When Batya Abramson-Goldstein opened her electronic mailbox after the recent shootings at a Kansas City-area Jewish Community Center, she was touched by the number of emails expressing condolences and offering help. Those emails weren’t just from other Jewish professional leaders. They arrived from outposts across the community.

“With relationships that you have over time, you build friendships,” she said. “You build trust so that when there are junctures that require it, you’ve got a relationship that is there.”

Creating relationships is the hallmark of the Jewish Community Relations Council, the organization Abramson-Goldstein runs. It will mark its 75^th anniversary from 5 to 7 p.m. on Wednesday, April 30, at the Danforth Plant Science Center, 975 N. Warson Road. Abramson-Goldstein, the JCRC’s executive director whose service there covers a third of the agency’s history, will be honored, along with organization past presidents. Paul Reuter, executive director of the Sheldon Concert Hall and Galleries, and the Rev. Paul Stark, vice president of mission and ministry at St. Louis University, will receive the Norman A. Stack Community Service Awards.

From Kristallnacht to Kansas City

JCRC’s roots go back to a seminal tragedy in modern Jewish history, Kristallnacht, attacks against Jews in Nazi Germany and Austria in 1938. The horrors of Kristallnacht concerned Jews far beyond the borders of Germany. Even in St. Louis, the Bund, an American pro-Nazi group, was growing in popularity by 1938, said Ira Koder, a vice president of the JCRC.

“There was huge anti-Semitism. Charles Coughlin was on the radio,” he said referring to an anti-Semitic Catholic priest and broadcaster known as Father Coughlin. “Gerald L.K. Smith was running for office. It was just blatant,” he said. Smith was a Protestant clergyman and political organizer whose groups espoused white supremacist ideology and were pro-Nazi.

This atmosphere eventually resulted in the formation of the JCRC’s forerunner, the Jewish Coordinating Council, which aimed to unify the Jewish community and present a forum for rebutting points of view sympathetic to the Nazis.

The organization quickly found its hands full as war spread across the globe, spawning rumors that linked Jews to black marketeering and unpatriotic activities. Later, the group would partner with veteran, labor, Christian and civic groups to dispel these notions. It would also maintain an extensive archive showing the records of American Jews who had fought in the war.

It was also during World War II that the nascent organization began to fight housing and employment discrimination, a common problem for Jews at the time. Such social justice efforts broadened later to include not just Jews but also the fight for civil rights for African-Americans. The agency helped establish the Mayor’s Council on Human Rights in St. Louis and worked with the city’s housing authority and board of education to desegregate schools and neighborhoods. 

Eventually, the JCRC would play a role in rallies at both the local and national levels, including the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 March on Washington.

“I think the hallmark of JCRC is the concern with human rights and the concern with dialogue between racial and religious groups,” said Marylen Mann, a vice president and co-chairwoman of the 75^th anniversary event. “The organization wants to make clear what Judaism is, but also that Jews are not just concerned with their own people. We are concerned with issues of humanity and rights.”

The 1948 founding of Israel left the group with a dual mission: to advocate for domestic issues and to be a voice for a growing Jewish State that frequently found itself under attack.

“The JCRC intensified activities to interpreting the meaning of the State of Israel to the rest of the community,” Kodner said. “Still, that’s a major thrust for what the JCRC does.” 

By the late 1960s, the JCRC was involved in other international issues, including promoting awareness of the plight of Soviet Jewry.

‘A peacemaking role’

Today, the JCRC continues its work in a wide array of  areas, creating relationships and promoting tolerance among outside groups.

“It’s those wonderful relationships that we build and develop, which really lead to a better understanding of each other generally on issues like Israel and other things that are dear to our hearts,” said Phyllis Markus, president of the agency.

The organization continues to grow, Markus said, and now includes 30 member agencies and more than a dozen at-large members.

“We have a real representation as the voice of the organized Jewish community,” she said.

Mann, who became involved with JCRC only three years ago, says she is impressed with the role that the organization has played in reaching across ethnic and religious lines. She first became aware of that work during the 2011 staging of “The Death of Klinghoffer,” a provocative opera by John Adams chronicling the hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro staged by Opera Theatre of St. Louis. OTSL partnered with the JCRC to promote community conversations over the issue raised by the piece.

“I went to some of the discussion groups that included Muslims and Jews to reflect on the messages of that opera and that particular incident,” Mann said. “Until then, I wasn’t quite sure of what JCRC was and did.”

JCRC often works as much in the background as it does in the public eye. 

“There are a lot of behind-the-scenes activities that JCRC does that nobody ever necessarily knows about, but it is tamping down problem issues and trying to play a peacemaking role,” said Lynn Lyss, a past president of the organization. “JCRC has traditionally not trumpeted what they’ve done. They do it quietly because they don’t want to call attention to the things that are happening when they are bad. We don’t want to point fingers.”

