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(JTA) — The Staff Circle has resigned from the Convention of Presidents of Main American Jewish Organizations, shrinking the umbrella group’s contingent of progressive teams.
The Staff Circle — a Jewish progressive activist group that runs a sturdy program of Yiddish lessons, and that extra just lately has emphasised advocating for democracy — stated it’s pulling out of the Convention of Presidents over disagreements relating to insurance policies in the USA, discourse on Israel and easy methods to outline antisemitism.
The choice is the most recent of some incidents in recent times which have uncovered cracks within the convention, which goals to be a unified voice for dozens of Jewish teams in the USA. The resignation displays the deep political divisions amongst American Jews extra broadly, and the problem of making an attempt to unite disparate opinions underneath one banner with the intention to protect a way of shared Jewish pursuits in an more and more polarized local weather.
However the Staff Circle determination doesn’t seem like sparking a pattern: Different left-leaning teams within the convention instructed JTA they’d stay within the coalition.
“We imagine that the time has come for us to separate,” Ann Toback, CEO of The Staff Circle, instructed the Jewish Telegraphic Company on Tuesday. “Our give attention to democracy is just not being mirrored by this group’s illustration of us.”
Convention of Presidents CEO William Daroff criticized Staff Circle over the resignation, accusing the group of not elevating its points or being an lively participant within the convention previous to its resignation. He stated that the resignation doesn’t converse to deeper divisions within the coalition.
That is the primary time he is aware of of when a bunch has stated it’s resigning from the convention as a consequence of ideological variations.
“It was an entire shock,” Daroff stated. “We had no concept that that they had any substantive points with us, with the convention. They often haven’t come to conferences. There are dozens of conferences they may have attended the place they may have engaged in these points.”
He additionally instructed JTA that the Staff Circle owed upwards of $15,000 in membership dues to the convention, which differ relying on the dimensions of member teams. Toback disputed that cost was at difficulty, saying that the group had paid up the invoices it has acquired and was dedicated to paying what it owed via the date of its resignation. “It wasn’t in regards to the dues,” she stated of the group’s determination.
Based in 1900 because the Workmen’s Circle, or Arbeter Ring, by Yiddish-speaking immigrants to the USA as a socialist mutual assist society, the Staff Circle has been a member of the convention because the mid-Nineteen Nineties. In 2016, the group refocused itself on opposing what it sees because the erosion of democracy in the USA. Toback says defending democracy matches with the group’s mission as a result of it was based by immigrants fleeing autocratic nations.
Lately, the group says, it has hoped that the Convention of Presidents would take extra vocal positions on home points like combating voter suppression and gerrymandering that dilutes the voting energy of minorities. “The COP’s unwillingness to step in and converse to the erosion of democracy in the USA has been an actual difficulty for us,” she stated.
Daroff stated the Staff Circle by no means requested the management of the convention to talk out on democratic norms. Whereas Toback acknowledged that she didn’t elevate the problem with convention employees immediately, she instructed JTA, “It its very clear what their positions are and aren’t.” She added later, “Our missions aren’t aligned.”
The convention was based within the mid-Fifties with the intention of extra successfully advocating for problems with Jewish concern by talking in a shared voice. Its roster of fifty teams consists of a few of the largest Jewish organizations, together with the main spiritual denominations, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish Federations of North America and the American Jewish Committee. It additionally consists of plenty of teams with a lot smaller staffs and public profiles.
The convention is not any stranger to infighting and threats of resignation. A number of member organizations have known as on its management through the years to self-discipline the Zionist Group of America, whose president, Morton Klein, is a right-wing pro-Israel activist with a historical past of inflammatory remarks. In 2019, ZOA obtained a reprimand from the convention for “insults, advert hominem assaults and name-calling.”
The next yr, greater than a dozen different liberal member organizations of the convention despatched an open letter to Klein condemning his bashing of the Black Lives Matter motion. Different member teams pushed the convention to expel ZOA. Klein responded with his personal criticism towards the refugee assist group HIAS and the heads of the opposite teams who had attacked him. Convention management tried to resolve the scenario by declining to take motion on the complaints.
