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"Sunset Strip" 29536 Northwestern Hwy., Southfield Hours:M-F 10 -5:30 10 - 5 Sat 36 FRIDAY, MARCH 2, 1990 AJCommittee Tightens Belt, Folds Magazine ARTHUR J. MAGIDA Special to The Jewish News Pie -s'efiCrense , T he American Jewish Committee, once con- sidered the wealthiest of the national Jewish defense organizations, is cutting back programs and staff to help make up for its $1 million yearly deficit. One of the results of a four- day board of governors meeting last week was the announcement that Present Tense, the Committee's bimonthly liberal magazine, would cease publication with its next issue. While Committee officials said the decision was a fi- nancial one, others noted that Commentary, the Committee's conservative monthly, was spared, despite the fact that it, too, operates, at a deficit. Some felt that the fact that Present Tense has published articles critical of Israel and of the Jewish establishment was a factor in the decision. Other major changes in- clude eliminating up to 32 staff positions at the Com- mittee's headquarters in New York and trimming the number of areas the organ- ization works in from 30 to three. The Committee's overall restructuring "was motivated by the timing to balance" its $1 million year- ly deficit, said Sholom Com- ay, Committee president, in a telephone interview from Pittsburgh, where he heads a firm called Action In- dustries. But "the underly- ing motivation was to focus our work more clearly and to improve its impact." "In its 84 years," said Comay, "the Committee has grown in lots of different directions, like a tree. It needed some pruning." The organization had incurred a large debt, he said, because "programming had grown faster than resources." The Committee's new structure, said Comay, will focus its efforts on intergroup relations, Israel, Jewish communal affairs, public policy, international relations and eradicating bigotry. The organization's three major goals, as now defined, are: • Ensuring the security of Jews in the United States and throughout the world; • Safeguarding and nur- turing pluralism; • Enriching the quality Present Tense: Liberals lose a voice. of Jewish life. Trimming the Committee's mandate "may be a two-edged sword," said David Gordis, who was ex- ecutive vice-president of the Committee from 1984 to 1987 and is now vice- president of the University of Judaism in Los Angeles. Gordis disagreed "with the notion that an organization like this should be focused on a few things. I don't believe that an organization of this size and scope should not be in a lot of areas." Responsibilities for the organization's international relations will be transferred to its Washington office, whose staff will be increas- ed. Perhaps the most con- troversial decision in the blueprint for the Committee was to pull the plug on Pre- sent Tense magazine, the organization's counterpoint to its more successful con- servative magazine, Com- mentary. The fact that two magazines with diametrical- ly opposed agendas have been published by the same organization purportedly reflected the breadth of po- litical opinions with the modern Jewish community, as well as the Committee's ability to encompass and echo it. According to Comay, each magazine had a deficit of $200,000 to $250,000. But a Present Tense staffer said that magazine's deficit was as low as $85,000. The offer to both maga- zines was the same: They could remain at Committee headquarters, but the organ- ization would no longer pro- vide funding for them, and they would have to defray their own deficits. "Our streamlined budget had no room for magazines," said Comay. Recently, Commentary