A Study On American Jewish Committee

American Jews have acquired unmatched achievements in politics, economy, education, culture and so on, becoming one of the successful minorities. These achievements, on the one hand, benefit from integration Jewish culture and American society; on the other hand, many Jewish elites have contributed themselves to Jewish welfare.American Jewish Committee (AJC), founded by many upper class German Jews in 1906, is aimed at preserving Jewish civil rights all around the world. After its foundation, it has played a key role in protesting Russian anti-Semitism policy and helping those Jewish refugees of World War I, while it’s relatively negative to respond to anti-Semitism in America. This paper researches main activities of AJC from 1906 to 1929 and tries to analyze these leaders’leadership.The paper consists of four parts. In the first part, it mainly analyzes the purposes for these leaders to build up AJC and the difficulties they had met. The second part describes two protest campaigns AJC led against Tsarist Russia, through which we can see AJC’s methods in lobbying top government and taking use of public opinion. Then in the third part, it concerns the competition and cooperation between AJC and American Zionists. The later took advantage of the war and tried to share the leadership with AJC, however, both couldn’t represent American Jews alone. So, they realized a short-term cooperation in the peace conference. In the last part, it throws the lights to the reactions of AJC to anti-Semitism in the United States, taking the Frank case and Henry Ford’s anti-Semitic propaganda for example. As a whole, AJC hold a negative attitude toward American anti-Semitism, In the conclusion, we try to put forward a point of view on AJC’s activities in its early period.In its early period, though weak in strength, AJC and its German Jewish elites did have make success in leadership. AJC has its inherent problem that these leaders were all self-appointed without democratic election. AJC earned its prestige and popularity after it succeeded in leading two protest campaigns; nevertheless, AJC had to choose to compromise with American Zionists. Besides, as an organization to guarantee Jewish equal rights, AJC was incompetent in react against anti-Semitism in its own country. As a result, this conservative style in some degree disappointed most common Jews which partly impeded AJC to become a national organization to unite all American Jews.