Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Jewish ‘Harper’s letter’ tied to opaque foundation, Republican megadonor

The Jewish Institute for Liberal Values, which launched Wednesday with publication of the “Jewish Harper’s letter,” is a project of an opaque foundation connected to Republican megadonor Adam Beren.

While the institute does not share the source of its funding, it directs online donations to the Combat Hate Foundation, a tax-deductible nonprofit based in Kansas. Until this week, the only public-facing project of the foundation was the Combat Anti-Semitism Movement.

The Combat Anti-Semitism Movement has grown quickly since its creation in 2019, attracting members of Congress and mayors of major cities to its online events and building a coalition of more than 300 Jewish organizations. It presents itself as apolitical, though its coalition skews conservative and includes the Clarion Project, which has been labeled an anti-Muslim hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The Jewish Institute for Liberal Values, or JILV, also states that it is nonpartisan, “opposes the imposition of ideology, encourages open discussions of challenging topics, and is committed to achieving a more just America.”

David L. Bernstein, the founder and chief executive, is a former head of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs and the board includes other notable Jewish leaders including Rabbi David Wolpe of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles and New York Times columnist Bret Stephens. Misha Galperin, a senior advisor to Combat Anti-Semitism, is also a board member. In addition to Bernstein, the website lists four other “core team” members.

Bernstein declined to say where the money for JILV comes from. “We will take a pass,” he wrote in an email.

According to JILV’s website, its goal is to “build a strong counter-movement” to oppose “Critical Social Justice” within the Jewish community, which it described in its open letter as an ideology that “holds that individuals bear collective moral guilt or innocence based on the current conception of group identity.”

Board chair Pamela Paresky recently published an article in Sapir, a new Jewish journal edited by Stephens, that described an elaborate fantasy in which a Jewish college student is subjected to various forms of bewildering discrimination due to the school’s embrace of this ideology.

Paresky’s proposed solutions including rejecting any distinction between “‘white’ Jews and ‘Jews of color’”.

The open letter, which was modeled after one published in Harper’s magazine last summer, condemned an alleged “suppression of dissent” within the Jewish community and decried a lack of Jewish criticism in the current movement for racial justice.

Its publication drew praise from many right-wing Jews but was pilloried by those on the left and some in the center, echoing in many respects the fallout from the original Harper’s letter.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.