JCRC: Jewish Community Relations Council

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The 1980s: History of the JCRC

August 1980 - JCRC leads Bay Area involvement in the national Jewish campaign to send one million Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year) cards to Soviet Jews, which will send support to the refuseniks, and a message to the Soviet government that American Jewry will not rest until Jews in Russia are free.
1981 - JCRC begins to publish The Bottom Line, an educational manual on Israel and the Middle East, anti-Semitism, and other Jewish community relations issues. The first is Questions and Arguments on the Current Middle East Issues.
December 1981 - JCRC persuades Mayor Dianne Feinstein to establish a Committee to Establish a Memorial to the Six Million Jewish Victims of the Holocaust, chaired by community leader Rhoda Goldman. Committee member William Lowenberg says, "The survivors built the successful Holocaust Library and Research Center at the Jewish Community Library. We feel very strongly about making a substantial financial contribution to this important community project for the City of San Francisco."
May 1982 - Rabbi Doug Kahn joins the JCRC as Assistant Director and begins by organizing major community gatherings throughout JCRC's regions in the aftermath of Israel's military actions in Lebanon.
November 1982 - JCRC hosts "Social Indifference and Racism," a conference for Bay Area educators and diverse ethnic communities, on racism in schools. Educators learn about handling racism in the classroom, organizing a school-wide conference on prejudice, organizing an intergroup clearinghouse in the schools, and dealing with racism in curriculum.
1982 - JCRC publishes "Soviet Jews Under Soviet Law," a newsletter explaining the plight of Soviet Jews, advances in emigration, communications with Soviet Jews, and stories of individual refuseniks.
1983 - Ongoing conflict in Israel is the catalyst for JCRC to co-organize with the Archdiocese, Church World Service, BOR, Northern CA Ecumenical Council, and SF Council of Churches "The Search for Common Ground," a day of Protestant-Catholic-Jewish discussion about Jewish-Christian partnership, its roots in social justice struggle and Biblical values, and diverse commitments to Israel and the Middle East. Reverend Robert McAfee Brown is the keynote speaker at the conference.
1983 - The San Francisco-based and East Bay JCRCs launch an education and advocacy campaign on Ethiopian Jewry. JCRC convenes the Jewish advocacy groups to develop effective consciousness and fundraising strategies. A small delegation brings medicine, religious books and money, and takes photographs documenting the lives of this population. Once home, they organize photograph exhibits and slide shows to raise awareness, and send the exhibits to eleven states for similar presentations. A few years later, delegation members visit an Ethiopian absorption village in Israel, where Jews are being resettled after traveling on foot to the Sudan, where Israel conducts airlifts and brings them to safety.
November 1984 - Following great deliberation, the multi-faith committee of community leaders, artists, clergy, and public officials established by Mayor Feinstein and staffed by JCRC commissions artist George Segal to create what becomes initially a controversial Holocaust memorial sculpture. "The Survivor" is permanently exhibited in San Francisco's Lincoln Park at the Legion of Honor, and pays tribute to survivors and the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust. It is dedicated on a cold San Francisco fall day with several hundred people in attendance. Rhoda Goldman addresses the crowd and inaugurates "the monument in hope and love." A month later, the Japanese Americans Citizens League makes a dedication at the memorial. K. Morgan Yamanaka, Past President, says "In honor of the extremes suffered by our fellow human beings, in cognizance of its inhumanity...[we] humbly share sympathy and concern with the survivors of the Nazi Holocaust." JCRC continues to manage the memorial in cooperation with the Jewish Community Federation Endowment Fund.
1984 - Church-state issues dominate this election season, and JCRC deliberates about many related issues of Jewish community concern: spoken prayer in the public schools, silent prayer in the public schools, government aid to religious schools in the form of tax credits, direct aid, or voucher payments, and equal access to religious clubs on public high school campuses. Employing a Jewish attitudinal survey sponsored by JCRC and the San Francisco Jewish Community Federation, JCRC estimates that Bay Area Jews oppose, by at least a four to one ratio, all of these issues. The opposition is grounded in a concern about community divisiveness among Jews and other minorities and the broader community. Bay Area Jews do not have the same depth of concern or consensus on the display of religious symbols on government property, although the bulk of Jewish organizations oppose such displays.
