Long-Simmering Feud Erupts in Public at Jewish Congress

A long-simmering dispute at the World Jewish Congress that involves some of the most powerful figures in American Jewish life has erupted in public a year after the organization embarked on a search for a new identity, and the feud is threatening the future of one of Jewry’s most venerable organizations.What began as an internal political dispute last year between the organization’s left-of-center president, billionaire philanthropist Edgar Bronfman, and the man who has since become his nemesis, right-of-center Australian travel magnate and WJC senior vice president Isi Leibler, is being seen as a wider struggle for the organization’s future even as the two men continue to trade barbs in public.Nearly one year after Mr. Bronfman appointed a task force to review the WJC’s mandate, Mr. Leibler, one of the task force’s three members, released an internal memorandum describing the WJC as an organization lacking transparency and accountability that is beset by “allegations of financial irregularities.”Mr. Leibler acted after Mr. Bronfman, following a year of review and turmoil, moved to install new management at the Congress.Mr. Leibler wrote that his committee had discovered numerous financial improprieties related to the chairman of the WJC’s governing board, Israel Singer, including the existence of a $1.2 million Swiss bank account in Mr. Singer’s name. Mr. Singer, long active on the Jewish scene in America and a pivotal figure in the quest for Jewish restitution from the Holocaust and Communist eras, denied the accusation.“We at the World Jewish Congress will not and cannot allow innuendo and salacious coercion by a lone voice of antidemocracy,” Mr. Singer said yesterday. His assistant, Pinchas Shapiro, described Mr. Leibler’s memo as “an attempt by an individual to hijack control of the world’s foremost Jewish organization, and it will not be tolerated.” Reached at his home in Israel, Mr. Leibler dismissed rampant speculation that he is aiming to unseat Mr. Bronfman, who pledged last year to resign after the organization adopts a new mandate.“I’m interested in reforming the World Jewish Congress. I have no interest in taking on a president who has served with distinction and is retiring,” Mr. Leibler said. In his memo, Mr. Leibler wrote that the goal of his 12-page report is “full fiscal transparency, accountability, and compliance with corporate governance requirements in the finances and affairs of the WJC – and there is no other underlying motive.”The latest disclosures come a year after the public airing of a feud between Messrs. Leibler and Bronfman over a letter penned by Mr. Bronfman to President Bush urging him to oppose Israel’s security fence.The letter, which shocked hawkish members of the Jewish community, made it into newspapers on three continents. While the feud prompted the formation of the task force on the WJC’s mandate, it also renewed debate within the Jewish community on the appropriateness of criticizing Israeli policy.A lawyer for Messrs. Bronfman and Singer, Franklyn Snitow, in a September 3 letter to the WJC’s general counsel, excoriated Mr. Leibler for publicizing accusations linking his client to a secret Swiss bank account. Mr. Snitow noted that the WJC under Mr. Bronfman played a lead role in securing a $1.25 billion settlement from Swiss banks for Holocaust-era restitution, and that the Swiss “would take no greater delight than having the opportunity to raise the specter of impropriety at the World Jewish Congress.”Mr. Singer has said that the account was “earmarked for purposes of WJC pensions,” according to the minutes, obtained by The New York Sun of a July 18 meeting of the operations committee of the WJC.The WJC is best known for activities on behalf of Soviet Jewry, the unmasking of a former United Nations secretary-general, Kurt Waldheim, as having served the Nazis, breaking Swiss banking secrecy to permit access to Jewish accounts dating from the Holocaust years, and, more recently, efforts to obtain international support for a U.N. General Assembly resolution condemning anti-Semitism, all causes considered non-partisan in the Jewish community.The man who is credited with founding the WJC in 1936, Nahum Goldman, played an outsized role in many Jewish issues in the 20th century, including securing German reparations paid to the Jewish State.In recent years, the Congress has been dominated, at times financed, by Mr. Bronfman, who has been admired in many quarters for his tactical prowess and his determination in carrying certain Jewish issues onto the world stage.The public clashes between Messrs. Leibler and Bronfman, who has served as the organization’s president since 1981, and the establishment of the task force with Mr. Leibler as one of three key members, seemed to indicate a possible shift in power at the 68-yearold organization.The drama also illustrated the extent to which powerful lay leaders can flex their muscles. An August 30 letter from Mr. Bronfman to the WJC steering committee suggested he was reasserting control over the organization, and sidelining the task force he appointed less than a year ago.The letter announced the appointment of Stephen Herbits, whom Mr. Bronfman described as his former “right hand man,” to serve as the WJC’s “transition manager” until the establishment of the organization’s new mandate. In an apparent reference to the tensions that have become public, Mr. Bronfman further wrote that the WJC “shall not countenance nor shall we condone coercion, corruption or self-interest within our ranks.”

Long-Simmering Feud Erupts in Public at Jewish Congress

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