[Boston Jewish Community Relations Council Executive Director Nancy Kaufman has been a controversial figure for some time. Back in June, I took a turn from my usual policy and openly called for her removal when I felt she had gone to a level that was openly damaging to the interests of the Jewish Community whose interests she is supposed to represent (see: When Rabbis Attack: The Fallout -- JCRC Needs New Leadership). Recently it was announced that Kaufman would be moving on from the JCRC (a coincidence I am sure). Charles Jacobs, in his Jewish Advocate column this week, has a look back at that particular corner of the establishment that's well worth reading in full below. I expect the Advocate's editors will be hearing it in more than full from Kaufman's supporters.]

Shift course at JCRC by Charles Jacobs

After 20 years of heading Boston's Jewish Community Relations Council, Nancy Kaufman is resigning her position. Will this mark the beginning of a new vision for the JCRC?

Kaufman was for these two decades a dedicated and passionate activist for her causes. She made significant contributions to enhancing the welfare of the needy in the Jewish community as well as those in the larger Boston community. But politically, as is well known, she stubbornly clung to left side of the house, even as much of the left turned cold - or worse - on Israel, and even though Boston's Jews have become politically more diverse.

Over these last 20 years, while the situation for Jews here and around the world deteriorated in significant ways, the JCRC, like most of the mainstream Jewish organizations guided by outdated paradigms, failed to adapt.

Times have changed. Anti-Semitism has morphed. In the West, Jews are hated today not because of our religion or our race, but because of the Jewish state. Religion-based Muslim anti-Semitism, which chased almost all Jews from the Islamic world, is increasingly metastasizing into the West. Among the opinion elites of academia and media, Israel is opposed, defamed, despised and organized against.

On the other hand, conservatives rally in droves to Israel and support efforts against Islamic terrorism, which - from the Jewish Federation in Seattle to the Chabad House in Mumbai - frequently targets the world's Jews. Consistent poll data shows that Republicans are reliably more pro-Israel than Democrats; and through their rejection of replacement theology, many Christian Evangelicals now truly and fervently consider the Jewish people their brothers and feel dutybound to protect Israel. In this environment, American Jews are more and more responding to the conservative movement and abandoning the left. In Boston, the Jewish political shift has been even more pronounced because of the large Russian Jewish immigrant community, which is decidedly suspicious of the leftist ideology they fled from.

Yet as these changes unfolded over the past two decades, like most Jewish institutions, the JCRC failed to adapt to the new realities and the evolving threats Jews face; it clung instead to an outdated and failed leftist worldview. Mainstream Jewish institutions have convinced themselves that "what is good for liberals is good for the Jewish community," and have stuck to liberal ideology at the expense of actual Jewish interests.

In the face of mounting threats to Israel and Islamic anti-Semitism, Boston's JCRC did not want to significantly shift resources away from its peacetime agenda of social justice (welfare and outreach), which was Kaufman's specialty and her love. Rather than confront the lies about Israel - which requires just a wee bit of courage and risks a fight with the Jewish left - Boston's JCRC adopted the happy-face program of Israel 21C - ignore the lies and tout Israel's accomplishments. CAMERA's Andrea Levin's bon mot: "Oh, so Israel will be the apartheid state with nanotechnology," skewered this foolishness.

To her credit, one of the more effective and important things Kaufman did was to bring Boston civic and religious leaders to Israel. But what did we really achieve? A few minority and labor union leaders showed up at a few pro-Israel rallies, but the JCRC has not been able to influence the minority and labor communities at the grassroots, where leftism now steeps them in anti-Israel and often anti-Semitic sentiment. This is notably true of the Boston Muslim community, where the JCRC's record is especially disappointing.

Kaufman's politically correct views largely prevailed in the Roxbury mosque controversy, pushing the JCRC into "dialogue" with - and thereby give legitimacy to - the Muslim American Society, an organization the ADL has named as one of this country's 10 most dangerous anti-Israel groups.

This sort of ideologically rigid political correctness endangers Jewish interests: It blinds Jewish leadership to the new threat pattern confronting Jews. The reality of Muslim anti-Semitism is avoided because it is taboo to criticize non-Western cultures; criticism of Muslims is viewed as bigoted and not constructive to the goal of dialogue.

Blinded to the obvious, our unelected Jewish leaders go through acrobatics of moral inversion: It is we who are aggressive; the Islamic extremists who menace us are the true victims who are only responding to our offenses. If only we appease them - show them how nice we are - they'll leave us alone. This only delays the inevitable: Even Boston's progressive rabbis will someday be forced to say publicly that the MAS is a problem. And, mark my words; they will proffer their fear of appearing bigoted against Muslims to excuse their inexcusable five-year silence on the threat the MAS poses to Boston's Jews.

The left, desperate for a narrative to explain away or deflect the Islamist threat, now raises the specter of "Islamophobia" to invert reality: "We must guard that America's irrational fear of Muslims brings them no harm." (FBI data: two-thirds of all religiously motivated hate crimes in the United States are committed against Jews, and anti-Jewish incidents outnumber anti-Muslim by a factor of 10!) Last month, Kaufman rallied with MAS leaders and leftist clergy against this phantom, and stood with them as they slandered the 71 percent of her fellow countrymen as bigots and racists for opposing the mosque near Ground Zero. Kaufman leaves Boston to lead a New York-based women's group that supports that project.

I hope that the JCRC's new leadership will break with such misguided positions and begin to understand the new reality. The task of effectively leading Jewish communal organizations will only get harder. We need leadership that is perceptive and brave to navigate the increasingly turbulent currents.