Candid S.F. leaders recall controversies

Fervent anti-Zionism raged among San Francisco's top Jewish leaders in the 1940s, leading many to initially oppose the creation of Israel.

Until the mid-1970s, women were the "second-class citizens" of the Jewish world, which kept them from attaining top leadership spots.

And Jewish day schools were seen by many top leaders as impediments to integration into mainstream America.

Such perspectives -- in sharp contrast to today's prevailing views -- are part of the official oral histories of 18 past presidents and executive directors of the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation.

Known as the JCF Leadership Oral History Project, the set of transcribed interviews offers a behind-the-scenes look at some of this century's most influential Bay Area Jews.

The U.C. Berkeley Regional Oral History Project controls the interviews but relies on outside grants to pay for its work. The federation's Jewish Community Endowment Fund finances the project. Each of the oral histories, which are available locally at U.C. Berkeley's Bancroft Library, cost about $7,000 to produce.

Since the project began in 1990, 11 of the oral histories have been made public.

Those leaders -- now in their late 60s to early 80s and in some cases deceased -- are candid and at times controversial. Here are excerpts from their oral histories that shine light on the Bay Area's Jewish past.

Anti-Zionism

A number of leaders recalled the local influence in the 1940s of the American Council for Judaism, a group that strongly opposed Jewish nationalism or the creation of the state of Israel.

Oral historian Eleanor Glaser noted that Lloyd W. Dinkelspiel Sr., president of San Francisco's Jewish Welfare Fund, described the city in 1948 as "probably the least national Zionistic of all major communities."

Jesse Feldman and the late Robert Sinton agreed.

San Francisco was one of the few communities in the United States with a "very active" chapter of the American Council for Judaism, said Feldman, who was federation president from 1973 to 1974.

The council was "terribly concerned about dual loyalty -- the controversy between [David] Ben-Gurion talking about Jews as a nation was anathema to the American Council for Judaism, where you were a Jew by religion only," said Sinton, federation president from 1967 to 1968.

"They did not agree with the idea of Jewish peoplehood. They just wouldn't buy the Zionist point of view here."

Sinton pointed to Rabbi Irving Reichert as the main opponent of Zionism here. Reichert was both the spiritual leader of San Francisco's Congregation Emanu-El and a national vice president of the American Council for Judaism.

The founding of the Jewish state in 1948 was a watershed, however.

Louis Weintraub, who began working in the local Jewish community in the late 1940s and was the federation's executive vice president from 1970 to 1975, described the council's eventual demise after Israel's statehood.

"Although they may not have believed in the need for a state of Israel, they were willing to support it since it provided a haven for Jewish refugees and relief and rehabilitation for those in need.

Ideologically, they were not Zionists, but philanthropically they would lend support," Weintraub said. "They were able to separate ideology from the business of saving lives."

Still, according to rumor, certain clashes persisted.

"I remember hearing that Golda Meir, when she was labor minister, had a hard time getting an appointment to see the president of our Welfare Fund. He finally saw her, but it was difficult. That's hearsay. But it was probably right," Sinton said.

Richard Goldman, president from 1981 to 1982, offered a slightly different account of a Meir visit.

"She was met at the airport and told she would not be accepted here -- this is long before she was prime minister -- and that she should take the next airplane out of town. Or words to that effect," Goldman said. "They wouldn't let her stay."

Israel

The late Mel Swig described the excitement at Israel's founding as infectious.

"Finally, the opportunity to have a place where Jews could call home became possible in 1947. The state was formed in 1948, and it just enveloped me as far as being the right thing to do...and the right thing...for our people," said Swig, who estimated that he had visited the Jewish state about 20 times.

Swig, president from 1971 to 1972, recalled a federation trip to Vienna in 1961 when the Jewish world was trying to get Jews out of Communist-controlled Romania. The refugees first traveled to Vienna and then flew to Israel on El Al. Swig acknowledged that the government didn't let the Jews out through the kindness of its heart.

"Paid is the word, bribed or paid, whatever you want to call it. Yes, we paid so much a head."

He saw children: "Some of them had blood on their ears where their little earrings had been torn off for the gold...The people were confused, of course. They came in and we shook hands with them...It was exciting to see these people coming out of Romania to freedom."

Swig lauded the federation's current close relationship with the Jewish state.

"When we want to raise money, what do we do? We take people to Israel. When we want to influence the young people, we send them by the bucketful to Israel. Why? Because that's where the action is. That's where they learn and can see firsthand what's going on in the world of Judaism," Swig said.

Goldman remembered when he accompanied then-Vice President George Bush to Israel in 1986. He saw Barbara Bush wipe tears from her eyes at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem.

Jerome Braun, like others, praised the accomplishments of Israelis.

"They took a desert and made a blooming garden out of it, a blooming orchard, plus all the construction," said Braun, president from 1979 to 1980. "Israel had to survive, had to become a Jewish homeland, had to rescue and be a sanctuary for refugees and emigres."

Today, as the late Samuel Ladar said in 1990, an emphasis on Israel has become the "guiding star of the federation." Ladar served as president from 1965 to 1966.

Women's emerging role

Though women now serve at all levels in the volunteer leadership and three have become federation presidents, such equality hasn't always been the case

Frances Green became the federation's first female president when she served from 1975 to 1976. She worked her way up from president of the women's division in the mid-1960s and chair of the federation's overall fund-raising campaign in the early 1970s.

"Well, at this point [in the early 1960s], the women were really the second-class citizens of the federation although the federation gave good lip service to it and were certainly nice about it," Green said.

