In the News
The Jerusalem Post profiled B’nai B’rith International CEO Daniel S. Mariaschin as he reflected on more than 50 years of Jewish advocacy and the challenges facing a new generation of Jewish leaders. Read the full profile in The Jerusalem Post.
DIASPORA AFFAIRS: B’nai B’rith outgoing CEO Daniel Mariaschin reflects on changes in the Jewish world, after 50 years of advocacy.
Forging a better world for the Jewish people is not the work of a day or of any single person, but an ongoing odyssey undertaken in cooperation with advocates and communities.
Jewish community advocacy has been the work of B’nai B’rith International CEO Daniel Mariaschin for not just a day but for 52 years, and as the sun sets on his time leading the organization after 37 of them, he reflected in a conversation with The Jerusalem Post on the fruits of his long labors and the ongoing work that must be assumed by a new generation of Jewish leaders.
Like many Jewish leaders, Mariaschin grew up in a household that was cognizant of the groundwork of the past. His parents were immigrants from Lithuania and Russia, with their experiences and the legacy of historic antisemitism seated at the dinner table. The other family went to Israel, with two second cousins serving in the Israeli military. Their photographs were on the mantelpiece above the Mariaschin family fireplace.
Israel was just as central to the New Hampshire native’s upbringing as the hearth in his home, with him noting later in the discussion that while many Jews now take Israel for granted, only a few short years ago its future was very much uncertain. He could still remember his parents speaking about the 1956 Suez Crisis.
Mariaschin had intended to go to law school, practice the discipline, then enter politics, but like many Jews today, when he came to university, he felt that it was “important for me to do something Jewish with my life.”With a bachelor of arts degree in history from the University of New Hampshire and his master’s degree in contemporary Jewish studies from Brandeis University, Mariaschin began his work on behalf of the Jewish community in 1973 as a Jewish Community Council of Boston community relations associate.He joined the Anti-Defamation League in 1977, first serving as its Middle East affairs director and later its national leadership division director. He worked as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee public affairs director before taking the helm of B’nai B’rith International in 1988.
Much has changed since Mariaschin began his journey in 1973, but as he is set to retire in June, similar long shadows have been cast over the Jewish community by the October 7 massacre. There are “some similarities” between the two time periods, though they were different Jewish worlds.
‘Existential threats that were posed to Israel’: Mariaschin
“They don’t remember the existential threats that were posed to Israel, in 1967, 1973, and so how we were raised to look at Israel and how these young people have been raised is really kind of two different universes. I get up in the morning and I’m looking at the [Jerusalem Post] website, and I’m looking at the latest news, and I’m looking at what’s happening with Israel today, and I still have that existential element that drives my worldview. The last two years only made this more pronounced.
“So I’m worried about the attachment of young people to Israel,” said Mariaschin. “I’m concerned about how we can fortify the role and the place of Israel in the lives of this new generation and coming generations.”
B’nai B’rith had always followed a procedure in which they wouldn’t disagree with the Israeli government or other organizations in public, out of respect for the democratic process. Now, the Jewish and Israeli communities have been afflicted with the same degree of polarization that had infected the rest of the world. Mariaschin appealed for unity, as divisions are a distraction.
“You can agree or disagree with certain decisions that have been made by the government here [in Israel], not just this government but any government, but particularly in the United States and also internationally, but it’s important to have some sense of unity, because you can send the wrong message,” said Mariaschin. “By being overly publicly critical, you can give approbation to those who don’t have Israel’s best interests at heart.
“So I’m concerned about the divisiveness. We didn’t have that back in ’73, we have this today, and I think there needs to be some attempt to unify, because we have friends, we have allies, but at the end of the day, we have our own community. We are our strongest and best advocates.”
Jewish leaders will have to determine a way to inform Jewish youth, perhaps by expanding Jewish education or trips to experience Israel. According to Mariaschin, truth has been one of the great casualties in the Israel-Hamas War. News networks are home to contributors who proliferate “blood libels” against Israel, bandying about charges of genocide, starvation, or Hamas-controlled casualty statistics.
“The news cycles are every hour, every half hour,” said Mariaschin.
“We didn’t have influencers. We had people who were critics. We had people who were more than critics, who were antisemites, and they would write a book, or they would be interviewed, or they would use the mail to get their message out.
“Today, you can take a blood libel, you can take a big lie, and within moments you’ve got hundreds of thousands of people who are taking these blood libels as the truth.”