Debunking myths

The anniversary celebration will not only confer awards and honors but will highlight several of the JCRC’s more recent success stories. These include Student-to-Student, a 20-year-old tolerance-building educational program that utilizes Jewish youth to give presentations on Judaism to schools with large non-Jewish populations. The idea arose when Abramson-Goldstein tried giving such presentations herself only to find that her young audiences did not seem engaged. Soon, she saw the lessons had greater impact when someone their own age was doing the presenting.

“The real crux of why Student-to-Student is such an important program is that we empower (Jewish teens) to go out and teach their peers about their beliefs,” said Hilary Cedergreen, who leads the initiative. Cedergreen said students get an idea not just about their differences but also the ways in which they are similar.

“There is really a camaraderie that develops,” she said. “These students, who have never been met a Jewish person before, have a very positive experience moving forward. It debunks the myths that exist out there that, whether we want to believe it or not, are still very strong.”

Arts & Faith St. Louis is another program born of the JCRC, the groundwork for which formed during the “Klinghoffer” controversy, chairwoman Carolyn Losos said.

“I think it is one of the finest things they’ve ever done,” Losos said of the discussion around the provocative performance.

No everyone agreed with the choice to stage the play, she said, “but the community was talking. It wasn’t something that people got angry about. It was something (about which) people had their opinions, yet felt they were consulted.”

Less than three months after the “Klinghoffer” performances, the 10^th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks prompted consultations between Abramson-Goldstein and Opera Theatre head Tim O’Leary on the best method to memorialize that event. A concert emerged as the most appropriate idea. 

“There on the stage for about an hour and 15 minutes were people of all faiths and musical excellence singing their hearts out about how it would be wonderful if we could come together and build a community of understanding and respect,” Losos recalled. “There has never been anything like it before.”

But Losos hoped very much that there would be something like it again, which is how Arts & Faith St. Louis came about. Last year marked the third annual 9/11 interfaith musical commemoration. 

“We believe that both the arts and faith have similar missions,” she said. “They just express it in different ways.”

The group, which has expanded to work on projects with other arts organizations, continues to promote a sense of togetherness at the annual concert.

 “It reminds everyone when they go to see it that you are sitting next to someone who may be totally different from you, but all people should be able to live together because we all have the same hopes and dreams, for peace, understanding and respect,” Losos said.

Giving a helping hand

JCRC has also worked to help people far from American shores. After building a sister-city linkage with Riga, Latvia, the agency decided to expand beyond the usual social and cultural issues and become more hands-on.

“As the relationship progressed, they realized that there was a hospital there that was the only Jewish hospital in the entire former Soviet Union,” said David Caplin, a Ladue plastic surgeon. “When the Soviets left Latvia, the hospital was basically given back to this community with no resources to run it.”

In the mid-1990s, the JCRC, with the help of Caplin and others, stepped in. A medical task force of sorts was created to help resurrect the hospital. Eventually, grant money was acquired to sustain the effort until the hospital was self-sufficient.

“It grew to the point where it was not just that one hospital,” Caplin said. “They ended up helping two others as well.”

Caplin said the challenge really displays the agency’s versatility when a crisis happens.

“The thing about the JCRC is that they can shift their focus and seem to be effective in so many different arenas including, in this case, something that is far outside of what anyone thought a local JCRC branch had ever tackled,” he said. “They are very impressive.”

Sometimes, the JCRC’s mission of building bridges fits with its mission of helping others. The best example may be the Jewish-Muslim Day of Service, a Christmas event held each year to give non-Christians a way to join in fellowship with one another and spend the day doing philanthropic activities for their neighbors who celebrate the holiday. 

Roberta Gutwein, a vice president of the JCRC board, is co-chairwoman of the event. 

“It brings together the Jewish and Muslim communities and gives them a chance to get to know each other better,” she said. 

“It provides an opportunity for people that they would not ordinarily have in their everyday lives.”

The gathering attracted 700 volunteers during its third Day of Service in December.

“The first year, we were hoping we’d get 200 people,” Gutwein said. “Over 500 volunteered. Clearly, there is a need not only for the community to get to know each other but for both communities to go out and do good.”

She said many participants have forged friendships and, in some cases, individuals have invited each other to dinner just to build the relationship.

And that is a testament to the organization’s power. Michael Newmark, a past president of both the local JCRC and the national Jewish Council of Public Affairs, helped fund the Michael and Barbara Newmark Institute for Human Relations as part of the JCRC. He puts the JCRC’s purpose simply.

“The Jewish Community Relations Council works to enhance social conditions that are conducive to secure and creative Jewish living,” he said.

It is a mission that has since expanded to include the whole community.

Tickets for the April 30 event are $50. Call 314-442-3871 for more information.