UP FRONT
Civil Rights Leader
To Retire After 41 Years
Joseph L. Rauh is a longtime Jewish
leader in the fight for equality.
JAMES D. BESSER
Washington Correspondent
W
hen historians
document Jewish
involvement in the
civil rights struggles of the
past three decades, Joseph L.
Rauh will have an honored
place.
Mr. Rauh, now 80, recently
announced his retirement
after 41 years as chief
counsel to the Leadership
Conference on Civil Rights
— a position that has offered
him a unique vantage point
to observe the prominent
role of Jews in the move-
ment for equality. He will
leave his post once his
replacement has been
selected.
"My first real involvement
in civil rights was in 1941,
when I was working at the
war preparedness agencies,"
Mr. Rauh said in a recent
interview. "I was asked to
draft an executive order on
fair employment practices in
the new war plants. There
was the threat of a march on
Washington if President
Roosevelt didn't issue such
an order."
That assignment helped
crystallize Mr. Rauh's com-
mitment to civil rights — a
commitment that reached
full flower in 1948.
"That year, (Sen.) Hubert
Humphrey and I worked the
minority civil rights plank
through the Democratic
convention," he said. "That
Mr. Rauh remains
an unabashed
supporter of _
affirmative action.
was really the start of Hum-
phrey's career — and an im-
portant event for this coun-
try, because it nailed civil
rights to the banner of the
Democratic party. In today's
politics, that's both a plus
and a minus."
The Jewish community
played a pivotal role in the
civil rights battles of the
1950s and 1960s, Mr. Rauh
said.
"In my view, the Jewish
community was far and
away the best ally of the
black community," he said.
"But when Jewish groups
began to oppose affirmative
action, the civil rights
groups felt betrayed. There
was a feeling that the Jew-
ish community was not sym-
pathetic to black aspirations
— which was far from the
truth."
But the tensions arising
from the affirmative action
debate have been waning in
the last few years, he said —
despite the ferocious debate
now underway in Congress
over quotas.
That debate has threaten-
ed the Civil Rights Act of
1991, a bill designed to re-
verse a series of Supreme
Court decisions making it
more difficult for employees
to prove job discrimination
against employers.
"The current bill is
necessary because the
Supreme Court went
haywire in 1989 with a lot of
decisions making it much
more difficult to enforce
Artwork from the Los Angeles Times by Catherine Kanner. Copyright° 1991, Catherine Kanner.
Distributed by Los Angeles Times Syndicate.
equal opportunity laws,"
Mr. Rauh said.
The Bush administration
argues that the bill would
create a de facto system of
quotas. But most Jewish
organizations disagree, and
Mr. Rauh calls the ad-
ministration argument
"hogwash."
Despite the controvers y ,
Mr. Rauh remains an
unabashed supporter of af-
firmative action.
"I think affirmative action
works," he said. "And it
hasn't created any real
dislocations for other com-
munities. People tend to
forget that affirmative ac-
tion is not for unqualified
people."
While some Jewish ac-
tivists disagree with Mr.
Rauh about affirmative ac-
tion, most praise his impact
on the fight for equal oppor-
tunity.
"He's been a towering fig-
ure in the civil rights com-
munity," explained Jess
Hordes, Washington director
for the Anti-Defamation
League. ❑
Berkeley, CA 94705. A gift
of $25 will receive one of the
1,000 bronze medals; $85
earns one of the 500 pure
silver commemoratives; and
a donation of $950 brings
one of 58 solid 10-karat gold
medals.
For information, call Mel
Wacks, director of the Jew-
ish-American Hall of Fame,
(818) 884-1348.
the city for which they are
requesting Shabbat starting
time.
ROUND UP
Brandeis Appoints
Christian Scholar
Waltham, Mass. — Krister
Stendahl, former dean of the
Harvard Divinity School and
former bishop of the Church
of Sweden, has been named
the first Myra and Robert
Kraft and Jacob Hiatt
Distinguished Professor of
Christian Studies at
Brandeis University.
The appointment of Mr.
Stendahl, a biblical scholar
and authority on relations
between Jews and Chris-
tians, marks the beginning
of a joint program in com-
parative religion at
Brandeis and the College of
the Holy Cross in Worcester,
Mass. The program is
designed to heighten
awareness of shared values
among students of diverse
religious backgrounds, to
help overcome societal pre-
judices and to foster scholar-
ship and dialogue.
The program provides for
the appointment of a scholar
of Christian studies at
Brandeis and a scholar of
Jewish studies at Holy
Cross, each of whom will
teach at both institutions.
Mr. Stendahl, 70, was born
and raised in Stockholm. He
was ordained in 1944, and
finished his doctorate in
1954 with a thesis on the
Gospel of Matthew and the
Dead Sea Scrolls. He joined
the Harvard Divinity School
facility in 1954. From 1975-
1985, he chaired the work on
"The Church and the Jewish
People" for the World Coun-
cil of Churches.
The Hank Greenberg
commemorative medal.
Medals Honor
Hank Greenberg
When Michigan Jewish
Sports Hall of Famers
honored Hank Greenberg
last month, they made a big
hit with a new com-
memorative medal of the
former Tiger great, present-
ed to Greenberg's son,
Stephen, deputy commis-
sioner of Major League
Baseball.
Now medals in honor of
Hank Greenberg, who this
year became the first sport-
sman inducted into the Jew-
ish-American Hall of Fame,
are available to the public.
The design features a por-
trait of the Hall of Famer in
his Detroit Tiger uniform,
with a facsimile of his
autograph below. On the re-
verse side is a picture of
Greenberg hitting his
legendary grand slam for
Detroit in 1945.
Editions of the medals are
limited and available on a
first come-first served basis
to those who contribute to
the nonprofit Magnes Muse-
um, a Jewish museum
located at 2911 Russell St.,
Do The Right Thing
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Museum Surveys
Greek Synagogues
The Jewish Museum of
Greece has been attempting
to survey deteriorating syn-
agogues in outlying areas of
the country before the
buildings are destroyed. One
such synagogue, Etz Hayim,
in the ancient city of Hania
on the island of Crete, has
been studied by volunteers
under the direction of archi-
tect William Soloway. The
data has been collected into
a book, though funds are
still needed for publication.
The Jewish Museum of
Greece is seeking donors to
help fund the synagogue
survey project. For informa-
tion, contact William
Soloway, Sephardic House, 8
W. 70th St., New York City,
N.Y. 10023, or call (212) 873-
0300.
Compiled by
Elizabeth Applebaum
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS 11