American Jewish Congress
The American Jewish Congress (AJCongress) is an association of American Jews organized to defend Jewish interests at home and abroad through public policy advocacy, using diplomacy, legislation, and the courts.[1]
Not to be confused with American Jewish Committee or The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.Founded
1918
13-1679610 (EIN)
American Jews organized to defend Jewish interests at home and abroad through public policy advocacy - using diplomacy, legislation, and the courts.
Daniel Rosen
Dr. Munr Kazmir
Ben Chouake
The First Amendment[edit]
The AJ Congress has been involved in hundreds of civil rights and religious freedoms cases before local and federal courts and the United States Supreme Court. Brown v. Board of Education[31] gave the AJCongress its public entrée into the field of Constitutional defense agencies.
The group advocates for removing religious symbols from public life, and thus filed a brief against allowing public displays of the menorah during Hanukkah in County of Allegheny v. ACLU.
Women's issues[edit]
The AJC founded its Women's Division in 1933. It operated for approximately fifty years before it was discontinued as a separate section; the organization subsequently continued its support for women's rights and feminist perspectives under the auspices of the Commission for Women's Equality (CWE), which was established in 1984.[32]
The CWE has turned its attention to the ethical, legal, and medical issues arising from research revealing that Ashkenazi Jewish women have higher-than-average frequencies of gene mutations predisposing them to breast and ovarian cancer.
In 1988, AJCongress hosted "The First International Jewish Feminist Conference: The Empowerment of Women" in Israel to address women's rights. More than 600 Jewish women from around the world attended, including former Congresswoman Bella Abzug and Betty Friedan. Some of the attendees visited the Kotel (Western Wall), Torah in hand and found that they were not allowed to pray in their fashion because of Orthodox restrictions on women wearing religious items, singing or reading Torah. A movement began, now known around the world as Women of the Wall, headed by Anat Hoffman. Polls show that in Israel "64 percent of the secular public, 53 percent of the traditional non-religious public, and 26 percent of the traditional-religious public support the group, Women of the Wall, and their quest to pray at the Kotel in their fashion. But their cause was unanimously rejected by the poll's ultra-Orthodox respondents", according to The Algemeiner.[33]
The CWE most recently held a major women's conference in Tel Aviv, Israel, in May 2006, bringing notable women of achievement like Anne F. Lewis; Lynn Sherr, anchor for ABC's 20/20; Irshad Manji, author of The Trouble with Islam; Bettina Plevan, partner at Proskauer Rose and former head of the New York City Bar Association; and others to a weeklong discussion on women's accomplishment and success.[34][35] Carole E. Handler was the CWE's most recent chair.
Controversies[edit]
Anti-Communism[edit]
Fear of being accused of Communism led the AJCongress to dissociate themselves from Jewish Communists and leftists during the Second Red Scare. The major Jewish organizations at the time advocated their expulsion from the Jewish community, collaborated with security agencies, supported the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, and discouraged other Jewish organizations from supporting the Rosenberg Committee.[36] In 1953, the National Community Relations Advisory Council, which included the AJCongress, released a statement criticizing the Rosenberg Committee for allegedly causing public panic over antisemitism within the Jewish community.[37] Stuart Svonkin, author of Jews Against Prejudice, argued that the involvement of the AJCongress and other Jewish groups with McCarthyism undermined these groups' otherwise support for civil liberties. However, the AJCongress cooperated with McCarthyism to a lesser extent than the AJC and the ADL.[38]
During the 1940s, the AJCongress strongly urged the Jewish establishment to distance itself from Jewish People's Fraternal Order and the American Jewish Labor Council. The AJCongress voted to expel both groups on June 7, 1949.[39][40][41][42]
Israel Singer[edit]
In the fall of 2007, the AJCongress announced that it had retained the services of Rabbi Israel Singer,[43] the former secretary-general of the World Jewish Congress – who left the agency after claims of financial irregularities were levied following an investigation by New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer[44] and followed up by accusations from then-WJC President Edgar Bronfman[45] about alleged theft.
Ms. magazine[edit]
On January 10, 2008, the AJCongress released an official statement[46] critical of Ms. magazine's refusal to accept a full-page advertisement[47] honoring three prominent Israeli women: Dorit Beinisch (then-president of the Supreme Court of Israel), Tzipi Livni (then-minister of Foreign Affairs of Israel), and Dalia Itzik (then-speaker of the Knesset). The AJCongress press release states: "'What other conclusion can we reach,' asked Richard Gordon, President of AJCongress, 'except that the publishers − and if the publishers are right, a significant number of Ms. Magazine readers − are so hostile to Israel that they do not even want to see an ad that says something positive about Israel?' ... 'Clearly Ms. has changed a great deal from the days when AJCongress members and leaders of the AJCongress' Commission for Women's Equality − including Betty Friedan, Bella Abzug and Ms. co-founder Letty Pogrebin − were at the forefront of the Women's Movement that led to the creation of Ms. Magazine.'"[46]
Katherine Spillar, executive editor of Ms. magazine, responded to the AJCongress on Ms. magazine's website, denying an anti-Israel bias, stating that: "Ms. Magazine has been criticized for not running an ad submitted by the American Jewish Congress (AJCongress) featuring the photographs of three prominent Israeli women leaders with the statement 'This is Israel.'" She argued that the proposed advertisement was inconsistent with the magazine's policy to accept only "mission-driven advertisements from primarily non-profit, non-partisan organizations", suggesting that the advertisement could have been perceived "as favoring certain political parties within Israel over other parties, but also with its slogan 'This is Israel,' the ad implied that women in Israel hold equal positions of power with men." Spillar stated that the magazine had "covered the Israeli feminist movement and women leaders in Israel ... eleven times" in the last four years.
Religion and the Public Schools: A Summary of the Law[edit]
The AJCongress, which had already been publishing Religion and the Public Schools: A Summary of the Law with the name of attorney Marc D. Stern on the cover,[48] adapted it to a "looseleaf form and expanding its distribution" in 1993. Stern served as assistant executive director of AJCongress[49][50][51] and subsequently became general counsel of the AJC[52]
