In the weeks leading to last Rosh HaShanah, the Anti-Defamation League, bowing to pressure and a revolt by its New England board, reversed its refusal to recognize the Armenian genocide.
Wary of offending Turkey — a close ally of both Israel and the United States — the ADL had refused to say whether the term “genocide” should apply to the Ottoman Turks’ massacres of Armenians during World War I.
But on Aug. 21, 2007, the group’s national director, Abraham Foxman, said the “consequences” of the killings were “tantamount to genocide.”
The reversal capped a weeks-long standoff that began with a ragtag group of activists in Boston goading one of the most formidable organizations in the Jewish world.
Though the campaign began to lose steam as 5768 progressed, it set a tone that continued throughout much of the Jewish year: upstart activists and new groups challenging the Jewish establishment on a widening range of issues.
• In Washington, a new Jewish organization, J Street, challenged the capital’s pro-Israel alliance led by the hegemonic American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
• A federal immigration raid in Iowa at the country’s largest kosher meatpacking plant spurred left-wing activists and liberal Orthodox rabbinic students into action, and boosted a new Conservative ethical kashrut initiative seeking to supplement the kosher certification industry.
• Holocaust survivors clashed with top Jewish groups over a congressional resolution that would help initiate lawsuits against European insurers accused of defaulting on World War II-era policies.
• And in a presidential election season that has seen both major parties nominate anti-establishment figures, Democratic nominee Barack Obama’s team faced an effort to brand him a Muslim and a terrorist sympathizer — one persisting despite denunciations by Jewish politicos and organizations.
“This is part of what’s going on in our society, in terms of both 24-7 news coverage — that is no less true in terms of Jewish media than in general society — and the atomization of opinion that was always a Jewish trait,” said Jeffrey Solomon, the president of the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies.
“We joke about the community that has two Jews and three synagogues. That was always a private joke. But when you combine it with the growth of news coverage, blogs, etc., there is more attention being given to the various opinions that exist outside of mainstream organizations,” he said.
The J Street band
J Street, a lobbying group and political action committee, was launched in April by some of the biggest names in the dovish pro-Israel community.
The goal, according to the group’s executive director, Jeremy Ben-Ami, is to present an alternative to the pro-Israel giants, particularly AIPAC, in the halls of the U.S. Congress.
In June, the group issued its first congressional endorsements, supporting one Republican and six Democrats. It also urged the presidential candidates to wish Israel a happy 60th birthday by pledging to pursue a two-state solution if elected.
J Street also has challenged the Jewish community’s willingness to partner with evangelical Christian groups supportive of Israel, contending that those groups oppose Israeli concessions, seeing them as violations of God’s will.
In July the group, in partnership with Democracy for America, delivered a 40,000-signature petition to Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) urging him not to address the annual Washington-Israel summit of Christians United for Israel, the Christian Zionist group founded by Texas Pastor John Hagee.
Like the Armenian and Jewish activists who challenged the ADL, J Street plays David to AIPAC’s Goliath. The new group, which has a four-person staff, projected its annual budget at $1.5 million, compared to the roughly $50 million AIPAC spends.
Still, organizers promised to play tough. They are animated by belief that most U.S. lawmakers support more intensive American involvement in the peace process and want more done to support Palestinian moderates, but are afraid of the political consequences of speaking out.
Thunder on the right
Meanwhile, in New York, a grass-roots campaign from the other end of the political spectrum targeted a Barnard College anthropologist, Nadia Abu El-Haj, who was up for tenure.
The campaign was led by a group of mostly Jewish Barnard alumni. It charged that El-Haj produced shoddy scholarship and harbored animosity toward Israel. Her defenders countered that her views are consistent with those of many Israeli archaeologists and were twisted by right-wing critics.
Barnard announced in November that Abu El-Haj was granted tenure.
Early in 2008, e-mails began to circulate claiming that Democratic presidential contender Obama is a Muslim, had attended a madrasa as a child in Indonesia and had been sworn into office on a Koran.
