With many 75-year-olds, successes achieved over the years never make the news. They are savored instead as quiet triumphs, the job done well its own reward.
That’s not quite the case for Milwaukee’s primary Jewish community relations council, which is celebrating its 75th birthday this year.
Many of its quiet successes were newsworthy. That they never became news items is a testament to the work of council members, officers and executive directors.
“Community relations require behind-the-scenes work,” said Elana Kahn-Oren, the current director. “Your best success is the story you can’t tell because you prevented a problem from happening.”
The council and its many friends will be celebrating that record with an event on Tuesday, June 18, 7 p.m., at the Pfister Hotel.
This organization has had three names over the years. It was founded as the Milwaukee Jewish Council in 1938; became the Milwaukee Jewish Council for Community Relations in 1993; and in 2010 was reorganized and renamed the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation.
An article in the Dec. 23, 1938, issue of The Chronicle quoted Bert Broude, the founding chair, as saying that the MJC was created to be “a clearing house for community problems,” and “a deliberative body formed for the purpose of hearing complaints, evaluating various plans of action to safeguard Jewish rights and then advising the Jewish community as to the policies which it thinks best.”
Broude also stated that the MJC would try to coordinate its activities with the General Jewish Council, a national group established earlier that year. Board members and officers included representatives of the American Jewish Committee, American Jewish Congress, B’nai Brith and the Jewish Labor Committee.
Its first executive director was George Gratz, who was followed by Ben Goldman (appointed 1944) and Sidney H. Sayles (1946). By then, the Jewish War Veterans were also part of the group.
Each group had three delegates elected by the council at large from a slate presented by 15 at-large members. Today, the council consists of 28 congregations and member organizations, and 28 at-large members chosen from the community. (Disclosure: This reporter served as a council board member from 2003-2009.)
Sorrin to Simon
Sayles’ successor, Sol Sorrin, is, to date, the council’s longest-serving executive director, having a 22-year tenure, from 1962 to 1984.
He was a participant in the 1964 White House Conference on Civil Rights, and in Wisconsin he supported laws protecting equal opportunity in employment, housing and public accommodations. He helped school districts create human relations programs and served as a member of numerous community boards and cabinets.
His successor, Judy Mann, who served until 1990, was instrumental in helping start the Wisconsin Jewish Conference. The conference is a state-wide advocacy coalition, representing members in the state legislature and in the U.S. Congress.
Also during her tenure, Mann worked with her eventual successor, then State Sen. Mordecai Lee, to enact a Wisconsin hate crimes law.
As a legislator, Lee had helped spearhead the initial bill. As executive director of the council, he worked with other advocates on opposing a constitutional challenge to the law, which eventually was upheld by the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
Other joint endeavors included working with the U.S. Justice Department when it prosecuted several former Nazi soldiers residing in Wisconsin who had hidden their backgrounds when applying for U.S. citizenship after World War II.
“We were the lead advocate for the justice of the prosecution, because there were all these voices from their churches and friends saying how unfair this was, and we just persistently kept explaining why this was a just process because the Justice Department didn’t do press relations,” Lee said in a recent telephone interview.
Lee said his proudest achievement as executive director was the 1996 Sesquicentennial Celebration of Jews in Milwaukee. He and then-board chair Jim Fromstein obtained funding from the Milwaukee Jewish Federation to mark the 150th anniversary of Wisconsin’s pre-statehood Jewish presence.
“Besides the nachas that would occur internally, we thought it was a fabulous platform for community relations,” Lee said. “We weren’t all immigrants from the mass immigration wave of the early 20th century. We have very deep roots in Milwaukee, so that gave us a platform to send speakers to schools, to have an exhibit at the Milwaukee Public Museum, to have a book that we distributed widely. It was just fantastic. It couldn’t have been better.”
Other successes, he said, included instituting an Arab/Jewish dialogue and advocating for American intervention for the Yugoslavian genocide of more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslims by Serbs.
Initiatives in which the council was involved but not successful, Lee said, included opposing Governor Tommy Thompson’s decision to expand Milwaukee’s School Choice program to religious schools, and supporting the 1993 Milwaukee Public Schools building referendum spearheaded by then-superintendent Howard Fuller. The $366 million referendum was defeated by a 3-1 margin.
A policy decision that has served the council well was made under Lee’s leadership.
“We got the board to adopt a formal policy saying that the council would not take positions about internal Israeli political issues. Instead, our policy was that we supported the government of Israel,” Lee said. “It eliminated a great deal of divisiveness on the council. If people wanted to be active in criticizing Israel, they could, but the council was not the place to do it.”
It was an Israel-connected issue that posed the biggest challenge for Lee’s successor, Paula Simon, who served as executive director from 1988 to 2009.
“[Opposing the] efforts on university campuses to get faculty senates to recommend that the University of Wisconsin System divest from Israel was perhaps the most challenging work that I’ve ever had to do,” Simon said.
The council learned of the effort by someone who knew a faculty member at the University of Platteville, where a 2005 vote on divestment was passed by a one-vote margin.
