JCRC: Jewish Community Relations Council

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The 1970s: History of the JCRC

February 1970 - The French sale of over 100 Mirage planes to Libya, and the French President's impending visit to the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in Palo Alto prompt JCRC to coordinate a mass rally in Union Square to express concern about French policy in the Middle East. Lawrence Goldberg, JCRC Chair, says the Jewish community "feels special gratitude for the French people who played such an heroic role in the rescue and succor of Jews during and following World War II. The demonstration is in the American - and French - tradition of expressing opposition to a government policy which we cannot help but feel will only aggravate the already tense situation in the Middle East." JCRC gathers petition signatures urging the French President to "listen to the majority of your own French people. Join the United States in supporting peace and democracy in the Middle East. Don't join the Soviet Union in supplying arms to the Arab nations. Don't increase the arms imbalance and the chances for all-out war in the Middle East." Clergy and African-American leaders join on the dais to speak, along with Douglas Kahn, who is billed as President of the National Federation of Temple Youth and a sophomore at the University of California at Berkeley.
August 1970 - Seven Jewish Community Federations in California, under the leadership of their community relations arms, join during the California legislative session to form an Inter-Community Committee on legislative issues of Jewish community interest. The committee leverages its voices through a coalitional advocacy effort. Among the participants are the San Francisco, Alameda & Contra Costa County, and Sacramento Jewish communities. The effort is so successful that a year later, under the leadership of Reynold Colvin and Robert Weil, the Jewish Inter-Community Committee on Public Affairs of California holds its first statewide conference. It provides testimony before legislative committees, tracks pertinent legislation, and works in coalition with other religious and ethnic groups to advocate for common causes. This Committee gives birth to the California Jewish Public Affairs Committee.
September 1972 - JCRC orchestrates an action alert and letter writing campaign when the Soviet government begins to demand ransom money for Jews it allows to emigrate to Israel, ranging from $5,000-$25,000, depending on the level of education achieved by the would-be émigrés. JCRC engages elected officials in objecting to the granting of "most favored nation" status to the Soviet Union unless it repeals its policy of bondage and ransom.
February 1973 - The baseless charges and imprisonment, religious persecution, and murder of Iraqi Jews by the Iraqi government prompts JCRC to launch a major letter-writing and advocacy campaign. Only 400 Iraqi Jews remain in the country, and JCRC works to make the plight of these individuals public.
June 1973 - Douglas Kahn, then active with BACSJ as a senior at UC Berkeley, recommends organizing a massive demonstration during the scheduled visit of Leonid Brezhnev to the United States. BACSJ Director Harold Light, Rabbi Jacob Traub, and community leader Ephraim Margolin chair the "Welcome to Brezhnev Committee," and rally, coordinated by JCRC, BACSJ, East Bay and Sacramento JCRCs, BOR, Amnesty International, and others. Community rabbis and cantors lead a procession of several thousand people from the San Francisco Jewish Community Center to the Russian Consulate, where Mikhail Shepshelovich, a young Soviet Jew recently released from the Potma Soviet Labor Camp addresses the crowd. Richard Kaplan, JCRC Chair, and the organizing committee place an advertisement in the San Francisco Chronicle, which confronts Brezhnev: "In the name of justice and of humanity, we appeal to you to immediately release those hundreds of Jews now in prison and those hundreds of others who have been denied a means of earning a livelihood. Permit them the emigration they so fervently desire and for which they are now being so unjustly punished and humiliated."
October 1973 - Israel is attacked in the "Yom Kippur War" by Syria and Egypt, who coordinate their attack to maximize damage to Israel. JCRC, the Jewish Welfare Federation, and the BOR organize mass community gatherings that bring overflowing diverse crowds who "throw their financial and moral support to Israel's desperate battle for survival against the combined military might of the Arabs in the Middle East war." JCRC issues action alerts, urging the community to send mailgrams to elected officials urging "support of the U.S. diplomatic position in the United Nations, ...the United States' effort to achieve a genuine peace through bi-lateral negotiations, ...continued support for Israel in her resistance to aggression and her struggle to negotiate a peace, and to remind officials that the U.N. observers have confirmed that Egypt and Syria broke the cease-fire which the United States negotiated in 1970."
