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Wisconsin Jewish Conference marks 20 years of achievements

By Leon Cohen
of The Chronicle staff

September 7th, 2007

When the Wisconsin Jewish Conference began in 1987, the organizers told then-legislative consultant Michael H. Blumenfeld that it was going to be a one-year experiment.

“We’ll see how it goes,” he remembers someone saying at the time.

It appears to have been an experiment that worked. The organization, of which Blumenfeld became the director in the 1990s, has endured for 20 years, has become a permanent and valued part of the statewide Jewish communal scene and a recognized force in the state’s politics.

“It has helped make sure that throughout the state, municipal and state authorities have greater understanding and appreciation and even respect for Jewish community needs and how governmental decisions impact the Jewish community,” said Richard H. Meyer, executive vice president of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation.

Moreover, the Conference has “helped bring together under one umbrella smaller Wisconsin Jewish communities that don’t have the population to take care of needs on their own,” Meyer said.

Two original aims

As The Chronicle reported in its April 6, 1990, article about the organization, the inspiration for creation of the conference came from Robert Aronson, then executive vice president of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation, and Judy Mann, then executive director of the Milwaukee Jewish Council for Community Relations.

Blumenfeld said in a recent telephone interview the founders had two aims in mind for the organization:

• They wanted it to be “a statewide organization that would serve as a resource for the Jewish communities, especially the smaller communities, and help create linkages between [them].”

• They also wanted to create “a watchdog” on the state government that would be “watching and protecting the community from things that might happen on the state level,” Blumenfeld said.

Originally, the emphasis was not supposed to be on proposing and lobbying for legislation for the state, Blumenfeld said. But “ironically, within the first year, we were involved in drafting, introducing and passing major legislation,” he said.

That legislation made history for both the state and the entire nation. It was the first version of Wisconsin’s Hate Crimes Law, which then Gov. Tommy Thompson signed in April 1988.

Moreover, though similar laws were passed in other states throughout the country, Wisconsin’s became subject of a challenge that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which decided in 1993 (Wisconsin v. Mitchell) that the law was constitutional.

But the enactment of the law also “really helped” establish the Conference’s credibility, said Blumenfeld. “We started with a bang,” he said, and “that led to a lot of other proposals.”

Mordecai Lee, who was a state senator at the time of the Conference’s debut, agreed. “It turns out that the Hate Crimes Law was the perfect debut for the Wisconsin Jewish Conference,” said Lee in a recent telephone interview.

He later served as executive director of the Milwaukee Jewish Council (1990-97) and continued working with the Conference in that capacity.

Lee, who is now professor of governmental affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s School of Continuing Education, said that the Conference has since been very effective in “educating the legislature that there were Jews across the state, not just in Milwaukee.”

The Conference today counts as its members 16 Wisconsin Jewish communities, all listed on its letterhead: Antigo, Appleton, Beloit, Green Bay, Janesville, Kenosha, Madison, Manitowoc, Marshfield, Milwaukee, Oshkosh, Racine, Sheboygan, Stevens Point, Waukesha and Wausau.

“State legislators from up-state may have a prejudice about Milwaukee,” said Lee. “Then along comes this guy, who says to them, ‘I don’t live in Milwaukee; I live in Madison, and I represent all these cities.’”

Blumenfeld can point out to legislators that “there’s a synagogue ten miles away” from their home base in their districts, said Lee. “Those kinds of local links are like gold in legislative currency.”

Coalition partner

The Hate Crimes Law also established the Conference as a valuable coalition partner. The effort to pass the law “brought together not just other faith groups,” but anti-racism, gay and disability rights organizations as well.

Since then, “We’ve done so much coalition work over the years, which I’m really proud of,” said Blumenfeld.

One of these coalition partners throughout the past 20 years has been the Wisconsin Catholic Conference, which has existed since 1969. John Huebscher has been this organization’s executive director for 15 years, and knew and worked with Blumenfeld for some 10 years before that.

Huebscher said it doesn’t matter much that Wisconsin’s Jewish community is so small — about 28,000 people, or about 0.5 percent of Wisconsin’s total population of 5.4 million (according to the 2001 “American Jewish Year Book”) — compared to the 1.6 million Catholics in the state.

“You don’t need to be large to be great,” said Huebscher. “The Jewish tradition is a great tradition. It has engaged society for a long time and it does reflect seriously upon our obligations to each other as people.

“Those questions are important in any public policy debate. When the world’s great religions share those reflections with the larger community, they are performing a public service.”

“I also think it’s important that the Jewish Conference exists because when public policies do intersect on matters affecting religion, it’s very important that all the religious communities are heard,” he said.

Huebscher said he has found it “very rewarding” to work with Blumenfeld and the coalition. “Michael clearly articulates the Jewish Conference’s positions and why they were reached,” he said. “He’s always respectful.”

“There are issues where we are on different sides,” Huebscher said. “When those occur, we disagree respectfully and appreciate the reasons for our respective position. It’s always a civil disagreement that has never prevented us from working well together on issues on which we do agree.”

As one illustration of the importance of coalition work, Blumenfeld cited how Wisconsin’s welfare reform in 1996 cost immigrants and refugees, including Jewish ones, their eligibility for federally funded food stamps.

The Jewish Conference inspired formation of the Wisconsin Immigrant and Refugee Coalition of “several dozen organizations that successfully pushed state legislation that funded food stamps for refugees and immigrants” by the end of the 1990s, Blumenfeld said.

The Conference receives about 75 percent of its budget from the Milwaukee Jewish Federation, about 15 percent from the Madison Jewish Community Council and most of the remainder from the other member communities.

Its total budget was about $27,100 in 1990. For fiscal year 2007-08, the MJF allocated $37,500 to the Conference.

In looking to the future, Blumenfeld said that while such issues as church-state separation, civil rights and community security will continue to be important issues for the Conference, state funding matters have been increasing in importance “for a while.”

Such issues as transportation, long-term care and housing “will be growing concerns” as the proportion of elderly people in the Jewish community grows, he said. “The Jewish Conference can be helpful in protecting and securing funding for our agencies” that deal with these matters, he said.

He also said that the Conference “continues to be important” in being “the central address for the state-wide Jewish community, serving as a resource especially for smaller communities” and as a means to “create communication and linkages between the different communities.”

Blumenfeld himself has received recognition for his work. In 2001, the then new Association of Jewish Community State Government Affairs Directors, of which he was then vice president, gave him its first Distinguished Service Award.

He also received recognition this past March at the Jewish Community Legislative Day in Madison for his 20 years of service to the organization.

“If anybody deserves credit for the success of the organization, it is Michael,” said Lee. “He’s very low key and a good listener. He absorbs information before reacting. That’s a wonderfully effective way to represent a point of view that seeks to be associated with a larger public interest.”