ADL

The Organized Community

There are hundreds of Jewish organizations in the United States. Fifty-two national groups have qualified for membership in the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. But only a handful, whether secular, religious, or "fraternal," can be said to wield extensive influence either inside the Jewish community or beyond it. One of these is the American Jewish Committee (AJC), a quintessential establishment agency whose annual meeting, held last week in Washington, drew notables from U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Israel's Defense Minister Ehud Barak. Founded in New York by affluent, acculturated "uptown" German Jews in 1906, the AJC sought initially to...