and very helpful. It means that some
members of Congress who otherwise
might have shrugged off Christian
conservatives are more open to taking
a look at some of these issues," he said.
"When the black, Baptist communi-
ty was interested in vouchers, they
knew where to go and they came to
the Orthodox community," said Rabbi Freedman
Freedman, a member of a statewide committee for
school choice issues.
Liberal Jewish activists, many of whom have come to
personally respect Diament and Cohen, see the same
impact but are less happy about it.
An official with one group conceded that the two
"are really becoming important players" in Washington,
but said their growing visibility "erodes a traditional
Jewish political strength — our relative unity on issues
such as church-state separation. Now the other side can
point to the OU and Agudath, even though they repre-
sent only a small minority of Jews, and say, 'Look, a lot
of Jews are with us on these issues, so breaking down
the church-state wall can't be so bad, after all.'
In fact, Orthodox Jews now comprise 21 percent of
all synagogue-affiliated Jews in America, according to
the 2000 National Jewish Population Survey.
Patriotic Judaism
Cohen and Diament say their activism reflects a Jewish
community that is gradually shifting away from its lib-
eral roots.
"Our presence has debunked the myth that the
Jewish community is monolithic," Cohen said. "When
we came to Washington and started advocating views
that were substantially different than other Jewish
groups, we became a resource to some people who did
not have Jewish support before."
Diament says their religion-based activism increas-
ingly serves the broader Jewish community's interests,
especially at a time when many Reform and
Conservative parents are struggling with the costs of
Jewish day school — and as Jewish social service agen-
cies, facing big cuts in government funding under the
old church-state rules, may benefit from President
Bush's so-called faith-based initiatives.
"I think we have managed to find ways to pursue
issues that simultaneously serve both the parochial con-
cerns of the Orthodox community, but also the broad-
er concerns of the Jewish community and of American
society," Diament said.
That broader impact is hard to measure, and many
liberal activists dispute it. Easier to gauge is the poten-
tial impact on the special interests of the Orthodox
community. For example, day schools and social service
and health institutions run by Orthodox groups
already have benefited from their efforts.
When the Seattle Hebrew Academy was denied fed-
eral disaster funds to help it rebuild after a 2001 earth-
quake, the Orthodox Union stepped in. Diament used
his connections at the White House to get the decision
reversed.
Both Cohen and Diament also have become major
players in the fight to make seemingly minor changes
in an education reauthorization bill that could make a
big difference to parents of special-needs children who
attend parochial schools.
The House-passed bill provides what they say will be
a modest boost for those parents; Cohen and
Diament are working hard for even more comprehen-
sive changes in the Senate.
As usual, it's hard to tell where the parochial ends
and the ideological ends. Changes in the Individuals
with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) could provide
immediate, practical help for hard-pressed Orthodox
parents.
But critics charge it could also be a backdoor route
to more extensive government funding of religious
services.
For proponents of the act, its focus is solely on the
benefit of children.
Southfielders Ieshula and Devorah Ishakis were
members of a summer 2002 series of meetings coordi-
nated and attended by Abba Cohen in Washington.
Ieshula is a lawyer and a CPA; Devorah, a special edu-
cation English teacher through-Parents for Torah for
All Children (P'tach), an agency providing resource
rooms in Detroit's Orthodox day schools with a goal
of mainstreaming children with special needs.
When a child in Devorah's Beth Jacob School for
Girls class was denied services, the two joined a group
on a mission to Washington to lobby for renewal of
IDEA and to make changes to make it easier for chil-
dren in both public and private schools to receive serv-
ices.
'As a resource for Orthodox Jews, Agudath puts
forth a voice that gets further," Ieshula Ishakis said.
"They prepared all briefs for our meetings with the
Department of Education, with representatives from
the White House and Dale Kildee, [Democratic] con-
gressman from Flint, who served on the committee for
an original draft of the Michigan Special Education
Law."
Beyond Washington
The rise of Orthodox involvement in the capital has
taken place over more than a decade. Fifteen years ago,
the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, the
American Jewish Congress and the American Jewish
Committee dominated Jewish domestic activism in
Washington.
The Washington representatives of those groups had
become central figures in liberal coalitions. All three
were involved in domestic affairs in ways that suggested
that liberal politics were synonymous with Jewish com-
munal influence.
That began to change in the late 1980s when the late
Rabbi Moshe Sherer, the longtime head of Agudath
Israel of America, decided that the Jewish community's
priorities were awry, with too many decisions made by
big contributors instead of Jewish scholars and religious
leaders.
On domestic issues, particularly the question of gov-
ernment support for religious-school education, Cohen
says the Orthodox community saw "only a vacuum" in
Washington.
"We feel that Jewish education is the key to Jewish
survival," Cohen said.
"So it should be not just a community interest, but
one of our biggest political items and at the top of the
Jewish political agenda in Washington."
But there was also an Israel component. Many in the
Agudath Israel movement believed that pro-Israel polit-
ical activism was guided by secular concerns, not
Jewish law.
Former OU president Mandell Ganchrow
"Today, the Israel issue is much more complicated,"
Cohen said. "We feel we want to express ourselves on
the issue as an Orthodox community. More and more
there is a religious dimension to the questions Israel's
leaders face — whether or not to give territory back to
the Arabs, for example."
Orthodox Hit The Hill
Agudath, commonly seen as representing the haredi
community, was first to break the Washington barrier.
It opened its Washington office in 1989 and quickly
focused on a key issue for its constituents: education.
Agudath's timing was good.
"It was an exciting time," said Cohen, the son of a
high-ranking CIA official who grew up in Washington
and earned a master's degree in international affairs and
a Georgetown law degree as well as ordination from the
Ner Israel Rabbinical College in Baltimore. "There was
a greater presence of religion in the public square, there
was a much greater willingness to explore programs
that would involve religious communities."
The OU followed a similar path to Washington.
Former OU President Mandell Ganchrow said the
group's presence began in the early 1980s with summer
internship programs. When he became OU president
in 1994, Ganchrow said, "I realized we had the poten-
tial to be a real power, but the only way to do it was to
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