JCRC: Jewish Community Relations Council

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The 1960s: History of the JCRC

December 1960 - JCRC deliberates on the issue of religious songs in public schools, ultimately issuing a consensus position statement objecting to the use of religious songs in a religious, rather than artistic context. "There can be no absolutist and automatic objection to every use of certain words, such as 'Jesus,' in public school songbooks...[or to] every mention of religious sentiment...such words and such sentiments could conceivably be unobjectionable in certain historical and artistic frameworks...therefore the crucial question is not what a song says, but for what purpose it is used, and whether it is legitimate for that purpose." JCRC meets with school superintendents and principals throughout the Bay Area, "calling upon them to respect the sensitivities of children of non-Christian faith and to avoid demonstrations [that] have a distinctly Christological and religious meaning."
January 1960 - A rash of anti-Semitic incidents locally and nationally spur a JCRC initiative to educate the Jewish and broader communities about the importance of fighting for democracy. Earl Raab tells the press that the recent spate of San Francisco swastika graffiti is not a matter of latent anti-Semitism in the offenders, but a "demonstration of the moral vacuum in which these boys have been suspended, and a small reminder of how easily anti-Semitism can be generated when there is such a vacuum, on any condition of social sickness...the only remedy is an ever stronger democratic climate and an ever more strongly organized democratic community which will naturally resist the temptations of bigotry under stress." JCRC organizes 75 local radio and television programs, conducts presentations before 100 different community groups, and disseminates thousands of pieces of literature in an education campaign against anti-Semitism and in support of a united, diverse, democratic America.
1961 - JCRC begins to maintain a Jewish Community Calendar of events.
May 1962 - After a United Nations resolution censuring Israel alone for recent Syrian-Israeli border clashes, JCRC issues a strongly worded statement to members of the California Congressional delegation, to the chairmen of the Senate and House Foreign Relations Committees, and to the U.S. State Department urging the United States to actively encourage the United Nations to bring about peace negotiations between Israel and the Arab nations.
July 1962 - Local issues related to the separation of church and state in the public schools motivate JCRC to adopt a consensus policy on the First Amendment: JCRC looks "with deep concern on any attempt to tinker with the constitutional formula under which religious liberty has flourished in America as it has nowhere else in the world." JCRC opposes "any attempt to alter the Bill of Rights, which for 175 years has guaranteed the rights and freedoms of all Americans." The statement cautions against efforts to blur the separation of church and state because "in heterogeneous American [this] could only result in destructive religious wrangling and divisiveness throughout the country."
May 1963 - In response to events of racial injustice unfolding in Birmingham, Alabama, the JCRC passes a consensus statement calling upon the United States government to "buttress racial justice and the maintenance of law and order in Birmingham or wherever they may break down," and upon Jews, "who have a triple stake in this problem and its consequences: primarily because [they are] American, and because of [their] religious heritage, but also because of [their] personal security and the security of [their] religious institutions that are inevitably threatened by any breakdown of democratic law and order" to insist on human equality. The statement cautions San Franciscans against inter-racial problems by "treating every person as a human being, on his own individual merits," and states "this problem is manifested as a wide-spread refusal to rent or sell housing to otherwise qualified non-whites; and a continuing reluctance to employ non-whites on a level for which they are qualified. The effect is to cancel them out as individuals and human beings. The Jewish community must continue to bend its efforts to the reduction of this problem at home, at the same time that it supports extension of human rights everywhere." JCRC organizes civil rights seminars, educating youth about the civil rights struggle and instructing them to participate.
Fall 1963 - Reports of dangerously increasing anti-Semitism in Russia reach American Jewish communities. JCRC works in consultation with national Jewish leaders to formulate an "effective course of action that will not subject Russia's 3,000,000 Jews to reprisals." JCRC educates the Bay Area about the plight of Russian Jews, and mobilizes citizens to educate elected officials about the situation. JCRC helps create a local Interfaith Committee to aid Soviet Jews subjected to religious and economic government-sponsored oppression.
January 1964 - JCRC adopts a policy on government aid to parochial schools, stating that while parents have the right to send their "children to schools having a sectarian religious focus, the exercise of this undeniable right imposes a special financial burden upon them. To establish such religious school dependence on government funds, through grants or loans, would not only breech constitutional principle, but would lead to a wholesale fragmentation of American culture along religious lines. Government would inevitably be 'in the business' of religion - and both government and religion could only suffer in the process."
