by Zev Chafets
In the past few years, however, the primacy of New York and the eastern seaboard has been challenged by Rabbi Marvin Hier—founder and director of the Menachem Begin Yeshiva High School, the West Coast branch of Yeshiva University, and most importantly the Simon Wiesenthal Holocaust Center. Over the past decade, Hier has employed aggressive marketing, astute media management, and emotional appeals to West Coast patriotism in order to create one of the country’s most successful Jewish organizations.
The Wiesenthal Center and its sister institutions are located in a single squat brick complex on Pico Boulevard in Los Angeles. The building, with its dark, lugubrious interior, seems strangely out of place in California, a reminder that Judaism has traditionally been an indoor activity.
The building also reflects the personality of its founder. Marvin Hier, an Orthodox rabbi who looks like a middle-aged Duddy Kravitz, is a small, intense man with piercing black eyes, a prominent hook nose, and a little potbelly that strains at the buttons of his monogrammed shirts. He was born and raised on New York’s Lower East Side, and he remains a traditionalist. On Saturday afternoons, for example, in the bean sprout capital of America, Marvin Hier eats cholent—the heavy meat-and-potato stew that his mother used to make back in New York. But the rabbi is also an iconoclast and a visionary—traits that have enabled him to become one of Jewish America’s most successful entrepreneurs.
Marvin Heir began his career as a congregational rabbi, and eventually he wound up in an Orthodox synagogue in Vancouver, Canada. In those days he used to visit Los Angeles frequently, and during his trips to Babylon he made two interesting discoveries. First, that L.A. was a Jewish boomtown, with hundreds of thousands of people and more pouring in every day; and second, that there was no important national Jewish organization headquartered on the West Coast.
The young rabbi was immediately impressed by the potential this situation offered. Thirty years earlier a fellow New Yorker, Walter O’Malley, had exploited a similar vacuum by moving his baseball team, the Brooklyn Dodgers, across the continent to Chavez Ravine. Hier has emulated him by establishing the first big league Jewish franchise on the West Coast.
“I saw that California, especially Los Angeles, was very underdeveloped from a Jewish point of view,” he said. “The American Jewish investment out here was spread very thin. Until we came along, the entire American Jewish world was tilted toward about thirty square miles on the East Coast. Take them away and there goes your Yiddishkeit.”
Unlike O’Malley, Hier had no organization of his own. But he did have a backer, Sam Belzberg, a multimillionaire congregant in Vancouver. Belzberg, already one of the most prominent Jewish philanthropists in North America, agreed to bankroll the L.A. franchise, provided that it was run on a businesslike basis. Hier accepted the condition, and by the late 1970s the two men were busy setting up shop in Los Angeles.
The move was far from popular. “The local Jews out here didn’t want us and neither did the national organizations,” said Hier. “But the truth is, Jewish growth is in California, not back East. There are already close to one million Jews on the West Coast, and that number is going to grow.”
Hier began by creating a West Coast affiliate of New York’s Orthodox Yeshiva University. Unlike the main school, the West Coast branch, which has an enrollment of about forty, offers only Judaica. The Menachem Begin Yeshiva High School is more ambitious. Established in 1980, it has around three hundred students and a basketball team, the Yeshiva Panthers, that is the class of its division.
“We’ve won the championship three out of the last four years,” Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the school’s headmaster, told me proudly. “And out here, it’s not like in Brooklyn. I mean, it’s not like we’re competing against Flatbush Yeshiva.” In addition to basketball, the school offers secular and Jewish studies—Talmud, Bible, Jewish history—“the whole shmeer,” in Cooper’s words.
The high school and college are important elements in Marvin Hier’s operation, but its centerpiece is the Simon Wiesenthal Holocaust Center, named in honor of the renowned Nazi hunter. Hier wanted an organization that would appeal not only to Orthodox Jews but to the mainstream; and only Israel and the Holocaust have that kind of broad appeal.
“In Jerusalem, Jews gather around the kotel (the Wailing Wall),” he told me. “Here in America, they gather around the Holocaust.” In setting up the Wiesenthal Center, Hier set himself up with the West Coast Holocaust franchise.
