Public affairs organization
The Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) is an American Zionist, Jewish public affairs organization with local subsidiaries that carries out "action agendas on behalf of and in the name of the local Jewish communities." Councils may aim "to represent the consensus of the organized Jewish community" in the cities in which they operate, and then assist in consulting other local stakeholders on matters of importance to Jewish community values. In the United States, JCRCs are affiliated with the Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA) organization.
The organization is well known for its Israel advocacy. After the United Nations declared Zionism to be a form of racism in 1975, JCRC held a rally in opposition to the decision. The group successfully advocated for the removal of a mural of American civil rights leader Malcolm X at San Francisco State University in 1994. 12 years later, the group pushed for the censure of a mural depicting Palestinian American Columbia University professor Edward Said on the same campus.
In 2010, the group pushed for the Museum of Children's Art in Oakland, California to retract an exhibit of artwork from Palestinian children, forcing the showcase to be moved to a private location.
The group's close ties to Israeli authorities include annual study tours to Israel. In 2016, former JCRC Executive Director Jeremy Burton publicly announced the group "dissociated" itself from the Black Lives Matter movement over its pro-Palestinian stance.
American anti-Zionist advocacy group Jewish Voice for Peace has opposed JCRC's work, decrying it as pro-genocide.
Description.
Jewish Community Relations Councils (JCRC) are Jewish local advocacy arms in the United States. Most major centers of Jewish populations have a JCRC, and are either constituent departments of the local Jewish federation, totally independent, or functioning as a joint office. Typically, the board of directors of a JCRC includes local representatives of national organizations and local synagogues.
The key to the uniqueness of JCRCs compared to other Jewish communal entities is that they are locally based bodies and carry out action agendas on behalf of and in the name of the local Jewish communities.
History.
JCRCs came into being in the 1930s to provide a means for coordination of defense activity within a community, as local communities were not content to leave this activity solely to national defense organizations like the American Jewish Committee, American Jewish Congress, and Anti-Defamation League, which rarely consulted with each other or with local leadership. Like these national organizations, JCRCs focused primarily on combatting antisemitism.
In 1944, the National Community Relations Advisory Council (later renamed the Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA) was formed as an umbrella organization of 14 local JCRCs, the ADL, the two AJCs, and the Jewish Labor Committee, in the United States. In 2000, the JCPA counted among its membership 120 JCRCs.
According to Professor Daniel Elazar, from the 1950s, the JCRCs with the JCPA and federations played the largest role in Jewish representation. Their importance increased by the early 21st century as Jewish organizational life, along with national life in general, became more and more decentralized.
References.
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