August 1964 - JCRC co-hosts with the Catholic and Protestant communities a conference that leads to the creation of the interfaith Conference on Religion and Race. Rita Semel, who had worked as Associate Editor for the Jewish Community Bulletin under Eugene Block's direction, owns and operates a public relations office, through which she is contracted to work for JCRC, and assigned to run the Conference on Religion and Race. Rita mobilizes JCRC constituent organizations and Conference constituents in rallying against Proposition 14, a legislative initiative that would repeal the significant Rumford Fair Housing Law, and would "do more than wipe the fair housing law off the books. It would freeze into the state constitution a prohibition against any state or local public body from ever doing anything about the problem of housing discrimination." JCRC is reminded that Jewish traditions "teach us that Judaism stands unalterably for the rights of the individual, the human being, above all else...[and that] the rights of all men to freedom in their way of life must be defended and upheld," and advocates against the Proposition.
August 1964 - Mayor John Shelley works with Earl Raab to establish the interim Human Rights Committee of San Francisco. It becomes a permanent Human Rights Commission, and Earl is appointed Vice Chairman. The Mayor appoints 14 other Commissioners, including two JCRC members: Robert Lauter, Jewish businessman and civic leader, and Howard Nemerovski, attorney and member of the Board of American Jewish Congress. The Commission's first issue is a hotly contested one: mediating between the hotel association, civil rights groups, and labor unions in fair employment practice matters.
August 1964 - Civil rights workers Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Michael Schwerner, ages 20, 21, and 24, respectively, are murdered in Mississippi. JCRC-based ecumenical San Francisco Conference on Religion and Race organizes memorial services at Temple Emanu-El, St. Boniface Church, and Grace Cathedral. Reverends Eugene Boyle and Carl Howie, and Rabbi Irving Hausman officiate. The Conference urges citizens to "rededicate themselves to the principles of justice and equality for which the trio gave their lives" and to donate to a Mississippi church rebuilding effort.
March 1965 - JCRC helps organize an inter-religious fundraising campaign to send rabbis to do emergency relief work in Selma, Alabama, and to lobby for voting rights in Washington. The effort is coordinated under the auspices of the Glide Foundation in coordination with JCRC leaders Reynold Colvin, Chair, and Edward Bransten, Vice Chair, as well as Rabbis Irving Hausman and Sanford Rosen. Rabbi Sidney Akselrad of Temple Beth Am in the Los Altos Hills is the first of the Bay Area rabbinical group to return home, and reports on the experience and effective advocacy effort for the voting rights bill.
August 1965 - JCRC adopts a consensus policy on school integration, which affirms that "the Jewish community has always had a special concern for the stability and excellence of the public school system; it has also always had a special concern for the equality of the educational opportunity which that school system affords." The position states that because of the "pervasive racial imbalance which exists" in the San Francisco school system, "the Council feels strongly that affirmative action must be taken promptly by the Board of Education to integrate the schools by any means practicable, within the context of high educational standards."
January 1966 - JCRC calls upon Jews to join a "tri-faith thrust," led by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese, the Protestant community, and JCRC to patronize businesses that hire minority group workers. Reynold Colvin, JCRC Chair and President of the San Francisco Board of Education, states the objective is to "open up new job opportunities for the minority work force in this area, in the interests of social justice and community peace...[and to] dramatically demonstrate concern for a segment of the population which is heavily convinced that nobody cares."
October 1966 - San Francisco Mayor John Shelley and the Chamber of Commerce launch a citywide campaign to create new jobs, particularly for minority citizens. San Francisco Jewish leader Melvin Swig, JCRC's Economic Opportunities Committee Chair, works with Earl Raab to contact Jewish employers and request they create jobs. Melvin Swig says, "We must mobilize our forces to contact every possible employer [and ask] for help in employment of those now jobless. The most we can do is not enough. And those we contact must be asked to reach others. This must be a chain effort with immediate result."
November 1966 - A Nazi rally in San Francisco is the catalyst for JCRC-organized town hall meetings to discuss community participation in combating extremism and Nazi organizing in the Bay Area.
January 1967 - Earl Raab travels with colleagues from other JCRCs to Israel. During a visit to Beit Katzir on the Israeli-Syrian border with a senior Israeli officer of the Armistice Commission, Syrian tanks and machine guns open fire into Israel. Earl and his colleagues narrowly escape the Syrian gunfire.