Both Marvin Hier and his disciple, Rabbi Cooper, believe in the need to act aggressively in order to counter anti-Semitism in America. In the capital of cool they employ a hot, angry style just short of Meir Kahane’s, and they are constantly on the lookout for issues that appeal to the Jewish sense of vulnerability. Hier took on CBS over its decision to cast the virulently anti-Israel actress Vanessa Redgrave as a Jewish concentration camp inmate; led the attack on Jesse Jackson’s anti-Semitic remarks in the 1984 primary campaign; and has been active in fighting Arab propaganda on the West Coast.
“We address issues that people respond to,” Rabbi Cooper told me. “We monitor anti-Semitic statements, the activities of the neo-Nazis, Arab activities, whatever. The Anti-Defamation League does the same thing? Good, great. There should be four more groups doing it. I mean, there should never be a time when the president of the United States can pick up a telephone and make one call to one Jewish leader and have spoken to everyone. We tried that in the 1930s and it didn’t work out too well.
“Look, after the Holocaust, we have two strikes against us. And Rabbi Hier says that a ballplayer with two strikes has to choke up on the bat, be a little more aggressive, not take any close pitches. That’s our philosophy here, and it makes us a little more militant than some of the other organizations around the country.”
When I mentioned the two-strike analogy to Hier he seemed somewhat vague—his hero is O’Malley, not Pee Wee Reese. But the attitude behind the analogy was plainly his. Hier believes that the threat to Jewry is worldwide, and his advocacy of Jewish rights extends far beyond the borders of California.
“Our focus is on the defense of Jews in America and abroad,” he said. “The threat is everywhere and we will fight for the rights of Jews anywhere. We have contacts in the Middle East, for example, that other Jewish organizations just don’t have. That’s how we got ahold of that anti-Semitic book by Tlas, the Syrian defense minister, even before the Israelis did. We have contacts in Europe, we deal with the Vatican, the British, and French governments. Our efforts are international.”
This kind of ambition requires big money, and the Wiesenthal Center has been especially successful in raising it. Like A.B. Data in Milwaukee, the center operates mostly through direct mailings, a technique that brought in 350,000 individual contributions in 1986, according to Rabbi Cooper. But not all of the center’s money comes from ten-dollar gifts. “Who runs the biggest fundraising dinner on the West Coast Jewish scene with all the big makhers in attendance?” Hier demanded rhetorically. “We do, that’s who. Why do they come? Because we are effective.”
Marvin Hier’s carpetbagging has excited the anger and jealousy of fellow Jewish leaders. “Some people complain that the Wiesenthal Center duplicates the activities of the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, and other organizations. And, in total honesty, we do to some extent,” he admitted. “But our critics don’t advocate giving all cancer research money to one medical center—they know it’s important to diversify. Hatred and anti-Semitism are not the exclusive concern of any one group. Besides, all Jewish institutions need money to survive, not just the ones in New York. And believe me, there’s enough for everybody.”
Marvin Hier, David Arnow, and Israel Singer are self-appointed Jewish leaders. Singer’s choice of Juan Perón as his model is apt; like the late Argentinian statesman, he and his colleagues function in a world without democracy. The American Jewish community has no electoral process, no constitution, and no publicly chosen representatives. It is, if anything, a
plutocracy—anyone with enough money can buy into the leadership business.
The closest thing to a central organization is the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations. But the conference is only an umbrella group, and it deals exclusively with foreign affairs, such as Israel or Soviet Jewry. Occasionally it has produced an outstanding leader—Rabbi Alexander Schindler of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations comes to mind—but usually it is headed by wealthy, well-meaning lawyers.
The real power in the Jewish community is vested not in the presidents or the Perónistas, but in local Jewish federations around the country. The federations are the definitive expression of the communal consensus in America. Although they reflect the values and ideals of the prosperous, respectable Jewish middle class, they are dominated by millionaires. Edgar Bronfman and David Arnow may be wealthy enough to own separate organizations, but most of the heavy hitters are connected to the federations and, through them, to Israel by way of the United Jewish Appeal.