May 1985 - Religious extremist Rabbi Meir Kahane, Israeli Knesset member and founder of the notorious fringe group the Jewish Defense League, visits the Bay Area. Jewish organizations demonstrate where he gives speeches and protest his position "that Palestinians be expelled from Israel and the occupied territories." JCRC and four of its member organizations issue a statement opposing his visit and rejecting his perspectives which "aside from being self-destructive, [are] repugnant to Jewish law, tradition, ethics, morality and the democratic values inherent in both the American Bill of Rights and Israel's declaration of independence, which accords freedom and equality of citizenship to all people, regardless of race and religion." Earl Raab and San Francisco-based Jewish Community Federation leadership decide that the Jewish Defense League and Meir Kahane will not be permitted into the Jewish Federation building. Never one to shy away from a diplomatic opportunity, however, Earl Raab agrees to meet with Rabbi Kahane in a public setting. In an interview with the Jewish Bulletin, Meir Kahane attacks Earl Raab stating "Jews should listen to a rabbi, not a Raab," to which Earl quips in response "I tend to agree that more people should spend more time listening to a rabbi rather than to Raab" and then explains the danger of Meir Kahane's violent and bigoted rhetoric.
April & May 1985 - During Passover, JCRC and the BACSJ host a freedom Passover seder, along with other Jewish organizations and local Hillels, outside the Soviet Consulate. Drawing on the Passover story of Jewish quest for freedom from bondage, the event brings historical meaning to the present-day situation of Russian Jewry. Reverend Douglas Huneke speaks, and states that the USSR should know "the violations it is committing are not going unnoticed by any segment of the American population. In Christianity, we stand in solidarity with refuseniks and Soviet Jews." The next month, JCRC and BACSJ hold a demonstration, at which there are widespread arrests for civil disobedience when community leadership chain themselves to a Consulate fence and block sidewalks. Among the arrested are rabbis Sheldon Lewis, Malcolm Sparer, Allen Bennett, John Rosove, Martin Weiner, Miriam Biatch, David Robbins, Hayyim Kassorla, Irvin Ungar, Gerald Raiskin, Joseph Goldman, Samuel Broude, David Teitelbaum, Steve Chester, Avi Levine, Ari Cartun, David White, Jonathan Slater, Daniel Pressman, Gordon Freeman, Gary Tishkoff, and Jack Frankel, Cantor Steven Puzarne, the Reverend Emil Authelet, and many Los Angeles rabbis who were participating. The law offices of Ephraim Margolin were present to assist demonstrators.
May 1985 - After almost a decade of Jewish community debate about the Chabad-sponsored menorah in prominent San Francisco public venues, particularly Union Square, and whether or not this is a violation of the separation of church and state, JCRC passes a consensus statement opposing "all religious symbols at any time in or on government buildings and structures such as City Hall and the Golden Gate Bridge." No consensus is found among JCRC members on "religious symbols used on a temporary basis in the course of the free exercise of religion by private citizens in public places which are traditionally open for areas such as parks, squares, and thoroughfares." In the latter, the debate is between prohibiting and protecting the establishment or exercise of religion by the state. Based on its consensus statement, JCRC does not formally oppose the menorah in Union Square and the controversy begins to fade away quickly.
May 1985 - President Ronald Reagan plans a visit to a cemetery in Bitburg, West Germany, where German soldiers, including members of the notorious Nazi SS, are buried. Jewish communities around the country, including in San Francisco, urge the President not to make the trip. When receiving the Congressional Gold Medal of Achievement at the White House, Elie Wiesel begged the President "to find another way" to seek reconciliation with Germany. Locally, JCRC gathers hundreds of signatures in a petition praising President Reagan's intended visit to a concentration camp memorial, and urging him to avoid the ceremony at Bitburg. In cooperation with JCRC, rock impresario Bill Graham, a Holocaust survivor, sponsors and stages a major rally in San Francisco's Union Square where politicians, clergy, Jewish agency professionals, Holocaust survivors, a Vietnam veteran, righteous gentile, and concentration camp liberator make personal pleas to the President to not visit Bitburg. JCRC Chair, Tanette Goldberg, issues the statement that "President Regan has long been a strong supporter of Holocaust remembrance in this country, and a champion of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, so it is fitting that he has made the decision to visit a concentration camp memorial during his trip to Germany next month. However, we agree with the American Legion that his announced plan to lay a wreath at the Bitburg Cemetary is unfortunate. Interred in that cemetery were members of the SS, the Nazi elite guard which was specifically responsible not only for the mass murder of Jews, but for the massacre of unarmed American soldiers near the site of that cemetery." William Lowenberg, community leader, tells the Jewish Bulletin "I'm very unhappy and think the President was ill-advised" and says "it is unthinkable that the President of the United States would lay a wreath on the graves of SS men and totally unacceptable to me, as a survivor, and to the survivor community here in the Bay Area." The Northern California district council of the Jewish War Veterans, in concert with JCRC and other organizations, plans a ceremony dedicated especially to the 800 American prisoners killed by SS troops during the Battle of the Bulge, some who are buried at Bitburg.
