American Jews Face East-West Power Struggle

The abrupt dismissal of the Anti-Defamation League’s regional director here has illuminated the growing power struggles between East and West Coast Jewry, as the fulcrum of influence over American Jewish life shifts from its historical center in New York.

David Lehrer, the regional director who helped knit together Los Angeles’ disparate communities during 27 years of wide-ranging human relations work, was dismissed from his post Dec. 21 by National Director Abraham Foxman in New York.

His ouster astonished and outraged Jewish community members here, who said Lehrer had never received a negative performance review, had tripled the league’s fund-raising revenue and had forged broad community ties in initiating scores of programs to fight bigotry and stereotyping.

Foxman has not publicly commented on his actions, and an ADL spokesperson in New York said he was on vacation and unavailable for an interview last week. Other East Coast Jewish leaders could not be reached for comment.

Sources within the ADL and other observers of Jewish affairs, however, said about 40 members of the league’s Los Angeles lay leadership overwhelmingly expressed support for Lehrer in a tense conference call last week with Glen Tobias, the ADL’s national chairman. These observers said Tobias refused to explain Foxman’s actions, calling it a personnel matter.

Lehrer, who has run the ADL’s Pacific Southwest office for 16 years, said he has met with attorneys and is exploring legal options.

Among some Jews here, the brouhaha has reignited long-simmering resentment over the way national Jewish organizations in New York still treat Los Angeles as “a colony,” as one put it. The same kind of tension--often between national headquarters and regional offices--has surfaced in other American Jewish organizations in recent years.

Lehrer would say only that “my ouster is in part a reflection of the East-West divide in American Jewry. I hope the Los Angeles Jewish community continues to assert its independence and uniqueness.”

Los Angeles is the nation’s second-largest Jewish enclave, 600,000 people ranging from powerful Hollywood moguls to cutting-edge rabbis to a vibrant influx of immigrants from Iran, Russia and elsewhere.

A long-term demographic shift is reshaping America’s Jewish population, pulling more Jews to the Sun Belt and West Coast. Yet the Northeast--still home to more than 40% of the nation’s 6 million Jews, according to demographer Pini Herman--has been slow to share the power, officials here say. According to the Jewish Journal, a Los Angeles-based community weekly newspaper, 75% of the 54 members of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations live in the Northeast. The paper quoted conference official Malcolm Hoenlein as dismissing any prejudice against the West Coast.

But a West Coast Jewish leader disputes that. “There’s a lot of creative power going on in L.A. that is now shifting the fulcrum of influence on Jewish affairs to be shared by both coasts, and traditional organizations like the ADL don’t like it,” said Rabbi John Rosove, a league board member and senior rabbi at Temple Israel of Hollywood. “They want to maintain power to determine the agenda for themselves.”

Rosove recalled that when he was ordained at Hebrew Union College in New York in 1979, he was advised against taking a post in San Francisco because “no one will take you seriously and you’ll never come back East.” He said that attitude has begun to change, but not quickly enough.

The rabbi said he planned to resign from the ADL’s local board unless unspecified “amends” were made to Lehrer by Foxman. Other Lehrer partisans have called for Foxman to apologize, offer a financial settlement and review personnel decisions at the ADL.

Those familiar with the long-standing tension between the two men said it was driven by what they called Foxman’s autocratic style and Lehrer’s refusal to be intimidated by it. The most-often-cited example was the national ADL’s opposition to Los Angeles Muslim leader Salam Al-Marayati as a member of a national counter-terrorist commission. Lehrer was known to support Al-Marayati.

Key Issue Is Power and How to Share It

Foxman most recently came under fire for one-man decision-making from both league members and the broader Jewish community after he promoted a presidential pardon for fugitive Marc Rich--an action Foxman later said he regretted. Some sources spoke on the condition of anonymity because of fear of retribution by the national office.

