Longtime L.A. Jewish Leader Is Dismissed

David Lehrer, the Los Angeles regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, has been abruptly dismissed from his post after 27 years with the nation’s premier Jewish civil rights organization.

The dismissal, delivered Dec. 21 in New York by the league’s national director, Abraham Foxman, drew immediate statements of shock, sadness and outrage Monday from Jewish community members in Los Angeles.

It was not clear why Lehrer was dismissed, and he said he was “stunned” by the news. The ADL’s New York offices were closed Monday, but the organization released a statement last week to the Jewish Journal saying that Lehrer would be leaving the league in connection with “undertaking steps to strengthen our leadership and development efforts” in the Los Angeles regional office.

“I am blown away,” said Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who called for a review of the league’s personnel decisions. “David Lehrer’s outstanding reputation and his summary dismissal without warning do not compute. A lot of us are resentful because this decision was made by someone in New York without apparent consultation with the lay board of directors locally.”

Jewish community members said Foxman and Lehrer had long had personal and political differences. In part, they said, the tension between the two reflected a struggle between Los Angeles and New York, American Jewry’s historical center, over which would set the community’s national direction.

In Los Angeles, some of Lehrer’s differences with national leaders surfaced in his relations with Muslims. Lehrer was one of the first area Jewish leaders to step forward and forge a code of ethics with Muslim leaders to civilize debate between the two sides in 1998. He also was known to differ with the national league’s opposition to Los Angeles Muslim leader Salam Al-Marayati’s appointment to a national counterterrorism commission. (Al-Marayati’s nomination was subsequently withdrawn after Jewish opposition.)

“Probably he is paying the price for the more balanced view he took toward Muslims,” said Aslam Abdullah, vice president of the Muslim Public Affairs Council.

In his wide-ranging human relations work, Lehrer forged broad ties with politicians, the media, law enforcement and ethnic communities. He helped initiate programs to bring non-Jewish students of color to Israel, educate 100,000 Southern California teachers about stereotyping and bigotry, and develop business ties between Latinos and Jews.

“Every ethnic group has the tendency to be insular, but David has, more than anyone else, sensed what L.A. is all about and begun programs to get the Jewish community out there in the larger world,” said Faith Cookler, an Anti-Defamation League past president and national commissioner. Cookler said the league’s local board of directors planned to meet on the issue Wednesday and would release a statement then.

Lehrer also helped write the state’s first statute against hate crimes and made the league the premier information center on extremist organizations, ranging from white supremacists to the Jewish Defense League. Recently, on the day that JDL chief Irv Rubin was arrested on charges of conspiring to blow up a mosque, the Anti-Defamation League disseminated a 25-page report documenting the group’s long history of violence.

During his tenure, Lehrer helped expand the league’s Western operations, with satellite offices in Santa Barbara, the San Fernando Valley and Las Vegas.

“David Lehrer will be extraordinarily difficult to replace because of all the people, both Jewish and non-Jewish, who respect him,” said Rabbi Lawrence Goldmark, executive director of the Pacific Assn. of Reform Rabbis.