Special Interest Groups

• WHAT IS ITS MISSION?
• HOW IS IT STRUCTURED?
• PRIMARY FUNCTIONS
• PROGRAMS
• BUDGET INFORMATION
• HISTORY
• BIOGRAPHY: Stephen Samuel Wise
• CURRENT POLITICAL ISSUES
• FAST FACTS
• FUTURE DIRECTIONS
• GROUP RESOURCES
• GROUP PUBLICATIONS
• BIBLIOGRAPHY

ESTABLISHED: 1916
EMPLOYEES: 40
MEMBERS: 50,000
PAC: None

Contact Information:
ADDRESS: 15 E. 84th St. New York, NY 10028
PHONE: (212) 879-4500
FAX: (212) 249-3672
E-MAIL: national@ajcongress
URL: http://www.ajcongress.org
PRESIDENT: Jack Rosen
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR: Phil Baum

WHAT IS ITS MISSION?

The American Jewish Congress describes itself not as an organization but as a movement "motivated by the need to ensure the creative survival of the Jewish people." Its stated mission is to "protect fundamental constitutional freedoms and American democratic institutions, particularly the civil and religious rights and liberties of all Americans and the separation of church and state; advance the security and posterity of the State of Israel and its democratic institutions, and to support Israel's search for peaceful relations with its neighbors in the region; advance social and economic justice, women's equality, and human rights at home and abroad; remain vigilant against anti-Semitism, racism, and other forms of bigotry, and to celebrate cultural diversity and promote unity in American life, and invigorate and enhance Jewish religious, institutional, communal and cultural life at home and broad, and to seek creative ways to express Jewish identity, ethics and values."

HOW IS IT STRUCTURED?

The AJCongress is a nonprofit Jewish coalition with headquarters based in New York City. Day-to-day organizational policy is formulated at regular meetings of a 275-member governing council, and by a smaller executive committee, whose director serves as head of the AJCongress national staff. The AJCongress hosts a convention every two years, at which the membership debates and votes on the group's agenda, and elects national officers to two-year terms. The New York headquarters includes subdivisions with particular areas of responsibility, such as the Commission on Law and Social Action, the Commission for Women's Equality, and the Bio-Ethics Task Force.

While it employs a "permanent representative" on Capitol Hill, AJCongress does not maintain a political action committee for campaign funding. Regional offices operate in 16 metropolitan areas, largely setting their own priorities for local projects and initiatives, while taking part in national programs. AJCongress also maintains an Israel office, in Jerusalem, which publishes the weekly newsletter Inside Israel.

PRIMARY FUNCTIONS

As a political force, AJCongress pursues two main strategies: lobbying (particularly in Washington, D.C.) and litigation. Wherever possible, it forms coalitions with like-minded groups, including other Jewish organizations and a variety of human and civil rights groups, to promote a wide-ranging agenda, mostly of liberal causes and principles, and centered on steadfast support for the state of Israel. AJCongress is also very active in the court system, challenging laws it considers unfair, and defending rights and freedoms from possible erosion. Whether AJCongress attorneys have initiated lawsuits themselves or joined in those brought by others, the group claims to have "participated in virtually every major test case affecting the religion clauses of the First Amendment to come before the United States Supreme Court," as well as many landmark civil and human rights cases.

However, AJCongress' ambitious goals are not limited to U.S. government affairs. Several programs reflect a general commitment to facilitating cross-cultural dialogue, particularly with the Middle East and among its contending factions. AJCongress sponsors travel and exchange programs to Israel, for political leaders and ordinary citizens alike. It also pursues a kind of unofficial diplomacy, while not participating directly in official peace processes. AJCongress delegations have developed contacts with members of Arab governments and sought to open channels of communication with their Israeli counterparts. Similar outreach programs foster communication between American Jews and a number of other communities, including religious and ethnic groups.

AJCongress also promotes scholarship and education in a variety of ways: by sponsoring conferences and seminars, offering scholarship programs, and by underwriting scholarly analyses of selected issues—particularly Mideast social and political circumstances, and various aspects of Jewish culture.

PROGRAMS

AJCongress sponsors programs in both Israel and the United States. They address the needs of individuals, including travelers to Israel, as well as the interests of entire communities. Regional programs in the United States have been formed to impact various issues, including civil rights and health.

AJCongress' International Travel Project offers members a number of tour packages to Israel. The group established the Louis Waterman Youth Hostel in Jerusalem, Israel's largest, in 1954; there it provides training programs for new Israelis, and multicultural forums to bring young Jewish, Moslem, Christian and Druze Israelis together.

Since 1980, AJCongress has sponsored an annual spring Jerusalem Conference of Mayors, offering elected officials from the United States and other countries the opportunity to experience Israeli society first-hand. Over 200 American mayors have participated in the program. The annual America-Israel dialogues, established in 1962, provide a forum for intellectuals and political leaders from the two countries to explore their shared concerns. Another program, the Hasbara Interns Project, provides a very specific kind of aid to Israel. Since 1984 it has brought Israeli diplomats to America for training in public relations skills and media management.