January 1974 - A small but vocal Neo-Nazi group organizes in San Francisco, protesting integration at Board of Education and Board of Supervisors meetings. The Board of Education requests JCRC's help in creating a City statute outlawing their entrance at meetings and wearing of Nazi uniforms. After lengthy deliberation, JCRC determines that such a statute would be contrary to American values and tradition, and advises the Board of Education to allow Neo-Nazis to come to public meetings, even in protest, and discourages a law prohibiting their assembly. Richard Kaplan, JCRC Chair, says "the only way to defeat the Nazis is by refusing to abandon our constitutional principles, rejecting the tactic of brawl and skirmish, and returning to the hard, serious business at hand: to come together out of our disarray and to build a school system with equal educational opportunity and the highest education quality. On that depends the future of our democratic society."
February 1975 - On the anniversary of the brutal murder of four Jewish girls near Damascus, JCRC launches an education and advocacy campaign on behalf of the 4,500 Syrian Jews oppressed by the Syrian government. JCRC states "restriction of movement, constant police surveillance, severe economic restrictions, special identification cards marked with the word 'Jew,' denial of the right to higher education and the right to practice their chosen professions are only some of the indignities inflicted upon these unfortunate people." JCRC petitions President Gerald Ford to intervene, to engage the Syrians in a commitment to cease the persecution of their Jewish citizens, and to allow the emigration of Syrian Jews.
November 1975 - The United Nations, formed after World War II to fight anti-Semitism, declares that Zionism is a form of racism. This declaration causes massive protests throughout the United States and the world. In San Francisco, the city that gave birth to the United Nations, JCRC organizes an Action Rally in Union Square. 2,000 people from diverse communities come to protest the U.N. resolution and to support the United States and other nations that voted against it. Marian Lippman, JCRC Chair, states, "This U.N. resolution is basic anti-Semitism in the guise of anti-Zionism. Americans remember that Hitler used 'anti-Zionism' as the centerpiece of his racist ideology. It is tragically ironic that the U.N., established to fight Hitlerism, has become a mechanism for reviving Hitlerist thought." At the rally, Congressman Philip Burton condemns the resolution as "a public outrage, moral bankruptcy and stark perversion of the truth" that "betrays the hopes that many of us had for the U.N. as a voice of reason in world affairs." John Henning, Secretary-Treasurer of the California AFL-CIO cautions from the dais that the resolution "will encourage hereditary hatred of the children of Israel," and San Francisco Mayor George Moscone declares, "I am a Zionist!" and unequivocally states, "Anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism."
March 1976 - JCRC organizes a community gathering at San Francisco's Congregation Beth Sholom to memorialize the four Jewish Syrian girls murdered as they attempted to flee to freedom, to remember the three quarters of a million Jewish refugees who fled terror from their ancient Arab homelands, to hold vigil for the 4,000 Jews still not permitted to leave or lead a free and full life, and to raise awareness about Jews still imprisoned in Arab countries. Among those still imprisoned are the 600 remaining in Iraq who continue to live in terror, as illustrated by Baghdad radio on January 27, 1969 when it called upon Iraqis to "come and enjoy the feast of the public hanging of Jews."
April 1976 - Rabbi Martin Weiner chairs a JCRC committee working with other clergy to expose "front" activities of Reverend Moon's Unification Church, a church engaged in cult activities but passing itself off as mainstream Christian. The committee exposes a great number of businesses and organizations, including those bearing the title "Judaism," that are front groups for, or entrenched in, the Unification Church. JCRC states "We have no quarrel with the right of the Unification Church to have its own religious beliefs, but along with the Catholic and Protestant groups, we are concerned with the possibility of young people entering organizations which may directly or indirectly serve as hidden transmission belts."