The UJA divides the country into “good” and “bad” federation towns. Detroit is considered one of the best—a model of efficiency, generosity, and affiliation. I wanted to take a look at how federated Jewish life is organized; and since I grew up in the Motor City, I chose Detroit as my model.
My first stop was my stepfather Joe Colten’s house in suburban West Bloomfield. When I arrived, Joe had just returned home from a two-week UJA mission to Israel. During his absence a great pile of mail had accumulated and his housekeeper had stuffed the letters into three brown Farmer Jack shopping bags and placed them at the foot of the stairs.
Joe was exhausted from the transatlantic flight, but habit made him sit down and begin sorting through the correspondence. He is a youthful man of seventy who looks a little like Jack Benny, and he has an almost adolescent idealism about other people in general and the Jewish world in particular. As a kid growing up in Detroit he was an ardent Boy Scout, and he is still a credit to his troop—honest in business, unflaggingly good-tempered, moderate in his views, and annoyingly free of bad habits. He exercises every day without discussing it, goes bird-watching on Saturday mornings, studies Hebrew on Sundays (something he has done all his life), votes for liberal Democrats, reads The New Yorker, drinks two scotch-on-the-rocks before dinner, roots for all Detroit sports teams, and sometimes races after fire engines with a teenager’s enthusiasm.
The huge stack of letters in the Farmer Jack shopping bags had nothing to do with bird-watching or baseball, however; the letters were from the Jews. Joe Colten is, first and foremost, a federation man, a member of the Jewish community. He has spent his life working for Jewish causes, donating more time and money than he could afford. One result of this dedication is that he has managed to get himself on just about every Jewish mailing list in the country.
Joe had been away from home for only twelve days, but in his absence he had been contacted by dozens of famous people and national and international organizations. The Jewish Welfare Federation wanted him to attend an open house. The Zionist Organization of America sent him a bulletin. There was a solicitation from the Jewish Association for Retarded Citizens, an invitation to participate in a mission to Israel with the Michigan chapter of the Friends of the Hebrew University, and an acknowledgment of a contribution to AIPAC. He got a letter from the Soviet Jewry Committee asking for money, another from the Jewish National Fund beseeching him to plant trees in Israel, and a third exhorting him to “get out the vote” for the World Zionist Congress elections.
And there was a solicitation from the National Jewish Center for Immunology and Respiratory Illness in Denver; a bulletin from the American Society of Israel’s Technion University; a letter from MOPAC, a local Jewish political action committee, asking for $1,000; a note from the Allied Jewish Campaign; and a fundraising appeal from the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces, the only army in the world with a foreign fan club.
And a NATPAC solicitation from Joan Rivers; a letter from Jack Klugman asking for money for the Institute for Jewish Hospice; and a note from Arthur Waskow on behalf of the Shalom Center, for “Jewish perspectives on preventing a nuclear holocaust.” And an invitation to a Polish-Jewish-Ukrainian dialogue sponsored by the American Jewish Committee; a solicitation from the Anti-Defamation League; an imitation leatherette address book from the Yeshiva Gedolah of Greater Detroit (with an attached form for donations); an invitation to a United Hebrew Schools luncheon featuring “Original and Traditional Folk Music Performed Vibrantly by Laslo and Sandor Slomovitz”; and appeals from the Crown Heights Jewish Community Council of Brooklyn, the American Friends of Magen David Adom Society, and the Israel Mobile Mitzvah Centers of the Chabad Chasidim of New York.
“What are you going to do with all this stuff?” I asked when he was finished going through the correspondence. “I’ve never even heard of most of these organizations.”
Joe smiled. He had heard of them all, and then some. “You don’t have to know about Jewish organizations,” he said mildly. “You live in Israel. But for us it’s different. If you can’t do more, at least you can write a check or go to a meeting.”