The “perfect storm of antisemitism” cast by social media, mainstream media, and academic institutions is also contributing to a “dramatic rise in antisemitism.”
When Mariaschin was growing up, antisemitism was more of a right-wing phenomenon, and many among the Left were supportive of Israel. Europe was host to most of the issue, while “tremendous progress” was made in the US. He explained that when his sisters were applying to universities, there were quotas relating to religion. Certain industries or corporate suites were only within sight for Jews through glass ceilings. This ceiling has long since been broken. Jewish comedians and actors once concealed their identities; now they have shed the use of stage names. Whereas elective office was seen as beyond the reach of Jews, with it assumed they preferred playing advisory or fundraising roles, there have since been many Jewish congresspeople and senators, said the Jewish advocate.
Yet, “Now it seems that we’re returning in the other direction. This is extremely troubling, where you have members of Congress who are openly hostile to the State of Israel and to its supporters; when you have an Ilhan Omar [the US representative for Minnesota’s 5th congressional district] who’s saying ‘It’s all about the Benjamins’; and when you have an Ilhan Omar and others who were talking about dual loyalty – this is something that we experienced 100 years ago, and now it seems that it’s back. This is troubling, that we seem to have peaked and are turning in a different direction.”
He never thought he would see a situation in Europe “where you have telling Israeli soccer fans they can’t attend a game in Europe” or have “a mob chase fans in the streets of Amsterdam.”
The further “we get away from 1933 to 1945, the more is open for those who want to deny the Holocaust,” said Mariaschin. “I used to make speeches early on in my career where I would say, there’ll come a day when there will be no more survivors to show their tattoo and say, ‘This is what I experienced.’”
A biological clock was ticking, and approaching the hour of a tremendous obligation, according to Mariaschin. It will be on future generations to tell the story, in defiance of those who “wish to deny and minimize the Holocaust through social media and other means.
Mariaschin also noted that restitution issues would become more urgent.
“This was not only the biggest murder in history, it was the biggest robbery in history,” said Mariaschin. “There’s a tendency, with the passage of time, to kind of let this pass without confronting it. We still have several countries that need to negotiate agreements. On behalf of the survivors, on behalf of their families, and that’s extremely important, too. So we have the double responsibility of remembrance and also restitution.”
The responsibility to care for the survivors in their twilight hours is important to Mariaschin, whose mother’s family was murdered in the Holocaust.“The need to do that is not only personal for me, it’s also something which is communal. It’s something which I feel is extremely important,” said Mariaschin. “We shouldn’t forget, even with the passage of time, even in our own community, that we have this obligation.”
He felt enough of an obligation that, in addition to consulting on special projects and a podcast, he wanted to continue to aid in restitution and remembrance work even as he retired from his B’nai B’rith leadership role.“The work is not the work of the day,” said Mariaschin. “There’s still plenty more to do.”
For all the changes in the world, establishment organizations like B’nai B’rith still have an important role to play, according to Mariaschin. Their members, located all over the world, still have a wealth of experience. These organizations have the capacity to engage in deep research that new, smaller groups do not. They have also established a degree of legitimacy and credibility, which allows them to be heard on Capitol Hill. He also believes that having multiple groups, representing different Jewish demographics, is healthy, in order to serve everyone’s interests.
Being a legacy organization, the organization has been able to speak truth to power, including in the forum of the United Nations, where he worked to rescind the “Zionism is racism” resolution. Mariaschin had the opportunity to combat UN bias in UN agencies and meet policy-makers and leaders from across the world, including Margaret Thatcher, Helmut Kohl, and King Hussein.
The ability to have these discussions was a privilege, but just as great was the ability to “work to provide housing for senior citizens, affordable housing,” and “raise funds for the victims of natural disasters.”
While he felt fortunate and privileged to sit at the table and raise issues such as antisemitism and Israel, he said that it is important to note that he didn’t take that seat alone.“There is no one person that makes the difference,” said Mariaschin. “To borrow a phrase, it does take a village.”
What kept Mariaschin going for over 50 years was that he knew that the work was important, and the world would otherwise be drastically different, even in the face of the great change since he began his work.
“I can tell you that 50 years passed very quickly. It’s been such a great privilege to have worked in our community like this.
“We have to stop and think for a minute about the great contributions that we made to civilization. There are thousands of years of history sitting here, sitting here in this city [Jerusalem]. Sometimes time passes so quickly, we really have to stop and think about that we’re actually talking in a city, in a country, that we waited so long for. I believe this is something special, and to have been a part of this is again a great privilege.”