JCRC: Jewish Community Relations Council

The Jewish Community Relations Council of San Francisco, The Peninsula, Marin, Sonoma, Alameda and Contra Costa Counties ("JCRC"), was founded in the early 1940s by the Jewish Federation of San Francisco to safeguard the conditions under which Jews, individually and communally, could live and flourish, here and abroad. As one of the original twelve community relations councils in the United States, the JCRC is an autonomous charitable, religious and educational organization supported, in large part, by local Jewish federations. JCRC continues its involvement as one of 120 members of the national Jewish Council for Public Affairs and active membership on the California Jewish Public Affairs Committee.

As a representative body of member organizations, synagogues and at-large members, JCRC has historically addressed, through education and advocacy, the following issues as they directly or indirectly affect the interests of the organized Jewish community: anti-Semitism, church/state relations, U.S./Israel relations, political extremism, Holocaust remembrance, intra-Jewish relations, oppressed Jewry, discrimination, acts of hate, intolerance or violence, immigration, race and inter-group relations, advocacy on behalf of Jewish communal institutions, public education and conditions which could give rise to extremism.

The 1930s The 1940s The 1950s The 1960s The 1970s The 1980s The 1990s 2000-present

The 1930s: History of the JCRC

December 1938 - As continuing news of the plight of European Jewry reaches the US, Jewish communities nationwide search for security in America while struggling to organize and assert their political interests. In San Francisco, Sol Silverman, Editor of the Emanu-El & Jewish Journal, calls for "more action and less hysteria," and for a "community council...that will meet periodically to discuss problems and utilize techniques for their solution." He cautions that "if certain Jewish groups fear the loss of their autonomy, because they would be bound by a majority in a community council, let them ponder two answers: one, that the council could be advisory in its early stages until it found itself; and two, that the loss of autonomy is a lesser evil than the possible loss of the blessings of liberty which are still being enjoyed in America. The council is no less a psychological than an actual necessity. Let us not delay in its formation any longer."
1938 - The Jewish Survey Committee forms under the leadership of Eugene Block, who also serves as Editor of the Jewish Community Bulletin. The Committee, JCRC's predecessor, is organized with a board of Jewish organizational representatives and members-at-large.

More than sixty years later, the JCRC continues to convene the community, coordinate its unified advocacy efforts, mobilize community action, and build a strong and cohesive community.