Posted By James Besser
Behind the Headlines: Jews 'Mostly Mute' or not? / James Besser in Washington
It's good to know important people are reading the Jewish Week, even when their perusal results in criticism.
Recently the Jewish Funds for Justice took us to task for a story with this headline: "Jewish Groups Mostly Mute Over Immigrant Bashing."
Rabbi Jill Jacobs, writing on the group's popular jspot blog site, said this:
"As it happens, Jewish groups have been anything but silent on the immigration issue. As we've discussed here before, more than twenty Jewish groups (including Jewish Funds for Justice, HIAS, ADL, Progressive Jewish Alliance, and others) created a Jewish Task Force for Comprehensive Immigration Reform about a year and a half ago, and have used this body to issue letters and action alerts, put out educational material, and even create a poster."
She's right -- but the Jewish Week story did not argue otherwise.
The story made it clear Jewish groups were at the forefront of the push for immigration reform. But that wasn't the focus of the article; instead, it was on the reaction of Jewish groups -- or lack of reaction -- to the overt immigrant bashing by 2008 political candidates.
Only the Anti-Defamation League has challenged candidates to tamp down the anti-immigrant rhetoric, and the ADL didn't name names. Other groups have been conspicuous by their silence.
But Rabbi Jacobs was also right in that the story did not note that her group has sometimes criticized anti-immigration rhetoric in broad-brush terms, although it has not confronted candidates who have made the issue a staple of the 2008 campaigns.
The article never claimed Jewish groups weren't involved in the fight for comprehensive immigration reform, but only that they have been timid about criticizing the fanning of public rage about illegal immigration as a partisan tool in this year's campaigns.
Perhaps that distinction should have been made more explicit. And it would have been useful and interesting to explore the connection between the failure of this year's push for immigration reform and the anti-immigrant rhetoric that is getting more heated by the day, although that would have required a much longer story.
But did the Jewish Week story suggest Jewish groups weren't leaders in the long, frustrating fight for comprehensive immigration reform? We don't think so.