“We had to work with populations that we didn’t necessarily have ongoing relationships with,” said Simon. That meant reaching out to Jewish faculty members at UW-Whitewater, where a similar vote was scheduled.
The MJCCR worked with Hillel, the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish Federation of Madison, the Wisconsin Jewish Conference and others, she said.
“It was challenging, but it spoke to the collaborative work that Jewish community relations councils are called on to do,” she said. The measure was ultimately defeated at Whitewater, and no other faculty councils took up the issue.
Simon cited the Wisconsin Educators Holocaust Memorial Museum trip and seminar as the high point of her career in community relations. For seven years, ending in 2009, the council took 400 teachers from throughout the state on a day-long trip to Washington, followed by another day-long seminar upon their return.
“It really was the best of community relations,” Simon said. “It was interacting with teachers in places where there were no Jews, where they might never have met somebody Jewish. They were so totally committed to Holocaust education, and they were supported by their principals and school boards.
“It wasn’t dealing with a crisis. It was education, it was relationship-building and so often in the Jewish world you sense that we own the Shoah, and we lose sight of the broad commitment, interest and its universal message, so for me that trip was everything great about community relations.”
Change in structure
Simon, who retired in 2009, took a part-time position in fall of 2012 as a regional director for the Jewish Community Relations Council of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin, Sonoma, Alameda and Contra Costa Counties. The job, she said, allows her to do everything she loved in Milwaukee without the administrative responsibilities.
Moreover, policies established by the Milwaukee council, she said, are benefiting her new JCRC.
“They have been working on a set of guidelines to help constituent members understand what their role is and how the relationship works, and expectations for board and council members, and the work we did in Milwaukee became the model for what they’re going to be using in San Francisco,” she said.
“And for how to decide what positions to take on, the guidelines that Larry Marks had worked on very carefully early in my career — why something was a Jewish issue and why it met our criteria,” Simon continued. “I was really happy to see that San Francisco had basically used our guidelines and adopted them as their own.”
Simon’s departure in 2009 coincided with a major change in structure. The council, which had been an independent organization, became part of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation. Kathy Heilbronner served as interim executive director until July 2010, when Elana Kahn-Oren became the council’s first executive director under the new model.
Kahn-Oren said the change has been positive, largely due to the organization’s steering committee.
“We got to be real partners in building something new,” she said, adding that her understanding of what the position is has and continues to evolve.
“If you asked me two-and-a-half years ago what I did, and then three months later and three months later again, [my answer] would change, but we’re always talking about the same job,” she said.
“There’s intergroup and interfaith work, Israel advocacy and education, social justice work, public policy work and government relations or anti-Semitism-related work,” she continued. “All of those pieces are part of one story and what ties them all together is that to have a friend, you have to be a friend.”
Her first initiative as executive director was “Civility: A Community Conversation.” That its launch coincided with the political turmoil that followed the November 2010 elections was not intentional.
“Superficially you can say it’s about how we speak to each other,” she said, “but in a deeper way it’s about valuing the diversity within our community and is very deeply Jewish. It’s about honoring the holy part in each of us, which is central to our part in community relations.”
Kahn-Oren is also excited about “Hours against Hate,” slated to kick off at the 75th anniversary celebration. (See page one story.)
“The one thing we know about hate is that people who hate Jews often hate Muslims, and often hate LGBT, black, brown, poor people and women,” she said. “So the thing we share is that if we do this together we can understand all the different types of hate as one problem, and we can be partners in standing up to hate. It’s very powerful to talk about anti-Semitism and anti-Jewish sentiment in the larger context of hate.”
The council’s role has evolved in its view of the community it serves. While the founders were concerned with a unified community voice, Kahn-Oren is committed to ensuring that the voice is as inclusive as it can be.
“We have a role in terms of creating a space to bring together all the parts of the Jewish community,” she said. “And that’s very powerful. The council has an important role in seeing the holiness of each person as a valued member of the Jewish community, no matter where they’re at, no matter what their perspective is, no matter where they live, what congregation they belong to or whether they’re on the political left or right.
“We have big aspirations, it’s a big job, and I find that very inspiring.”
Amy Waldman is a Milwaukee-based freelance writer and coordinator of the ACCESS Program for Displaced Homemakers at Milwaukee Area Technical College.
JCRC 75th anniversary fete will be June 18
The Jewish Community Relations Council of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation will celebrate the 75th anniversary of its founding on Tuesday, June 18, 7 p.m., at the Pfister Hotel, 424 E. Wisconsin Ave., Milwaukee.
The event will include champagne, dessert, and the launch of HoursAgainstHate.com. It will feature a conversation with the founders of the Hours Against Hate initiative — Farah Pandith, Special Representative to Muslim Communities for the U.S. Department of State, and Hannah Rosenthal, president and chief executive officer of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation — moderated by James Causey of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Joyce Altman and Ellis Bromberg are event co-chairs. Cost is $75. RSVP by Friday, June 7.
For more information, call 414-390-5777 or visit milwaukeejewish.org.
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