“Don’t tell me you send money to these outfits. I mean, the Crown Heights Jewish Community Council of Brooklyn? Mobile Mitzvah Centers? You’ve got to be kidding.”
Joe gave an embarrassed laugh. “I won’t send them very much—just a few dollars. Nothing significant. It’s just part of being a member of the community. It’s something you do. Most of my time and whatever donation I make go to the federation anyway; that’s what really counts.”
In Detroit, the federation is a kind of municipal Jewish government in exile. When I was growing up in the 1960s, there were eighty thousand Jews in Detroit, most of them clustered in homogeneous neighborhoods in the city’s northwest corner. But in the summer of 1967, just as I was leaving for Israel, the adjacent black ghettos erupted in one of the worst urban riots in American history. Forty-three people were killed, and large parts of the city were transformed into smoldering ruins.
For people like Joe Colten, who were born and raised in the city, it was a heartbreaking and threatening development. The Jewish community fled Detroit en masse, moving so far and so fast that a lot of people spent the winter in unfinished houses in deserted pastureland ten or fifteen miles north of the old neighborhood.
In the suburbs, the Jews rebuilt their communal life around shopping malls, car pools, and designer synagogues. Meanwhile, in the city, Detroit elected its first black mayor, the flamboyant Coleman Young. Young gave Detroit an aggressively black administration that many whites (including many Jews) considered hostile. The tone was set in Young’s inaugural address, when he advised the criminals of Detroit “to hit Eight Mile Road and keep going.” Eight Mile Road separates the city from its northern suburbs, and many of the uprooted Jews took a dim view of the mayor’s suggestion.
The years since 1967 have been hard on Detroit. The aftermath of the riots blended into the prolonged recession of the 1970s and early 1980s, and the city lost both confidence and economic momentum. It also developed a deserved reputation as one of the most violent places in America. I arrived in town shortly after No Crime Day—a Coleman Young–sponsored cease-fire that turned into a fiasco when three people, including a Detroit policeman, were murdered and eight others were shot.
“They’ve even got a murder meter on the Lodge Freeway,” Joe Colten told me unhappily. “It’s like the old automobile production meter except it measures homicides.”
“How are the numbers this year?” I asked. Detroiters follow the statistics of mayhem with the pained expertise of stockbrokers in a bear market.
“We’re still number one in the country, I’m afraid,” he said. “I just don’t think things are getting any better.”
The prosperity and security of the Jewish community contrast markedly with the violence and decay of the city it left behind. Although it is shrinking—there are about fifty-five thousand Jews in the Detroit area, twenty-five th
ousand less than a generation ago—the community radiates middle-class respectability and good citizenship. Most Jews belong to a synagogue or temple, and perhaps ninety percent donate money to some Jewish cause. The bulk of these donations come during the annual federation fundraising drive, which is the most important activity of the Jewish year.
Detroit has always been a good fundraising town, and in 1987 the federation was going for a new record—twenty-five million dollars. That sounded like an astonishingly large amount of money, but Colten, who was a member of the planning committee, was confident it could be raised. “We’re having our first committee meeting this week,” he told me. “Why don’t you come along and see how it’s done.”
The meeting was held on a Monday morning at eight. As we drove to the suburban Hebrew school where it was to take place, Joe filled me in on how the $25 million would be spent.
“Half of what we raise stays here in Detroit to fund local projects and services. We run two Jewish centers, a year-around camp, three day schools, old-age homes, and vocational and family counseling services. Twelve million dollars may sound like a lot, but you’d be surprised how much it costs to maintain the community. And the other half goes to Israel.”
“Don’t people mind sending so much to Israel?” I asked.
Joe shook his head. “Israel raises money for local projects, not the other way around. If we didn’t have Israel, people wouldn’t give as much.”
“Why do people give so much?” I asked. “I mean, there’s no Jewish I.R.S. Nobody can force them.”
Joe smiled again—a gentle, worldly smile. “People in Detroit have discretionary money, and we expect them to give. It’s a kind of self-tax. People in the community respect that. And if they don’t, well, there’s no reason to be lenient with tax evaders.”