January 1977 - The Bay Area is outraged when the French government frees terrorist Abu Daoud. JCRC organizes an interfaith group, including Mayor George Moscone, Reverend Marvin Chandler from the San Francisco Council of Churches, Reverend Donald MacKinnon from the Archdiocese, Rabbi Brian Lurie from the Jewish Welfare Federation, and others to meet with French Consul General, Pierre de Mirmont. Matthew Weinberg, JCRC Chair presents the Consul with the statement "We are here to physically demonstrate through you to your government that the people of San Francisco, people from every segment of our society, are appalled by the action of your government. The results of your action will be a fearful new wave of terrorist acts as well as a global disillusionment with the ethics and morality of the French government."
April 1977 - Local National Socialist White Workers Party leadership opens Rudolf Hess Bookstore in San Francisco's Sunset District. A group of local Holocaust survivors attack the store, destroying its inventory. Nathan Green, owner of the property and a Holocaust survivor, gains JCRC's assistance in finding a lawyer who will help evict the bookstore, which eventually closes. JCRC advocates for the creation of a San Francisco interfaith committee to explore methods of education on the dangers of Nazism and intolerance of American democracy. With support from San Francisco Mayor Moscone, Supervisors Dianne Feinstein and Quentin Kopp, Reverends Norman Leach, John Streeter, A.C. Ubalde and others, the Community Committee for Continuing Education Against Nazism is born. JCRC Chair Matthew Weinberg explains "the purpose is to be sure that every resident of the San Francisco area understands...why Nazism was the ultimate expression of anti-human politics; why it is so hateful to Jews and other Americans who know it; why it must be hateful to everybody, including those who are too young to have been in a war against it." With the support of the Jewish Welfare Federation, JCRC and its affiliated members, the Catholic and Protestant communities, the Committee develops educational seminars and promotes education in the mass media, churches, schools, and other public venues. The effort is replicated in Marin, where a three-month seminar series about Nazism, the Holocaust, and American Constitutional protections commences. In response to the Nazi bookstore incident, JCRC decides, in consultation with local Holocaust survivors, to undertake three commitments: 1) establishment of a Holocaust Library and Center; 2) an annual Holocaust remembrance commemoration; and 3) building of a permanent Holocaust Memorial. The Holocaust Library and Research Center of San Francisco is born two years later to help preserve the authentic history of the Holocaust.
April 1977 - JCRC, East Bay JCRC, and the BACSJ host a Freedom Seder on behalf of persecuted Soviet Jews on the street in front of the Soviet Consulate.
May 1977 - JCRC assembles a Holocaust Committee of Remembrance, chaired by William Lowenberg, to plan the first annual Holocaust Remembrance Day Memorial Service. The service is held at Congregation Emanu-El and 1,300 community members participate in the program focusing on teaching future generations about the Holocaust. Nazi hunter and author Charles Allen Jr. speaks, area rabbis and cantors officiate, local Holocaust survivors light candles in memory of the six million murdered, and the Yiddish Folk Chorus sings.
August 1977 - Community leaders participate in a JCRC and BACSJ sponsored trip to the Soviet Union, and bring medicine and Jewish ritual items concealed in clothes. They pay off suspecting Soviet guards with Sports Illustrated magazines. The delegation meets with Soviet Jews to determine their status and needs.
1977 - The male-only policy of the Concordia Club, JCRC's meeting place of thirty years, leads JCRC to lengthy deliberation about whether or not to continue holding its meetings there. Ultimately, JCRC determines that because the policy has an effect on both JCRC female members whose access to the premises is limited at JCRC meetings, and San Francisco women who cannot become members of the club, it will move its meetings. The Concordia Club changes its policy many years later.
May 1979 - Concerned that unorganized or over-zealous independent Jewish community advocacy efforts may damage the status of Iranian Jews, JCRC convenes the community in strategy sessions. The community decides to streamline its action into diplomatic channels with United States officials; Jewish Family Service Agency will assist Iranian Jews living in the Bay Area who need assistance extending visas to avoid being sent back to a disastrous humanitarian situation; and American Jewish Congress will serve as contact between the Iranian Jewish community and American Jewish community.
1979 - In the aftermath of a national increase in Black-Jewish tensions, JCRC is instrumental in starting the San Francisco Intergroup Clearinghouse, an umbrella organization to address hate violence and intergroup tension.