She tried to work with the men, not fight them.

"I just couldn't accept some of the remarks that were made about women. They tried to be nice: `You cute little ladies, you're doing such a wonderful job, blah, blah, blah,'" Green said.

She considered it "patronizing...but there was an underlying threat if the women ever really got going that they would take over."

There were definitely men with more liberal attitudes, however.

When Green first became the first woman to serve as the federation's campaign chair, the late John Steinhart regarded it as a step up.

"It was time you had a woman in leadership in the federation," said Steinhart, president from 1969 to 1970.

Even better, in his eyes, was having a female president.

"It was long past due," he said.

By the time Green became federation president in 1975, she saw that the environment had changed for women.

"By that time I really hadn't thought too much about it, because I think it was the hardest step to be the first woman campaign chairman. I think this was a natural follow-up," she said.

Day schools

Several of the leaders openly acknowledge their distaste for the Jewish day school.

"I really wish I could really believe that it makes a better Jewish child," Green said.

She also wondered whether parents wanted a good Jewish education or just an alternative to escape public schools.

Goldman objected to Jewish schools, fearing the consequences for Jews "if they ghettoize themselves."

Swig said he personally opposed Jewish day schools but let the community's support of them sway his position.

"We are a multiethnic, multiracial, multireligious society. Basically, I feel that our children should be exposed to that way of life and shouldn't be separatists," Swig said.

Peter Haas, president from 1977 to 1978, likewise preferred keeping Jewish children in the mainstream.

"I was quite lukewarm about Jewish day schools. I guess I feel much more that we should be a part of the community," he said.

But Haas added that the federation's growing support of day schools was inevitable because "that's the will of the community."

Laurence Myers was one the few past presidents to support Jewish day schools.

In the 1960s and 1970s, "there was a constituency in the federation of powerful lay leaders who believed that day schools were not appropriate for the Jewish community, that the public school system and private school system afforded enough opportunities...I was not of that school," said Myers, president from 1986 to 1988.

Protests of the '70s

The unrest and spirit of protest permeating U.S. campuses led to intrusions of the federation's offices in the '70s.

In 1971, Weintraub recalled, U.C. Berkeley students spent a weekend in the federation offices to protest what they felt was the insufficient amount allocated to Jewish culture and education.

"They didn't do damage to our property but they did frighten our personnel," he said.

Steinhart recalled his irritation with them.

"The first thing they had to do was sing songs. They had a guitar with them, and they had to sing songs. Finally, I got a little annoyed and I said, `All right now, kids, you've had your fun. What do you want? We've got other things to do,'" he said.

"We were also a little critical of them because some of these kids were from families who were giving good sums to the charity."

The militant Jewish Defense League also caused trouble.

"We did what we could to keep them from coming into San Francisco and establishing a chapter here," Ladar said.

In 1975, several JDL members raced into the federation office, grabbed Weintraub and another staff member -- a Holocaust survivor with health problems -- and physically threw them out.

The JDL members ran into Weintraub's office, locked the door, broke into his desk and threw all his papers out the window.

"They didn't like our allocations," Weintraub said.

Weintraub and others called the police, who took the JDL members to jail. The federation refused to drop charges, he said, due to the damage inflicted and "the ugly way they came at us."

The offenders were convicted and given 30 days in jail, Weintraub recalled.

"It was the JDL's invasion of our office that finally caused us to bulletproof the reception area leading to our offices," Weintraub said.

Marijuana

America's drug culture also infiltrated the Bay Area's Jewish community.

The first known incidents of youths caught with drugs at a Jewish summer camp happened in the early 1960s, Sinton recalled.

"There was marijuana in the camp, and the parents were upset...and we had a big investigation and so forth," he said.

For such reasons, Sinton considered youth activities at San Francisco's Jewish Community Center a deterrent to negative influences.

"We were always worried about the teens. The teenagers were always a problem," Sinton said, chuckling.

Jewish Bulletin

Few of the former leaders had much good to say about the Jewish Bulletin.

Bulletin publisher Marc Klein "raises a lot of controversial issues that I think impede fund-raising," Myers said.

Though the federation subsidizes the Bulletin's budget, Myers noted, Klein then goes on to print articles "critical of Israel...He shouldn't be in a position where he takes contrary positions that affect our very existence."

But Swig, also a Bulletin board president from 1969 to 1971, defended the newspaper.

"It is certainly not run by the federation, nor was it ever. A lot of people identify it and think that because it is subsidized by the federation, that it is run by the federation. It is not. The federation puts ads in there and get some compensatory advertising," he said.

"But in terms of its editorials, or its content, the federation does nothing, to my knowledge to ever influence it. It has little or no influence on it. So it is an independent operation, and that's the way it ought to be, in my opinion."

Federation's role

Earlier this century, Sinton said, the federation's precursor was primarily interested in supporting "the indigent or the exile, the refugee."

Today, Sinton said, federation leaders ask: "What can we do here to promote Jewish life in the diaspora? That was not discussed in the old days. That had a very low priority."

Goldman saw a need for older federation leaders to step aside and make room for the younger generation.

"The federation has become too much of a club," he said.

Green saw the federation as growing ever more popular.

"It's a superagency now. I think the changes really are that instead of being looked on as `Well, do I have to give?' and `I don't want to give,' I think it's gotten many, many, many, many more people involved in giving to Jewish causes and being proud of doing so," she said.

Swig, too, applauded the federation.

"It transcends all religious factions, if you will. Whether you're Reform, Conservative or Orthodox, we're all Jews...It doesn't separate the people," he said.