Regional chapters have instituted a number of innovative programs. For example, the Northern Pacific Region, centered in San Francisco, founded the Jack Berman Advocacy Center for Violence Reduction, which provides educational programs as well as legal and legislative action. The Boston-based New England Region established the Gene Team, which drafts legislation on such issues as genetic privacy, ethical research, and insurance restrictions.

BUDGET INFORMATION

Not made available.

HISTORY

Founded in 1916, AJCongress was originally intended to be a temporary organization with a single mission: to represent Jewish interests in negotiations to end World War I. Specifically, it sought to influence the U.S. peace delegation to demand full civil rights for previously-disenfranchised Jews (and other minorities) in Europe, and to assert the Zionist claim to a homeland in Palestine, as provided in Britain's 1917 Balfour Declaration. It was also conceived as a democratic Jewish organization, in contrast to what founders saw (in the words of an AJCongress pamphlet) as a "benevolent yet self-appointed aristocracy that had been at the helm of American Jewish life since the mid-nineteenth century."

Delegates to its first convention, held in Philadelphia in December 1918, were elected through nationwide balloting of 350,000 American Jews; the convention then elected a delegation to attend the Versailles peace conference. Although the delegation was not entirely successful at Versailles, enthusiasm for "grassroots" political participation led to the establishment of AJCongress as a permanent institution in 1920. The organization's first president was Rabbi Stephen Wise.

Through the 1920s and 1930s, AJCongress worked to promote the eventual establishment of a Jewish state, and to fight anti-Semitism, both at home and in Europe. The United States saw the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and other nativist groups, widespread discriminatory immigration policies, and many Jewish groups targeted as "un-American" revolutionaries; in Europe, brutal anti-Jewish pogroms were on the rise in Poland, Russia, and Romania, and fascist movements were growing in Spain, Italy, and Germany. In 1933, when Hitler began to solidify his control over Germany, AJCongress staged a massive anti-Nazi rally at New York City's Madison Square Garden, calling for an international boycott of the Nazi regime. In 1936, it organized the World Jewish Congress, and launched a $1 million defense fund to rescue Jewish children orphaned by the Nazis. During and after World War II, AJCongress publicized early reports of the Holocaust. As the level of Jewish victimization was revealed, it pushed harder to gain support for a Jewish state, and for early U.S. recognition of Israel when it was established in 1948.

In the postwar era, AJCongress has expanded its agenda, particularly in domestic affairs, to include "the goal of full equality in a free society for all Americans." It was an early supporter of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, forging coalitions with African American groups and contributing to legal challenges of racial discrimination in housing, schools, and employment. It has also been strongly involved in issues of church and state separation, civil liberties, gun control, reproductive rights and women's equality.

Beyond its efforts on behalf of Israel, AJCongress' international activism has embraced human rights struggles worldwide. For example, in the 1970s and 1980s, it helped pressure the Soviet government to ease restrictions on Jewish emigration, and campaigned to end racial apartheid in South Africa. In the mid-1990s, it publicized atrocities in the former Yugoslavia, urging both the United States and European governments to intervene in the conflict, and arguing that the failure to act constituted "acquiesce[nce] in Europe's most grievous calamity since the Holocaust." It has also been active in efforts to combat international terrorism, and has encouraged U.S. administrations in their efforts to advance the Middle East peace process.

BIOGRAPHY: Stephen Samuel Wise

Rabbi; Zionist Activist (1874–1949) Stephen Wise was one of the earliest and most successful proponents of Zionism, the worldwide movement to establish an independent state and Jewish homeland in Palestine. Rabbi Wise spent his entire adult life helping to articulate the movement's ideology and to organize a following. He began by rallying his own congregation (a Reform congregation) and founding the New York Federation of Zionist Societies and, in 1898, the nationwide Federation of American Zionists. Swelling membership in these groups was evidence to President Woodrow Wilson that a large majority of American Jews supported Zionist aims. Wise joined U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis and Harvard lawyer and eventual Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter in helping to formulate the text of the Balfour Declaration of 1917 on behalf of President Wilson. This declaration of the British government favored the establishment of a Palestine homeland for Jews. Back home, Wise led in the organization of the American Jewish Congress (AJC). This proactive group was conceived to resolve the needs and problems of Jews from a political position. Wise served a leadership role in the AJC from 1921 until his death in 1949. Israel wasn't established until the final year of his life. Until then–to Jews who argued that Zionism stoked domestic anti-Semitism by suggesting that Jews were divided in their national loyalties—Rabbi Wise responded, "I have been an American all my life, but I have been a Jew for four thousand years."

.

CURRENT POLITICAL ISSUES

In 1993, when the term "liberal" had become a common political epithet, AJCongress adopted a mission statement proudly declaring that it was "informed by liberal principles." Its ambitious agenda includes a number of causes and principles traditionally identified as liberal, and traditionally opposed by conservatives. It supports separation of church and state, social welfare programs, reproductive choice (including access to abortion), gun control, women's equality, affirmative action (but not quotas), and universal health care; it is against school prayer, capital punishment, prejudice in all forms, and human rights abuses. AJCongress usually works in coalition with other groups and often serves in a position of fostering dialogue among diverse interests.