All three claims are false, as news media and Jewish defenders quickly pointed out. Obama’s father was a non-practicing Muslim and the Illinois senator embraced Christianity at Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ, an association that would soon reveal a different set of liabilities.
In January, leaders of several of the largest U.S. Jewish organizations — among them the United Jewish Communities, the American Jewish Committee, the Jewish Council on Public Affairs, and the Reform and Orthodox congregational arms — signed a letter refuting the rumors about Obama. Seven Jewish senators later signed a letter echoing the same theme.
Still, the charges continued to circulate during the primaries and raised doubts about Obama among some Jewish voters.
Eventually, the attack against Obama moved to more conventional ground, with Jewish critics focusing — whether fairly or accurately was debated — on his associates, positions and experience.
But as recently as May, The New York Times reported that Jewish voters in the key swing state of Florida still thought that Obama is Muslim, a member of Chicago’s Palestinian community and was endorsed by al-Qaida.
In primaries in several of the states with the largest Jewish populations, Obama lost to his main Democratic opponent, U.S Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.). On her home turf, New York and New Jersey, and in Pennsylvania, Obama lost the Jewish vote by sizable margins.
But he handily won among Jews in Connecticut, 61 percent to 38 percent, and narrowly in California and Massachusetts despite losing those states overall.
Several polls show Obama stalled at 60 percent of the Jewish vote in his fight against his Republican foe, U.S. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) — a significant drop from the 75 to 80 percent enjoyed by recent Democratic standard-bearers — suggesting that the attacks may be taking a toll.
Kosher kerfuffle
Establishment organizations say they are the victims of smear campaigns as well — the ADL by Armenian activists, AIPAC by its liberal critics and Hagee by those who portray him as a sexist and a homophobe.
That sort of back and forth — with both sides charging they are being unfairly tarred by their adversaries — also characterized perhaps the biggest Jewish news story of the year: the controversy surrounding Agriprocessors, the largest kosher meat producer in the United States.
In May, federal authorities conducted the largest immigration raid in U.S. history at the company’s packing plant in Postville, Iowa, netting 389 illegal workers and prompting a flood of allegations against the company from former employees.
A grand jury is investigating and the Iowa attorney general is considering criminal charges in 57 cases of alleged child labor. No senior managers have yet been charged.
The company’s owner, Brooklyn butcher Aaron Rubashkin, has denied wrongdoing. His defenders allege a witch-hunt by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, abetted by liberal Jews and the news media.
The critics say the company has a history of flouting government regulations and seeks to maximize profits on the backs of immigrant laborers.
Both sides accuse the other of failing to live up to the high-minded ideals they espouse.
As recriminations flew, the episode boosted the Conservative movement’s upstart food certification, Hekhsher Tzedek, which aims to label as kosher food produced in an ethical and environmentally responsible manner.
The brainchild of a Conservative rabbi in Minnesota, Morris Allen, Hekhsher Tzedek released its guidelines in late July. This represents the first attempt by non-Orthodox Jews to influence the kosher food market.
While Allen insists his certification is meant to coexist with existing certifications, established kosher agencies cast wary eyes on his efforts.
“What does somehow trouble me a little is the fact that they are devoting all their efforts to kosher food companies,” said Rabbi Avrom Pollak, the president of Star-K, a kosher certifier that works with more than 1,500 manufacturers. “I think it should be a much broader effort. All the services that we use and buy should also be subject to the same scrutiny.”
As the outcry over Agriprocessors’ conduct grew, a coalition of 25 Orthodox rabbis traveled to Postville to conduct their own inspection. They issued the company a clean bill of health.
But critics were quick to point out that Agriprocessors paid for their trip and they did not meet with former workers who alleged mistreatment. The rabbis spent three hours in the plant.
Though the Orthodox community largely rallied to the company’s defense, an Orthodox social justice group, Uri L’tzedek, broke ranks and called for a boycott of Agriprocessors products.