June 1985 - JCRC deliberates on the Kennedy-Gray bill on South Africa, and determines there is consensus in the Bay Area Jewish community to support the bill because of its strong opposition to apartheid in South Africa. JCRC Chair Tanette Goldberg says "This Jewish community urges Congress to pass the Kennedy-Gray bill, which would bar new investments, including bank loans by any American in South Africa." The bill provides exceptions to this ban should South Africa reach specific benchmarks and objectives for progress in social equality. JCRC engages in an education and advocacy effort on the bill, apartheid, the inaccuracies about charges of Israeli support for South Africa, and Israel's efforts related to strangling the racist apartheid system.
1985 - Concerned about Jewish children being exposed to discrimination in Sonoma public school classrooms, the newly formed Sonoma Schools Committee of the Marin-Sonoma JCRC hosts a meeting for fifty school superintendents, principals and educators in the region. The separation of church and state, excused absences for Jewish children during the High Holydays, and instruction on the Middle East were issues discussed at the meeting. Richard Zimmer, Chair, says, "It's a new phenomenon for [Sonoma County educators] to deal with Jews. I think it went incredibly well."
November, 1986 - Metropolitan JCRC, JCRC of the Greater East Bay, and the Bay Area Council for Soviet Jewry organize a massive demonstration in front of the Russian Consulate; more than 4,000 people participate, chanting "Let My People Go!" A former refusenik who emigrated to the United States five years earlier addresses the crowd, along with San Francisco Supervisor Quentin Kopp, State Assemblymember Lou Papan, and Congresswoman Sala Burton.
February, 1987 - Thousands of people gather in front of the Soviet Consulate to honor famous refusenik and human rights activist Anatoly Sharansky, who just one year earlier walked across the Glienecke Bridge from East to West Berlin, ending his nine year prison stay that included a nearly deadly four month hunger strike. Sharansky was honored by Assemblywoman Jackie Speier with a declaration of the day as "Freedom for Prisoners of Conscience Day" and accolades by Congressman Tom Lantos for his continuing fight for the release of 330,000 who still remain captive and wishing to emigrate from the Soviet Union. JCRC and BACSJ organized the rally that received international media attention, including in Pravda, the Soviet press.
May 1987 - After lengthy deliberation, JCRC votes to oppose a United States Senate bill that will create a Constitutional amendment permitting organized silent prayer in public school. JCRC engages in an advocacy campaign to educate Bay Area federal elected officials about its position, and to educate the Jewish community about the importance of mobilizing against the bill.
October 1987 - After nearly twenty years of demonstrating at the Soviet Consulate on Green Street with repeated requests for meetings rebuffed, the Soviet Consulate agrees to open its doors and meet with Jewish community leadership during this annual Soviet Jewry Simchat Torah rally where 2,000 people have gathered. Shocked that the ongoing requests was actually accepted, Michael Jacobs and Sheldon Wolfe, Co-Chairs of the JCRC Soviet Jewry Commission, Greg Smith, Vice President of the Bay Area Council for Soviet Jews, and Michael Jacobs' 14 month old daughter, carried on his back, are admitted at a side entrance to the Consulate and meet for twenty minutes with Consulate duty officer Mikhail Golubkov.
October 1987 - The Moscow Ballet performs at the Flint Center in Cupertino. Thousands of ballet patrons are greeted by JCRC, BACSJ, and Congregation Beth David and Kol Emeth leaders who distribute 3500 brochures reminding patrons of the nearly 400,000 Soviet Jews who are still waiting for freedom. The brochure says, "Under the Soviet Union's new policy of glasnost, the situation has improved slightly - but the door has opened only a crack. We look forward to the day when the Soviet Union fulfills its international agreements and allows those who wish to emigrate, the freedom to do so." Eli Taub, JCRC South Peninsula member brings his young children with him to distribute the brochures, and remarks that "as an American, I believe that all people yearn for the basic right to be free. The activities of Soviet Jews to gain their freedom are an eloquent testimony to this yearning." Similar leafleting occurs in San Francisco during the appearance of the Bolshoi Ballet; publicity in this situation contrasts the freedom of movement in dance with the lack of freedom permitted to Soviet Jews.
