they are for.”
HOPES NJA WILL BECOME NATIONAL GROUP
Rabbi Gerald Serotta, associate director of the Hillel Foundation of Rutgers University, and NJA steering committee chairman, said there are thousands of Jews “seeking some way of identifying Jewishly” but who have not “found a place within existing structures.” He said he hoped the NJA conference would result in a “new Jewish “national grass room organization that gives them such a place.”
Serotta said one of the NJA “definite goals” was to involve “especially those who feel the politics of the American Jewish community have turned so rightward and inward that they no longer feel comfortable in that community.”
Serotta brought together, of a May 1979 meeting, held at the New York Havurah, some 100 politically active Jewish liberals who shared his views that there was on urgent need for a group open to all politically liberal Jews.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
