About JEF
The Joint Action Committee was founded after the 1980 election when many friends of Israel in the Congress were defeated by an emerging force in American politics: Radical Right political groups that opposed Israel and the values of mainstream American Jewry. The JAC Education Foundation was formed several years later to continue to educate and inform our community in a nonpartisan manner.
Our goal is to engage and empower the progressive Jewish community to preserve and protect Jewish values in addressing current American issues.
Since the 2016 election and the increasing threats to American democracy, JEF's work to protect Jewish, American and democratic values has become more urgent than ever. Today, JEF renews our determination to build and expand our work, and to empower new generations to advocate for our values.
The Foundation publishes a Jewish Community Voters guide, a nonpartisan resource that identifies and tracks legislative issues of interest to the Jewish Community. Issues addressed by the Guide over the years include: reproductive choice, separation of religion and state, a strong US-Israel relationship, climate change and, gun safety.
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Board of Directors:
Gail Yamner, New Jersey, President
Jacki Parmacek, Illinois, Secretary
Susan Berk, Illinois, Treasurer
Marcia Balonick, Illinois
AnnDee Levy, California
Jamie Sher, California
About Our Banner Image:
The Statue of Liberty Menorah was designed by Manfred Anson. Anson was born in 1933 in Germany. He hoped to move to Israel but, like so many others, his dreams were stopped by the Nazis, and most of his family was murdered in the Holocaust. Manfred survived, thanks to Jewish Welfare Guardian Society of Australia, and eventually reunited with his sister in the United States. He became an avid collector of Americana, designing this symbolic Menorah to demonstrate the shared power of renewal expressed in Chanukah and in emigration to the United States.
This Menorah was used in a White House Chanukah party in 2013 and is on display at the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia.