Calling characterizations of the American Jewish community as a single-issue community a “misperception,” Michael Pelavin, chairperson of the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council (NJCRAC), charged that members of Congress “doubt whether Jewish community relations agencies are prepared to press vigorously on the other gut issues of concern to the Jewish community.”
Addressing a session of the NJCRAC plenum at the Bonaventure Hotel, attended by more than 500 delegates, Pelavin faulted political action committees and other single-issue organizations for contributing to the misconception, but also asserted that the Jewish community relations field leadership has not forcefully advocated their full agenda.
“The American Jewish community relations field does not limit itself to a single issue,” he said. “The issue is not whether we advocate a single-issue agenda; the issue is the forcefulness of our advocacy of that total agenda.”
Pelavin asserted that “No one would deny, or even wish to deny, the primacy of Israel for the Jewish community relations field and the American Jewish community.” Yet, so far as Congress, the White House, and the media are concerned, “American Jewry has only one button — and that is Israel,” he declared.
When the “litmus test” for Jewish support is perceived by political candidates as restricted to Israel, Pelavin said, “it significantly undermines our effectiveness in acting on the other gut issues of the Jewish community.”
ROLE OF THE PACS
He stated that PACs “enhance the influence and leverage of the Jewish community if used properly.” Recognizing that “PACs must, by their very nature, concentrate on those core issues that bring together the largest number of contributors in a common cause,” Pelavin criticized PACs for limiting themselves solely to the issue of Israel, while ignoring the other gut issues of the Jewish community.
“I do not believe that the overwhelming majority of the Jewish community would condone PACs giving support to any member of Congress who showed the slightest taint of anti-Semitism, no matter how vigorously that Senator or Congressman supported Israel,” he said.
“But I also suggest that the great majority of the Jewish community would question whether it is in the best interests of the Jewish community for PACs to support those Senators or Congressmen who would undermine the separation of church and state or, more broadly, the bill of rights, notwithstanding their position on Israel.”
He contended that, at a minimum, PACs also should respond to threats to Soviet Jewry, threats of anti-Semitism, threats to the separation of church and state, and threats to the Bill of Rights.
Pelavin called upon Jewish community relations leaders “to play a much more active role in educating the leaders of the 70 or more Jewish PACs” to evaluate a candidate’s stance regarding these issues, in addition to Israel, “in determining whom they should support.”
Pelavin also urged Plenum delegates to encourage “the active involvement of Jews as individuals in the mainstream of American life.” By doing so, he said, “the Jewish community also will be responsive to the total agenda of American society.”
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.
