In 1990, after months of meetings with Jewish activists and leaders across New York City, JFREJ Community (then called simply "JFREJ") co-founders Donna Nevel and Marilyn Kleinberg Neimark convened JFREJ's first meeting in Rabbi Marshall T. Meyer's living room. According to Donna and Marilyn, JFREJ was founded because:
“In New York City a conservative Jewish voice not only defined what were so-called Jewish interests, but also influenced the city's priorities more generally-and it still does; the absence of a strong alternative to the self-appointed conservative spokespeople for New York City's Jews was distorting political life in New York.… We formed JFREJ to reject apathy and quiescence, to demand the city address the desperate needs of the vulnerable and the oppressed, to build on and expand alliances with other progressive communities, to keep focused on the long-term goal of building a more just society, to offer a place where Jewish identity and commitment to social justice are not at odds. We formed JFREJ to disturb the peace.”
In the thirty years that followed that first living room meeting, JFREJ has changed the landscape of the Jewish community, led a reinvigorated Jewish left into the 21st Century, and with our many movement partners, made a powerful impact on the lives of all New Yorkers. In 2021, JFREJ Action, a 501c4, was created to carry on JFREJ's extraordinary legacy of fighting for justice. The 501c3 that was JFREJ was renamed JFREJ Community. In this history, when we refer to "JFREJ" we are referring to JFREJ Community, a 501c3 organization.
Fueled by our commitment to economic justice, JFREJ has joined campaigns for housing justice, supported employees unionizing at restaurants and kosher food factories, stood with B&H Photo/Video warehouse workers fighting for their rights, and organized alongside the domestic workers who passed the New York State Domestic Workers Bill of Rights in 2010, and the Queens residents who successfully battled to keep Amazon.com’s HQ2 out of Long Island City. Today, our movement of The Caring Majority is fighting for universal health care, including universal long term care, and advancing our vision for a feminist economy in which care work is valued and protected, and everyone has access to the care they need.
From JFREJ’s first event, which welcomed Nelson Mandela to New York after his release from prison, JFREJ has fought for racial justice. After the acquittal of the NYPD officers who murdered Amadou Diallo in 1999, JFREJ participated in a day of protest leading to the arrest of over 120 Jews, including 13 rabbis, on the steps of City Hall. Since then, we have worked tirelessly to hold the NYPD accountable and end police violence. JFREJ was part of the anti-Stop & Frisk campaign that led to the victory in the Floyd lawsuit, the passage of the Community Safety Act in 2013, (including the City Council’s thrilling override of Mayor Bloomberg’s veto) and the Right To Know Act in 2018. Our Jews4BlackLives actions have demonstrated steadfast Jewish solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, and with the families of New Yorkers killed by the NYPD.
Throughout JFREJ’s history, we have consistently shown up for immigrants. In 2006, JFREJ joined the nationwide protests against right-wing anti-immigrant legislation. After the election of Donald Trump, JFREJ was one of the first organizations to show up at JFK airport to protest the Muslim Ban and we helped to start Never Again Action, which has led the Jewish community in the fight to abolish ICE, and end family separation.
JFREJ has had an extraordinary impact on the Jewish community, locally and throughout the country. We helped to seed Tzedek Lab, Never Again Action, Ammud, Jews Against White Nationalism, and other groundbreaking initiatives that have breathed new life into the Jewish left. Beginning with 2015’s Black Lives Matter haggadah supplement and the Jews of Color National Convening, we’ve led the community in organizing Jews of Color and Mizrahi & Sephardi Jews to fight for a seat at the table within the Jewish community, and to recognize their leadership in movements for racial & ethnic justice everywhere. Following the resurgence of the white nationalist movement in 2016, we published the seminal progressive guide to antisemitism, led the effort to educate our community and our movement partners about this complex issue, and created a first-of-its-kind coalition to respond to rising hate violence in our city.
More recently, JFREJ has added richness and revolution to the Jewish ritual calendar, with our annual radical Purimspiel (produced in partnership with Jenny Romaine and the Aftselakhis Spectacle Committee), our Shavuot for Black Lives, 40 Days of Teshuvah, and our Juneteenth and Mimouna celebrations. In 2020, JFREJ responded to the COVID crisis, rapidly mobilizing our members for mutual aid, and organizing to protect nursing home residents and workers and free people from COVID-infested immigration detention centers and jails. The nationwide uprising after the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and others, helped give JFREJ and our partners the momentum we needed to pass the Safer NY Act, which repealed 50a, the NY state law that hid police misconduct records from the public. JFREJ was at the forefront of the spring 2020 campaign to defund the NYPD by at least $1 billion, and invest in the communities of color hardest hit by COVID-19. We continue to respond to the COVID crisis, working to get desperately needed resources to excluded workers, and protect homeless New Yorkers from being evicted from their hotel rooms. We continue to work towards abolishing the carceral state and the NYPD, and replacing them with public safety institutions that are accountable to the communities they serve, and are aligned with our values and vision for a New York City where everyone thrives.