Gerald Bubis, a Los Angeles expert on Jewish agencies, said the key issue was power and how to share it. He said institutional tension between responsibility and authority--the mandate to raise money but no say in how to spend it--has bedeviled organizations in general, including the Red Cross and United Way.

At the ADL, Los Angeles provided 10% of the national budget, ranking first in fund-raising (including financial pledges in wills and other forms of deferred giving). But all budget decisions were made in New York.

Two years ago, the same kind of disconnect surfaced in the American Jewish Congress when the organization’s Los Angeles office broke off and formed a separate organization, the Progressive Jewish Alliance. Alliance President Douglas Mirell said the reason was less geographical than ideological: The Los Angeles office, he said, was distressed by what it perceived as a swing to the right by national leaders.

A Growing Divide Over Liberal Agenda

Mirell said a new crop of national leaders was weakening the organization’s long-standing liberal agenda. In the mid-1990s, he said, they began withdrawing support for the Mideast peace process. Then, in a move that sparked the break, American Jewish Congress leaders criticized a groundbreaking report by the group’s Los Angeles office that pointed out Jewish involvement in Southern California’s sweatshop industry.

Local defections have continued, with the Boston office of the American Jewish Congress recently breaking off after the national headquarters failed to protest the appointment of Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft or President Bush’s anti-terrorism measures, including plans for secret military tribunals, Mirell said.

Daniel J. Sokatch, executive director of the Progressive Jewish Alliance, said the developments underscored a growing divide between Jews dedicated to a traditional agenda of Holocaust remembrance, fighting anti-Semitism and support of Israel, and those fired by broader ideals of social justice.

The Los Angeles alliance, Sokatch said, has pulled in scores of younger Jews who had not previously been affiliated with any organization by promoting a liberal agenda based on the biblical exhortation, “Justice, justice shall you pursue,” and the Jewish concept of tikkun olam, or repair the world. He said the alliance is working against the death penalty and abuses in the sweatshop industry, for instance, and remains a stalwart member of the Muslim-Jewish dialogue in Los Angeles, which has suffered defections by members of both sides.

“With traditional organizations, there is a sense that you should be guilted into affiliation,” Sokatch said. “That’s no way to ensure Jewish continuity. You should identify as a Jew because you come from a great and beautiful prophetic tradition of social justice and tikkun olam. This is a much more joyful and ultimately productive way to be a Jew.”

Less testy but also significant, the University of Judaism became autonomous from the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York in 1994 when it opened its own rabbinical school. According to Rabbi Elliot Dorff, a philosophy professor there, the move created some consternation in New York, which until then had a monopoly on training rabbis for the Conservative movement.

Dorff said the move in part symbolized “the West Coast Jewish community growing up,” and underscored differences between Los Angeles and New York in their approach to rabbinical education. He said the seminary approach was more formal and cerebral, which did not address a desire in Los Angeles to offer students training in how to make the Talmud relevant to people’s daily religious lives.

As one example, Dorff said he expands teachings of ancient Jewish laws on personal injury, for instance, to include discussions of suicide, drug abuse and other contemporary issues. He also said student-faculty relations are more personal here.

“We’re a California institution--not exactly touchy-feely, but there is a presumption here that students and faculty will talk about both academic and nonacademic things,” Dorff said.

Some Groups Avoid Bicoastal Tensions

Some Jewish organizations have managed to avoid the bicoastal tensions. Bruce Ramer, a prominent entertainment attorney in Los Angeles, recently headed the American Jewish Committee; local Executive Director Gary Greenebaum said the organization has experienced normal “stresses and strains” between coasts but no major differences in priorities.

In the Reform movement, the new president of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Rabbi David Ellenson, is an Angeleno. Two of the past three presidents of the Central Conference of American Rabbis have been from the West Coast, and the next president slated to head the Reform rabbinical group is a Bay Area woman rabbi.

The demographic shift to the South and West is “just now coming into ascendancy in an organizational way,” said Rabbi Alan Henkin, regional director of the Pacific Southwest Council of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations.