Presidents Conference rhubarb delays takeover by Lob

The American Jewish community’s leading lobby coalition elected its next leader on Tuesday in a confirmation vote that was anything but routine, having followed a week of tumult over her selection.

So instead of beginning her term as board chair of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations on June 1, as originally planned, Dianne Lob will take over in April 2021. Amid the change in the selection process, the members also opted to keep the current chair, Arthur Stark, in his post for another year.

Tensions informed discussions ahead of the vote Tuesday afternoon, which was 31-8 among the 49 members eligible to vote, with five abstentions. Another five were absent from the meeting, which took place over Zoom.

The delay appears to have short-circuited a fight over Trump-era immigration policy and cooperation with Muslim groups instigated by some of the umbrella organization’s more right-wing members.

Lob is a Wall Street financier who recently finished a term as board chair of HIAS, the lead Jewish immigration advocacy group.

In an email to its more than 50 constituent organizations on Sunday evening, Stark and Lob blamed disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic for the proposed change.

Others said they attributed the delay to opposition led by from Morton Klein’s Zionist Organization of America, which spurred not just like-minded right-wing organizations to oppose Lob, but center-right groups to urge the Presidents Conference leadership to consider a compromise.

The nomination fight comes as the Presidents Conference is navigating its first professional leadership transition in more than three decades. It underscores major, longstanding fault lines in an organization founded in 1956 with the goal of bringing the Jewish community together to speak with one voice on Israel-related issues to the U.S. administration.

The injection of immigration politics into Presidents Conference deliberations underscores the degree to which the left-right divide in Jewish communal affairs has increasingly expanded beyond narrow Israel matters to reflect the country’s wider political discord.

The group mostly lobbies the U.S. government’s executive branch, which is why Lob’s nomination was unusual, given the antagonistic relationship between HIAS and the Trump administration. HIAS has clashed repeatedly with the current administration on its immigration policy and has been lead plaintiff in at least two lawsuits against the administration.

One possible result of the delay in Lob becoming board chair is that Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee who is much more sympathetic to HIAS’ immigration posture, may be president when she does.

The White House, according to a Jewish organizational source, did not object to Lob as the conference chairwoman as long as immigration was not on the agenda — an easy ask, considering the Presidents Conference does not deal with domestic issues. A Trump administration official who deals with the Jewish community did not respond to requests for comment.

The vote leaves the Presidents Conference openly divided at a crucial moment. Lob has been forced into a defensive position, emphasizing in a letter to the group’s constituents her bona fides as the daughter of German refugees and her embrace of mainstream pro-Israel positions, including rejecting the boycott Israel movement as “reprehensible” and calling anti-Zionism “a modern form of Jew-hatred.”

Rancor between Klein and HIAS erupted in 2018 with a complaint by HIAS that accused ZOA of violating Presidents Conference rules by making ad hominem attacks. The complaint earned the ZOA a rare reprimand.

On Twitter, Jill Jacobs, who leads T’ruah, a rabbinical human rights advocacy group that is not a member of the Presidents Conference, said the decision “demonstrates that [the Presidents Conference] is held hostage by a small and loud group of right-wing extremists who do not at all represent the overwhelming views of the American Jewish community.”

The Presidents Conference leadership making the decisions included Stark; his immediate predecessor, Stephen Greenberg; and its two professional leaders, longtime executive vice president Malcolm Hoenlein and William Daroff, who is newly installed as CEO.

The pandemic frustrated efforts to push back against Klein’s initiative. Lob was unable to personally meet with the leaders of the groups to assuage concerns. She will also forgo the traditional immediate inaugural trip to Israel post-election. That trip would have provided photo ops of Lob with Israel’s right-wing government and gone some way to tamp down criticism.

Klein in a pre-vote interview said the compromise was “somewhat positive, but minimal” because Lob’s election appears irreversible, even if it is delayed for a year. But he said the leadership transition could stave off his criticism.

“We do have almost a year to get to know her and see if she can learn more,” Klein said.