Spring & Fall 1967 - JCRC and the Board of Rabbis of Northern CA (BOR) co-host a community rally at Temple Emanu-El to expose the persecution of Russian Jewry. Earl Raab, recently returned from Russia, presents "Observations From Behind the Iron Curtain." Petitions for an end to Jewish oppression are circulated, and sent to the State Department and Russian Embassy. In the fall, JCRC and BOR host a mass meeting at Union Square, where Father Eugene Boyle, Chair of the Commission on Social Justice of the Archdiocese, says, "the present plight of Soviet Jewry is one of the worst persecutions going on in our modern world. There is consistent effort to eliminate rabbinic study altogether, synagogues are being closed, both Yiddish and Hebrew languages are excluded, immigration has been cut off, and the exploiting of the mid-East crisis is fanning widespread, overt anti-Semitism." Film star Theodore Bikel and Mayor Joseph Alioto also address the rally.
May 1967 - The Jewish community holds its first annual Israel Independence Day Celebration.
June 1967 - Israel is attacked in the "Six Day War." The night after the war begins, JCRC gathers rabbis and community leaders who decide to establish a JCRC Middle East committee, and that JCRC will contribute to the volunteer-run local American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), organized by Naomi Lauter, by formally staffing a Northern California chapter. Rita Semel is contracted through her public relations office to staff the chapter and fundraise for it. Working with Robert Lauter, Co-Chairman of the Bay Area AIPAC, Rita organizes a major Community Meeting of Concern for Peace in the Middle East, where Congressman Philip Burton, Mayor John Shelley, Reverend Eugene Boyle from the Archdiocese, and Dean Julian Bartlett from the Episcopal Diocese address an interfaith crowd of more than 2,000 and call on the United States to defend Israel from acts of aggression and to preserve Middle East peace.
1967 - JCRC begins to publish Middle East Backgrounders that focus on Camp David, Saudi arms sales, Israel's invasion of Lebanon, Iraqi nuclear plants, and other salient topics. The backgrounders become the national model for a compendium of articles about the Middle East.
Spring 1968 - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is assassinated. JCRC works with clergy and faith leaders from diverse backgrounds to host an Interfaith Memorial Service of Penance at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, immediately preceding Easter and Passover, where there is a call for "a rebirth of common brotherhood and an end [to] our inhumanity toward one another."
October 1968 - Vice President Hubert Humphrey, Senator Edward Muskie, Governor Ronald Reagan, and other public officials send telegrams of support and solidarity to the Bay Area, where the Bay Area Council on Soviet Jewry and the JCRC co-host a rally in Stern Grove to expose oppression against Jews in the Soviet Union. Buses bring 3,000 community members from points as far as Sacramento, Stockton, and Santa Cruz to participate. Cantors Martin Feldman of Sherith Israel and Joseph Portnoy of Emanu-El sing, Harold Light, Founder and Director of the Bay Area Council for Soviet Jewry (BACSJ), and Daniel Goldberg, JCRC Chair, speak along with Father Eugene Boyle. John Rothmann, then a Whittier College student who has just recently returned from the Soviet Union, gives an eyewitness account of anti-Semitism occurring there.
January 1969 - JCRC holds a peaceful demonstration at the French Consulate to protest President De Gaulle's embargo of planes and materials to Israel. Daniel Goldberg, JCRC Chair, and Roland Elefant, East Bay JCRC Chair deliver a petition expressing concern that the embargo is "designed to further fan the flames of war in the Middle East and to bring the Soviet-backed threat of genocide closer to the Jews of Israel." It says, "It is imperative for the peace and sanity of the world that the great nation of France immediately reverse the conscienceless and reckless behavior ...and again take its stand firmly for the peaceful negotiation of differences against the continuation of terrorism, and against the threat of genocide in the Middle East."
October 1969 - In concert with 52 other communities nationwide, JCRC and the BACSJ organize a second annual interfaith "Speak Out for Soviet Jewry" rally at Sigmund Stern Grove in San Francisco, which brings several thousand participants. JCRC Chair Daniel Goldberg and BACSJ Director Harold Light speak, and Senator Milton Marks presents a California State resolution condemning the treatment of Russian Jews.