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Jewish Movers and Shakers
[From Instauration May 1998]
A new book has just crossed my desk that has given me a fuller
understanding of the
role of Jews in pre- and post-WWII America. Titled Jews Against
Prejudice:
American Jews and the Fight for Civil Liberties, it is written by
Chosenite Stuart
Svonkin, a history professor at Columbia University and the New School for
Social
Research.
The book centers around the successful efforts of three major Jewish
organizations to
eliminate all forms of discrimination and prejudice from the American
social order.
The trio is the American Jewish Committee (AJC), the Anti-Defamation League
of
B'nai B'rith (ADL), and the American Jewish Congress (AJC).
As Svonkin points out:
While the various intergroup field included
representatives of various racial, religious and ethnic communities, Jewish
organizations played the leading role in defining the movement's tactics
and
objectives.
The history of the Jews has been an unremitting effort to establish
themselves as a
separate entity. They then became more conspicuous as they prospered and
the
genetic xenophobia (fear and hatred of those who are different) of the host
population
manifested itself, leading to their expulsion or killing. This process has
happened
countless times through the ages in the countries and towns of Europe and
the Near
East.
Jewish leaders in the U.S., particularly in light of a reemergence of a
strong anti-
Jewish bias in threatening guises such as militant anti-Communists,
anti-Zionists and
a radical-right movement, were alarmed and determined not to let the
age-old
patterns of Europe repeat themselves in America. Professor Svonkin writes:
The primary objective of the Jewish intergroup relation agencies after 1945
was too
prevent such an occurrence -- in effect, to prevent the emergence of an
anti-Semitic
reactionary mass movement in the United States.
Jewish leaders had reached the conclusion that "the elimination of
anti-Semitism and
the preservation of a vibrant Jewish culture in the U.S. depended upon the
expansion
of civil rights to all Americans."
The author devotes two chapters, "Propaganda Against Prejudice" and
"Teaching
Tolerance," to the efforts of the AJC and the ADL to fight prejudice and
anti-Semitism.
They launched a multimillion-dollar campaign of ads, radio programs and a
number
of movies, such as Crossfire, Gentlemen's Agreement, Home
of the
Brave and The Jackie Robinson Story. The biggest effort was
directed
towards schools, with materials and programs made available on a large
scale. By
the early 1960s the ADL's Benjamin Epstein estimated, "one out of every
three
teachers in the U.S. has at some time received our materials."
However, it was through the courts, Congress and state legislatures that
vast social
changes were put in place. Other intergroup organizations such as the
NAACP, the
ACLU and some labor unions pushed for civil rights, but it was the American
Jewish
Congress and its Commission on Law and Social Action (CLSA) that led the
way to
enact the U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
These acts
prohibited discrimination in employment, education, certain public
accommodations
and voting. Duane Lockard, a leading social scientist, claimed, "Jewish
religious and
social organizations deserve much credit for the initiation of hundreds of
civil rights
campaigns."
The Jewish intergroup relations leaders still had a major challenge to meet
and
overcome in the '40s and '50s. It was the perception of many Americans that
Jews
and communism were synonymous. Many new immigrants from Eastern Europe were
Communists and coalesced in such organizations as the Jewish Peoples
Fraternal
Order (JPFO), described by Svonkin as, "the main vehicle of Communist
influence in
Jewish life." Eventually, Jewiswh anti-Communist leaders such as Rabbi S.
Andhil
Fineburg were successful in purging communism and its followers from most
Jewish
groups.
According to Svonkin, Jewish leaders nwo are worried that intermarriage and
Jewish
indifference to Jewishness may bring about changes that pogroms and
expulsion
failed to accomplish. He writes,
intergroup relations leaders were also
confronting the
problem of assimilation, a new and more immediate challenge to Jewish
survival.
Jewish leaders have been exhorting American Jews to have more children and
reaffirm their ethnicity in order to ensure the continuation of a Jewish
culture here.
What the book proves is that a small band of competent, dedicated people,
superbly
organized and with unlimited finances, can drastically change the social
framework of
any country, regardless of size.
Professor Svonkin has produced an excellent book on the Jewish input in
American
history. Well written, extensively researched (110 pages of notes), I
recommend it
highly.
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More here on Jews Against Prejudice.
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