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Speaking Truth to Power — Not

There\'s nothing bashful about Jewish organizations, but in 2004, many suddenly go mute if the subject involves potential conflict with the Bush administration.
[additional-authors]
April 1, 2004

There’s nothing bashful about Jewish organizations, but in
2004, many suddenly go mute if the subject involves potential conflict with the
Bush administration. 

The silence epidemic has been particularly evident in the
ongoing Capitol Hill battles over President Bush’s proposals for new tax cuts
and some of his archconservative nominees to the federal bench.  But it has
also shown up on a host of other issues, including one traditionally close to
the hearts of many Jewish activists: church-state separation. 

The reasons for this uncharacteristic reticence can be
summed up in one word: fear. Jewish leaders fear that clashing with the
president on his top domestic priorities might affect his support for Israel,
and they fear losing precious White House access. 

There’s one more factor at work here, as well: the growing
gap between the megadonors who increasingly dominate Jewish communal life and
rank-and-file Jews, who remain remarkably true to the community’s political
moorings. 

Talk to almost any director of a Jewish social service
agency and you’ll probably get the same answer: The mounting budget crisis in Washington
threatens their operations and their clients. 

Bush insists his big tax cuts, and the additional ones he
wants to enact this year, are needed to spur the economy, but critics say they
are producing record deficits that are already forcing Draconian cuts in
discretionary spending, starting with health and social services.

But while Jewish agencies, funded by a blend of government
and philanthropic money, are direly threatened, Jewish groups have almost all
shunned the tax cut issue. With the exception of the Reform movement, the
response to queries on the tax issue is generally, “We don’t have a position,
because we don’t have consensus.” 

Overwhelmingly, Jews remain pro-choice on the touchy
question of abortion, despite a vocal minority.  But only the Religious Action
Center of Reform Judaism and the National Council of Jewish Women have been
aggressively involved in the Senate fight to block some of President Bush’s
anti-choice nominees to the federal bench. 

The hundreds of judges appointed by this president will
reshape American jurisprudence for a generation, yet, when asked, most Jewish
groups have the same response: “We don’t get involved in judicial nomination
fights.” 

Even on church-state issues, some Jewish leaders are spiking
their big guns when it comes to confronting an administration that is
transforming the church-state landscape with its aggressive faith-based
initiatives. 

Groups such as the Anti-Defamation League and the American
Jewish Committee continue taking a tough line on school vouchers and public
school prayer, but overall, the community’s response to the administration’s
faith-based revolution has been surprisingly tepid. 

The reasons aren’t hard to fathom, starting with concern
about an embattled Israel. 

There is an acute awareness in Jewish leadership circles
that this administration has been surprisingly supportive of the kind of
Israeli government that usually produces U.S.-Israeli strains — a hardline
Likud government one. 

With Israel isolated and under siege, there is a strong
reluctance to jeopardize that support by challenging the administration on the
home front, and especially on its top domestic priorities. 

Top pro-Israel leaders these days talk about the need to
reward an administration that has been good to Israel — in part by muting
opposition to its domestic policies. 

There is also the question of access. 

The Bush administration didn’t invent the policy of
punishing political opponents by keeping them away from the White House, but
many observers say it has carried vindictiveness to new heights. 

Jewish leaders crave the meetings with top administration
officials and the White House receptions and photo-ops, things they need to
maintain their own input into policy decisions — and to satisfy their lay
leaders that they’re on the job. 

There’s one more issue out there limiting Jewish criticism
of the current administration: the growing dominance of a handful of big givers
in Jewish communal affairs. 

Their importance to the Jewish world is unquestioned — would
the United Jewish Communities be able to fund countless critical services
across the country and in Israel without them? But they also tend to skew the
community’s activism. 

Many of these megagivers are much more conservative and much
more Republican than a community that remains strongly Democratic and liberal. 

And many favor the things that many workers in their own
organizations fear, including big tax cuts and “trickle-down” economic
policies. 

The Jewish community is caught in a bind. It needs the big
givers to fund increasingly expensive operations — but the growing gap between
top leaders and rank-and-file Jews could be a factor in the drift away from
communal involvement outside the activist core. 

In the real world, knowing when to fight and when to
compromise is always tricky.  It’s become much harder — and the stakes have
become much greater — now that we have a president who is doing exactly what he
promised to do, and a Congress eager to go along with him.  

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