December 1987 - The JCRC, Jewish Community Federation, and BACSJ lead a trip to Washington D.C. for the historic massive national rally for Soviet Jewish freedom that is timed to coincide with Mikhail Gorbachev's visit to Washington D.C. to negotiate an arms control agreement. Natan Sharansky, Vice President George Bush, and Elie Wiesel are among the notable speakers. Simultaneously, a major Bay Area vigil is held in San Francisco's Union Square with United States Senator Pete Wilson, Congresswoman Barbara Boxer, Speaker of the Assembly Willie Brown, former prisoners of conscience, and other important political figures. At the coinciding demonstrations, thousands of participants rally for peace between the United States and Russia, justice for the oppressed, and human rights and freedom for Soviet Jews desperate to leave.
September 1987 - The San Francisco visit of Pope John Paul II creates controversy regarding the best response to his recent reception of Kurt Waldheim. JCRC gives considerable thought to do this in a way that does not jeopardize positive local Catholic-Jewish relations. With vastly different ideas from survivors and community groups on whether, or how publicly, to protest, JCRC ultimately agrees to hold a vigil at the Holocaust memorial, organize a petition campaign, host educational forums, and withdraw its explicit objections to any protests scheduled by other groups.
December 1988 - A massive community vigil for Soviet Jewry and in support of the peace efforts of the Reagan-Gorbachev Summit is held at San Francisco's Union Square. Former prisoner of conscience Vladimir Lifshitz is the keynote speaker introduced by Mayor Dianne Feinstein who had made a special appeal on his behalf to the mayor of Leningrad during her visit to the USSR. Other dignitaries appearing are U.S. Senator Pete Wilson, State Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, Assemblywoman Jackie Speier, Congresswoman Barbara Boxer, State Senator Milton Marks, State Senator Quentin Kopp, and numerous San Francisco Supervisors.
Fall 1988 - Proposition W is put on the San Francisco ballot, asking voters to approve an official San Francisco policy favoring a Palestinian State on the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip, and the language excludes any mention of the extremist elements of the PLO, which would become the government of that State and which continue to deny Israel's right to exist. With the leadership of Andrew Colvin, JCRC Chair, and Henry Berman, Mel Swig, Robert Friend, William Lowenberg, and Donald Linker, JCRC launches a poll to determine potential voter response to the proposition, and the polls show that in the election it could win by a two-to-one margin. JCRC then launches a massive effort including the establishment of an official and independent "No on Proposition W" campaign, gaining endorsements from Mayor Art Agnos, U.S. Senators Alan Cranston and Pete Wilson, Lt. Governor Leo McCarthy, Congresswomen Nancy Pelosi and Barbara Boxer, Speaker Willie Brown, Attorney General John Van de Kamp, Controller Gray Davis, Superintendent of Schools Bill Honig, Former Mayor Dianne Feinstein, Supervisors Harry Britt, Jim Gonzalez, Tom Hsieh, Willie Kennedy, Bill Maher, John Molinari, Wendy Nelder, Carol Ruth Silver, and Doris Ward, and conducting a massive voter education drive. San Francisco voters ultimately defeat Proposition W when 68.5% vote against it. In Berkeley, a simultaneous effort is launched to defeat, Measure J, a proposition to create a sister-city relationship between Berkeley and the Palestinian refugee camp of Jabaliya in Gaza. Concerned that Measure J poses as a humanitarian issue, but in fact its language distorts and denies history and is a fa�ade for blaming Israel for the plight of Palestinians living in refugee camps in Gaza. JCRC launches a voter education campaign and coordinates the Coalition for Middle East Peace and Justice. Endorsements in this Coalition campaign against Measure J include Assemblyman Tom Bates, Berkeley Mayor Loni Hancock, City Council member Shirley Dean, School Board member Louise Stoll, Vice Chancellor of the University of Califonria Daniel Boggan, Speaker of the Assembly Willie Brown, and countless Berkeley clergy, academics, judges, and other community leaders. Measure J ultimately is defeated by 71% of the voters.
1988 - JCRC begins bringing civic leader and elected officials from diverse ethnic and faith backgrounds on annual study missions to Israel.
November, 1989 - In response to anti-Semitic remarks made by prominent European Catholic clergy, JCRC and the Board of Rabbis of Northern California work with the local Christian communities, under the aegis of the Task Force on Jewish-Christian Relations, to host a Holocaust Study Day on the occasion of the 51st anniversary of Kristallnacht. Reverend Bruce Bramlett, Reverend Douglas Huneke, Rabbi David Teitelbaum, and survivor Linda Breder speak at the conference held at Congregation Sherith Israel in San Francisco.
1989 - Doug Kahn goes to the Soviet Union with 14 other clergy in an interfaith delegation sponsored by JCRC and the BACSJ. They meet with refuseniks and organize a human rights conference in the Soviet Union on "Human Dignity in the Jewish and Christian Traditions."