Press Release

Release Date: March 22, 2000
Contact: Mark B. Levin, Shai Franklin

National Conference Renames to NCSJ

WASHINGTON— The National Conference on Soviet Jewry today changed its name to "NCSJ: Advocates on behalf of Jews in Russia, Ukraine, the Baltic States & Eurasia."

"NCSJ is actively engaged with Jewish communities and with governments in all 15 successor states to the former Soviet Union," NCSJ Chairman Denis C. Braham of Houston noted, "and the NCSJ organizational structure is ready for the new century. We have used NCSJ as an abbreviation, and this formal name change reflects a region without a Soviet Union, in which the issues we address have evolved and multiplied. The name change formalizes the organized American Jewish community’s long-held public recognition that the successor states are independent and that the Soviet Union is dead."

NCSJ President Howard E. Sachs of Atlanta said, "Our prime objective was to avoid any reference to the Soviet Union – past or present – while maximizing the name recognition. The name "NCSJ" also highlights our Web site, www.ncsj.org, which is now a primary means for informing and interacting with policymakers, the Jewish community, and the general public."

"Some urged that our new name refer to ‘Former Soviet’ or ‘Post-Soviet’ states," NCSJ Executive Director Mark B. Levin recalled, "But Jews and non-Jews in the region asserted that retaining the term ‘Soviet’ in any form would be inappropriate. While it is convenient to refer to the communities of the region as ‘Soviet Jewry,’ doing so may imply that the diverse successor states and their Jewish communities are somehow monolithic."

According to Braham and Sachs, "NCSJ acts in close consultation with community leadership in the United States and in the region, and we are constantly finding ways to make NCSJ even more effective and responsive to the range of issues we address."

NCSJ, a non-for-profit agency created in 1971, is the mandated central coordinating agency in the United States on behalf of the 1.5 million Jews in the successor states. Today, NCSJ continues its commitment to safeguard the religious and political freedoms of Jews living in the successor states, protect their right to emigrate without impediment, monitor and combat anti-Semitism, and ensure that Jews have full access to Jewish education, culture, and heritage.