The boycott was quickly called off — too quickly, some said — after the company hired a compliance officer and took other measures to ensure its workers were treated fairly.
Though dismissed by right-wing Orthodox figures as a fringe group with a tiny following, Uri L’tzedek was thrust into the public eye by the controversy, raising its profile in a way that will likely boost its potency down the road. Some critics charged it had seized on the Postville situation for precisely that reason.
A right to sue
Though most upstart-establishment battles split the community along religious, political or generational lines, one fight transcended all three.
This was over a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives that would give Holocaust survivors the right to sue European insurance companies over World War II-era policies.
The Holocaust Insurance Accountability Act is still making its way through congressional committees.
Samuel Dubbin, the Florida attorney and former Department of Justice official pushing the bill, contends that the right to sue is fundamental and should not be abridged.
He also charges that the official body created to resolve the insurance issue, the International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims, or ICHEIC, was a failure, paying only a fraction of the estimated value of Jewish insurance policies held before the war.
Not surprisingly, the European insurance industry has lobbied to defeat the bill. But Dubbin and his client, the Holocaust Survivors Foundation, also engaged in legislative combat with the largest Jewish groups and the Claims Conference, the principal Jewish organization for Holocaust restitution.
Those groups claim that the flood of potential lawsuits would do little to help survivors and would jeopardize restitution negotiations with European companies and governments.
The fight has grown increasingly acrimonious. An official of the Claims Conference accused Dubbin of unrealistically raising the survivors’ expectations in the hopes of reaping millions in legal fees.
Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Fla.), a backer of the bill, wondered at a congressional hearing in February how Jewish leaders could sleep while preventing survivors from being compensated for defaulted policies.
Advocates for the legislation have said the bill would benefit needy Holocaust survivors, many of whom may find themselves with even less communal support in the coming year if the faltering economy hits the Jewish philanthropic world as hard as some expect.
Economic tzuris
Economic concerns have risen to the forefront of the Jewish agenda as 5768 draws to a close.
After the March collapse of Bear Stearns, a major Wall Street bank and a significant source of Jewish charitable financing, philanthropy professionals worried that a continued slide in stock and real estate markets could force them to cut their allocations significantly.
At the annual gathering of the Jewish Funders Network, held in April in Jerusalem, philanthropists and foundation professionals expressed concern that a philanthropic recession was coming.
“People are beginning to be nervous, especially in places where the economy is so based on banking and real estate,” Richard Marker, an independent philanthropy adviser and a professor of philanthropy at New York University, told JTA then.
“And I don’t think that the Jewish community is going to be exempt,” Marker continued. “There is going to be tremendous pressure on both the philanthropists and the nonprofit world.”
At the same time, the dollar’s decline hit Jewish groups operating overseas as well as Israeli nonprofits.
In July, for example, the Reform movement announced that because of the faltering dollar, its Israel center was facing a major budget shortfall. The movement said it needed $500,000 to “save” its Israel operation, which was facing a decline of more than 30 percent in its budget.
“We’re going to find out who the strong and the weak were. It’s an almost Darwinian survival of the fittest,” said Jonathan Sarna, a professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University. “We’ll only find out which Jewish institutions are severely undercapitalized if the recession deepens.”
Though the faltering economy shadows the waning days of 5768, the year had some celebrations. One in particular provided a reminder that grassroots challenges to authority have yielded some of U.S. Jewry’s greatest moments.
In November, the community marked the 20th anniversary of the struggle for Soviet Jewry, a campaign that mobilized thousands of Jews across the country on a scale unequaled before or since.
What began as a student-led effort in the 1960s blossomed into a worldwide movement, leading to the largest Jewish exodus in history and, some say, playing a role in the ultimate fall of the Soviet Union.
According to Henry Feingold, the author of a recently published book on the struggle: “It was probably American Jewry’s finest hour.”
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