The Staff Circle determination means the group will now bow out of these inner debates. In a resignation letter despatched Wednesday to the convention’s management and shared with JTA, Toback and Staff Circle president Zeev Dagan wrote that their breakup “is just not a choice that we’ve got made flippantly.”
“We have now been a longtime member of the COP and share its concern for the pursuits of the American and world Jewish communities,” they wrote. But the letter, along with criticizing the Convention’s “silence” on the home points which have turn out to be the main focus of Staff Circle, names a bunch of different causes for the cut up, together with the Convention’s promotion of the Worldwide Holocaust Remembrance Affiliation’s definition of antisemitism, which some liberal teams say chills free speech on Israel by defining some types of criticism of the Jewish state as antisemitism.
In his response to the Staff Circle resignation, Daroff singled out particularly their objections to the IHRA definition. He stated the refrain of individuals and teams that oppose the Israeli authorities’s latest judicial overhaul efforts — which incorporates members of the convention — exhibits that criticism of Israeli coverage is condoned. (No less than one member of the convention, ZOA, helps the overhaul laws.)
“One want solely have a look at the final six months of vociferous criticism of the Israeli authorities’s insurance policies, whereby nobody is claiming that such criticism is antisemitic, to dispute the preposterous canard that the definition — and the Convention by extension — stifles legit criticism of Israel,” he wrote in a press release.
However that debate over the judicial laws, Toback stated, ended up being the ultimate straw for the Staff Circle. After Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, handed a legislation final week weakening the facility of the Supreme Courtroom, prompting mass protests and prices that such legal guidelines would endanger Israeli democracy, the Convention issued a press release that expressed “concern” over the reforms and known as on Israel’s leaders “to hunt compromise and unity,” including, “Accountable political actors should ease tensions which have run dangerously excessive.”
Toback had hoped for a fiercer condemnation of the legislation. “Watching Israel’s democracy hit this disaster level with out calling for actual change was the ultimate second” within the group’s relationship with the Convention, she stated.
Progressive teams have floated leaving the coalition earlier than, together with in 2014, when the convention declined to increase membership to J Avenue, the liberal Israel foyer. After that call — which was made by a secret vote of the convention’s members — Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, stated one choice for his group could be “to easily depart the Convention of Presidents.”
He added on the time, “However this a lot is for certain: We’ll now not acquiesce to easily sustaining the facade that the Convention of Presidents represents or displays the views of all of American Jewry.”
The teams that criticized the Convention of Presidents after the J Avenue vote are all nonetheless members, together with URJ. Reached for touch upon Staff Circle’s exit, Jacobs acknowledged that it’s “a problem to be in a big, various umbrella group — typically it’s very irritating.”
However, Jacobs added, the URJ and different liberal teams select to remain as a result of “to extend the progressive, liberal voice on the Convention platform is vital.”
“They don’t make statements just like the Supreme Courtroom with a majority and a minority view,” Jacobs stated of the Convention. “We don’t, both. The Talmud does, however we don’t.’
Daroff instructed JTA that the convention’s members “all work collectively to construct consensus on behalf of the agenda of the American Jewish group.”
Left-leaning teams within the convention stated they revered the Staff Circle’s determination however that they felt they may do extra inside the coalition than outdoors of it.
“We’ve gone all in with the Convention of Presidents,” stated Sheila Katz, CEO of the Nationwide Council of Jewish Ladies, whose president served on the convention’s government committee. “We’ve discovered the extra we interact, the extra alternative there’s.”
However she added, “I deeply respect the choice that Staff Circle is making primarily based on what I do know to be true in regards to the impression they need to make. I’ll miss them there.”
Hadar Susskind, president and CEO of Individuals for Peace Now, stated, “We really feel it’s worthwhile for us to be there and to be a part of the convention, though it’s not excellent.”
Toback stated that the Staff Circle’s determination to depart the Convention is just not meant to mirror on the organizations that stay members.
“That is by no means pointing fingers and saying, ‘By being within the Convention, you’re anti-democracy,’” she stated. “I need them to proceed to be robust activists within the Convention, and encourage them and others to advocate for robust statements in assist of democracy.”
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