Case Study: Religion and Government

Given its founding mission to combat anti-Semitism and secure the rights of Jewish minority populations, issues of religious freedom have always been high priorities for AJCongress. It has taken an active interest in state and federal legislation that affects religious practice, and has joined in legal challenges of laws it opposes. AJCongress embraces the Constitution's First Amendment guarantee of religious freedom, and favors the strict separation of church and state. It has consistently opposed mandatory prayer in public schools, the display of religious symbols on public property, and public funding for religious schools (including recent proposals for "school choice" and "voucher" programs).

The AJCongress fundamental legal position is that the First Amendment, in its provision that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," creates a solid "wall of separation" between the public functions of government and the private practice of religion. At the same time, it protects everyone's right to freely express their faith. Sometimes the public interest seems to conflict with the free exercise of religion: for example, when laws require autopsies to be performed on accident victims, Hmong or Orthodox Jewish family members object to the procedure on religious grounds. In such instances, AJCongress applies certain "balancing tests" to weigh the government interest against the private liberty. This usually means that government can interfere with religious practice only when it can demonstrate a "compelling public interest" to do so. Similar tests are also traditionally applied in cases involving freedom of speech and of the press.

For many years, Supreme Court rulings tended to follow similar logic, particularly in a series of landmark school-prayer cases that resulted in the 1962 Supreme Court decision in Engel v. Vitale that prayer in public schools was unconstitutional. Since then many groups, particularly religious conservatives, have been fighting to get organized prayer back into the schools and to legally guarantee further expressions of religious freedom. During the 1990s, the AJCongress found itself in strong opposition to several pieces of proposed "religious freedom" legislation.

Particularly in the wake of the 1994 mid-term elections, in which Republicans gained majorities in both houses of Congress, several proposals were offered that, in AJCongress' view, went beyond "protection" of religion, and came dangerously close to government sanction of a particular faith. In 1995, Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) proposed a constitutional amendment, the Religious Equality Amendment (REA), which would have allowed for greater religious expression in public places. Opponents felt it could lead to compulsive religious activities in schools, and to public practices that might offend members of other faiths. Shunning any "major surgery" to the time-tested Constitution, AJCongress characterized the REA as "a radical reworking of a very careful balance struck by the First Amendment," and helped lobby for its eventual defeat.

In 1997, Rep. Ernest Istook (R-Okla.) launched another effort to amend the Constitution, with the backing of Hyde and many conservative Christian organizations. Like REA, the Religious Freedom Amendment (RFA) would have allowed expanded religious expression in public places; but it also addressed school prayer. By allowing "voluntary, self-directed" prayer in public schools, Istook's amendment would have weakened the strict prohibition defined by Supreme Court rulings from the 1960s. Joined by groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the National Council of Churches, AJCongress lobbied hard against the RFA, which was defeated in the House in June of 1998.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS

While continuing to pursue its wide-ranging domestic and international agendas, AJCongress has introduced several new initiatives, which it hopes to expand in the future. Women's rights and women's health issues, in particular, have been growing concerns. Research has shown that Askenazi Jewish women may have a genetic predisposition to higher rates of breast and ovarian cancer. AJCongress programs support research and education, and explore legal issues related to genetic information. Another issue that will continue to be targeted is the fight to control terrorism both at home and abroad.

GROUP RESOURCES

The AJCongress Web site at http://www.ajcongress.org includes a 2-year file of press releases, articles from AJCongress publications, and links to Israeli media Web sites. Research requests should be directed to the Public Relations office at the National Headquarters, 15 E. 84th St., New York NY 10028; phone (212) 879-4500.

GROUP PUBLICATIONS

AJCongress publishes several periodicals, both for members and the general public. Congress Monthly, "a magazine of Jewish political, social, and cultural comment," and Judaism, "a quarterly journal of Jewish life & thought" are provided to members at no cost, and by subscription to non-members. Three other publications provide detailed coverage of developments in the Middle East. Radical Islamic Fundamentalism Update, a bimonthly newsletter, monitors social and political developments in the Muslim world; subscriptions are available at $20/year. Inside Israel, a weekly newsletter on Israeli politics, is published by AJCongress' Jerusalem office; Boycott Report, a monthly newsletter, reports on efforts against the Arab economic boycott of Israel.

In addition, AJCongress publishes and distributes a number of educational pamphlets, as well as the findings of academic studies it has commissioned. Recent examples include Religion in the Public Schools: A Joint Statement of Current Law (compiled in conjunction with 37 different religious and civil-rights organizations), Blacks & Jews in Congress: A House Undivided (a study of the voting patterns of Black and Jewish legislators), and American Jews & Middle East Policy: a Survey of the Options. All publications are available through the Public Relations office at the National Headquarters, 15 E. 84th St., New York NY 10028; phone (212) 879-4500.