News

Shake-ups at AJCongress Are Cast as Shift to the Right

By Ami Eden, Forward Staff
Forward, November 23, 2001
Republished by permission of the Forward

But Its President Defends Firings, New Appointments as Response to 'Financial Neglect'

The American Jewish Congress has fired the longtime professional head of its New England region, in the latest of several moves that critics say signal a shift away from the organization's liberal roots and officials defend as efforts to reverse a financial crisis.

The fired staffer, Sheila Decter, an AJCongress employee for more than 20 years, learned of her dismissal several weeks ago in a telephone conversation with the organization's executive director, Phil Baum. The move drew heavy criticism from AJCongress leaders in Boston, local Jewish communal leaders and prominent politicians, including Rep. Barney Frank and Linda Melconian, majority leader of the Massachusetts state senate.

Mr. Baum, who started working at AJCongress in 1949 and plans to retire soon, told the Forward that the decision to fire Ms. Decter was based on her shortcomings as a fundraiser and membership recruiter. But lay leaders of the Boston-based chapter countered that she was dismissed because of her steadfast support of liberal policies. Fueling such complaints, several observers said, was news that AJCongress had tapped a lobbyist with Republican ties, Charles Brooks, to serve as its new representative on Capitol Hill and head its Washington regional chapter.

"I think that under the presidency of Jack Rosen, the American Jewish Congress is being pulled to the right," said Daniel Levenson, a past president of the New England region. "This is an organization which since [1918] has, of all the Jewish defense agencies, been the most progressive on national and international issues.... That I think is being changed from the top down."

The firing of Ms. Decter, who logged her final day last week, comes after Mr. Baum and Mr. Rosen shut down the San Francisco and Los Angeles chapters. Former AJCongress leaders in both cities said that their chapters were targeted for failing to toe a more moderate line.

"Its all hogwash," said Mr. Rosen, a New York businessman who raised money for President Clinton. Both he and Mr. Baum insisted that any office closings or firings simply had to do with a failure to meet fundraising and membership goals, instituted as part of concerted efforts to get local chapters to start covering their own costs. The organization's real image problem, Mr. Rosen said, stems from decades of financial neglect and a concern that the organization could not survive without major changes.

"I heard for years that the problem at the American Jewish Congress was that it didn't have these kind of performance requirements," Mr. Rosen said. "Now that we're putting these changes into place, in order to grow and be effective, we are getting questioned."

Mr. Baum said that for most of the last 15 years the national office was forced to cover "significant" deficits incurred by the New England chapter, but declined to share exact figures.

The growth of the organization, Mr. Baum said, has been stymied for decades because of an organizational structure that forces the national office to dedicate most of its $6 million annual budget to covering local expenses. The other two defense agencies, the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee, have national annual budgets of $50 million and $30 million, respectively.

In Los Angeles, where former AJCongress members have founded the Progressive Jewish Alliance, the AJCongress has opened up a new chapter. There are no immediate plans to do so in San Francisco. As for Boston, Mr. Baum said that the goal was to find a replacement for Ms. Decter and to keep the region operating. Ms. Decter's fate was sealed, he added, when just three members from the Boston region showed up for the organization's national convention in Washington last month.

Through her attorneys, Ms. Decter declined to comment.

Mr. Decter's supporters said that the low turnout for the national convention should be blamed on the national organization's decision to have the event focus almost exclusively on the war against terrorism. Boston leaders also said they were turned off by the failure of national officials to protest any of the controversial sections of President Bush's anti-terrorism legislation, the Uniting and Strengthening America Act of 2001. Other liberal Jewish groups, led by the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, were strongly critical of the anti-terrorism legislation's civil liberties aspects.

Mr. Baum said his group supported the general concept of providing government with more tools to combat terrorism. Prior to the September 11 attack, he added, AJCongress would probably have objected to the legalization of roving wiretaps, but now supports it. He rejected, however, the claim that AJCongress has shifted to the right.

Ms. Decter's defenders say that she was probably the most effective AJCongress regional director, at least in terms of raising the profile of the organization, developing political contacts and building diverse political coalitions with other groups. And, supporters added, she is probably the only regional director capable of attracting support from such a wide range of Jewish and political leaders.

In one such statement, Mr. Frank, in a November 1 letter to Mr. Rosen, complained that local AJCongress leaders in Boston were not consulted before the firing took place. He wrote, "For a non-profit organization summarily to dismiss a loyal, dedicated, hard-working employee of decades of service and outstanding reputation is itself a repudiation of the values for which the American Jewish Congress ought to stand — and which I had up until now thought it did stand."

"I am writing to express my shock and outrage over the decision," declared Ms. Melconian in her November 14 protest letter to Mr. Baum and Mr. Rosen.

Those complaining of a right-wing shift say the biggest changes can be seen in the organization's approach to the Middle East. During the 1980s and early 1990s, under the leadership of then-executive director Henry Siegman, the organization did not hesitate to criticize Israel's Likud government.

Like most other American Jewish organizations since the start of the intifada last year, however, AJCongress has mostly focused its public statements on criticizing Yasser Arafat. While some AJCongress officials said this reflects nothing more than an understandable reaction to Palestinian violence, Mr. Rosen acknowledged that the organization would in general be very reluctant to criticize policies of the Israeli government.

"I don't think that's our role," said Mr. Rosen, who became president three years ago after being recruited by AJCongress lay leaders even though he had no connection to the organization. "I think our role is to support the Israeli government."

This change on Israeli issues, Mr. Rosen said, had nothing to do with the decision to hire Mr. Brooks, who spent several years as the executive director of the National Political Action Committee, known as Natpac, a well-connected group that raised money for pro-Israel candidates from both parties.

Several of Mr. Brooks's predecessors at AJCongress went on to work for liberal organizations, including RAC and the National Jewish Democratic Council. But prior to his stint at Natpac, Mr. Brooks worked on foreign affairs and Jewish issues for a Republican senator from Pennsylvania, Arlen Specter, and served as outreach director for what is now the Republican Jewish Coalition. Mr. Brooks also recently did work for the Zionist Organization of America, a group that has strongly opposed the Oslo process and any territorial concessions to Mr. Arafat.

Mr. Rosen said AJCongress hired Mr. Brooks because of his contacts with Democrats and Republicans. Mr. Brooks said he was quite comfortable with the organization's domestic agenda, including its historic support for a strong separation of church and state, which Mr. Rosen said would continue to be the organization's calling card.

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