As the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination approaches, we Jews have our own special reasons to mourn.
In conducting research for my new book, “JFK, Conservative,” I came across two pieces of evidence that shed new light on Kennedy’s positive views about the American Jewish community and the warmth of his relationship with it.
The first was a tape recording of a meeting between Kennedy and American civil rights leaders following the March on Washington in 1963.
With the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. at the White House following his “I Have a Dream” speech, Kennedy launched into a discussion not of the need for federal civil rights legislation, but rather of what blacks could do to help themselves.
“Now, isn’t it possible for the Negro community to take the lead in committing major emphasis upon the responsibility of these families, even if they’re split and all the rest of the problems they have, on educating their children?” Kennedy asked/lectured. “Now, in my opinion, the Jewish community, which suffered a good deal under discrimination, and what a great effort they made, which I think has made their role influential, was in education: education of their children. And therefore they’ve been able to establish a pretty strong position for themselves.”
For blacks, the president’s advice might have been patronizing, but for Jews, it encapsulated the way Kennedy admired them and saw them as a success story of American immigrant upward mobility.
An example of that trajectory was the Jewish attorney Lewis Weinstein, who built a close relationship with Kennedy and is the source of the second piece of evidence.
Weinstein was born in Lithuania in 1905, graduated from Harvard Law School and became a partner at the Boston law firm of Foley, Hoag & Eliot.
One day in 1946, Weinstein’s partner Thomas Eliot, whose grandfather Charles had been president of Harvard, walked into Weinstein’s office and said, “Lou, meet Jack Kennedy.” From this classic Boston political moment — the Brahmin lawyer introducing the Irish Catholic politician to a Jewish partner who could help him raise campaign contributions — an enduring relationship began.
The relationship came into play later when the plight of Soviet Jewry emerged as a concern for American Jews. In a White House meeting with President Kennedy in November 1963, Weinstein told him that no American president had intervened with the Russian authorities on behalf of the Jews since President Theodore Roosevelt had protested to Czar Nicholas II after the Kishinev massacre.
Kennedy replied: “Well, here’s one president who’s ready to do something.”
Kennedy told Weinstein to organize a conference in Washington about the Soviet Jewry issue. The president told Weinstein to schedule the meeting after his upcoming political trip to Dallas.
Ira Stoll is the author of “JFK, Conservative.” He was managing editor of the Forward and the North American editor of the Jerusalem Post.