A sample sermon, which is included in the guide and assaults the religious right, has drawn fire from Matt Brooks, executive director of the National Jewish Coalition, the Republican Jewish group.
Brooks said that even though he supports the effort to register American Jews to vote, he is consulting an attorney to investigate whether to file charges against the Jewish groups for what he says is partisan activity.
As nonprofit, tax-exempt organizations, Jewish groups and synagogues are prohibited by the Internal Revenue Service from engaging in partisan political activity. The charges prompted the effort’s sponsors to apologize for the tone of the offending section. At the same time, they maintained that the sermon and their effort to register voters is not partisan.
“This is a small blemish in a much larger effort,” said Lawrence Rubin, executive vice chairman of the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council.
NJCRAC and the four Jewish religious movements sponsored the voter guide, which was endorsed by dozens of major Jewish organizations and local federations.
The guide’s sample sermon admonishes American Jews that “the religious right is a threat to our nation, to the Jewish community and to our fundamental liberties.”
The sermon goes on to say that “the leaders of the religious right are peddlers of coercion who, if given the chance, will launch a radical assault on pluralism, civil rights and religious freedom.”
Brooks says the statements, using code words, essentially tell Jews to vote for Democrats.
“In the minds of the Jewish community, the religious right and the Republican Party are linked,” Brooks said. “Any member of the Jewish community who was sitting in shul during the High Holy Days and heard this sermon could have [reached] no other conclusion but to register and vote Democrat.”
Sponsors of the effort agree that the section on the religious right had, in the words of Mark Pelavin, associate director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, “a more combative tone and was more aggressive than is appropriate.” But he, like other sponsors, disputed Brooks’ charge that it advocates partisan activity.
“Those who are magnifying the one paragraph, in one appendix, of a 20-page document should frankly be ashamed of themselves,” said Pelavin, whose organization prepared the guide.
As for Brooks’ threat to take legal action, Marc Stern, co-director of the American Jewish Congress’ legal department, said Brooks would have a difficult time proving his case. “The IRS generally acts only when there is the clearest of evidence,” Stern said. “That does not appear to be the case.”
Not all American Jews, however, believe that the Christian Coalition is a danger to the Jewish community. Two rabbis, Yechiel Eckstein and Daniel Lapin, addressed the Christian Coalition’s annual convention here last week.
Eckstein, founder and president of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, praised the coalition for bringing “moral sanity, sobriety and principles back into society.”
He received a standing ovation from the more than 3,000 activists when he said, “True Christians are among the Jews’ best friends.”