Jacob J. Weinstein
Rabbi Jacob J. Weinstein -(1902-1974) was a Chicago Rabbi and activist.
Protoge of Charles E. Wood
"And, what do you want to be when you grow up?" inquired the gentleman of the young newsboy who was peddling papers outside the Portland [Or.] Chamber of Commerce Building one day in about 1914.
The young fellow responded that he wanted to be a lawyer and help get the IWWs and other innocent people out of jail. It turned out that the 12-year-old Jacob Weinstein became a Rabbi instead; but he remained true to his concern for justice and the defense of the needy and oppressed.
The newsboy's customer just happened to be attorney Charles E. Wood, Portland's most prominent civil liberties defender, one of whose clients was no less than famed anarchist, Emma Goldman, who was certain to be arrested during her periodic agitational tours of the Northwest.
And so, the immigrant Jewish boy, not long off the boat from Poland, became the protege of a noted advocate of union organization and the First Amendment, in whose office the schoolboy listened to many a discussion of workers' rights, socialist thought, and American politics[1].
Rabbi
Years later, the boy became the young rabbi on his first job, in San Francisco, preaching support for striking longshoremen, or urging higher wages for department store employees.
Soon, Rabbi Weinstein was in search of a new post with a congregation more receptive to those forms of social advocacy which were consistent with his reading of Jewish ethical thought. That congregation was to be Chicago's K.A.M. Temple, where he found both sympathy and encouragement[2].
Service
During the years of World War II, Rabbi Weinstein served as public member of the Chicago area War Labor Board which arbitrated a crushing load of contract disputes between workers and their employers. This experience led to subsequent arbitration assignments in the labor relations field, and to an appointment by President Kennedy to the President's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity, and to the Business Ethics Advisory Committee to the Secretary of Commerce[3].
National Committee to Abolish the House Un-American Activities Committee
As of May 1964, Jacob J. Weinstein RAM Temple, Chicago Illinois was listed as a sponsor of the Communist Party USA front, National Committee to Abolish the House Un-American Activities Committee.
UAW
Rabbi Weinstein's instruction also served on the Public Review Board of the United Auto Workers, established by Walter Reuther in 1957 to mediate and adjudicate disputes within the union. Among his colleagues on that Board were Msgr. George Higgins, chair of the Catholic Conference on Social Research; Prof. Frank McCulloch, formerly head of the Labor Education Division at Roosevelt University, and Dr. Robin Flemming, labor arbitrator and President of the University of Michigan[4].
Chicago Committee to Defend the Bill of Rights
In 1970 Earl Dickerson and Rabbi Jacob Weinstein were Honorary Chairmen of Chicago Committee to Defend the Bill of Rights[5].
References
- ↑ http://www.kentlaw.edu/ilhs/hprabbi.htm
- ↑ http://www.kentlaw.edu/ilhs/hprabbi.htm
- ↑ http://www.kentlaw.edu/ilhs/hprabbi.htm
- ↑ http://www.kentlaw.edu/ilhs/hprabbi.htm
- ↑ Full text of "The nationwide drive against law enforcement intelligence operations : hearing before the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, Ninety-fourth Congress, first session page 151