An e-mail alleging anti-Semitic remarks by the local leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference set off a weeklong firestorm in the Jewish community that was only beginning to cool Friday.
The e-mail was sent to friends April 4 by Jewish philanthropist Daphna Ziman after she attended an awards ceremony that day sponsored by the Western Province of Kappa Alpha Psi, a historically African American fraternity. She described the Rev. Eric Lee as rejecting efforts to bring the black and Jewish communities together.
Ziman wrote that she heard Lee say at the ceremony, "The Jews have made money on us in the music business, and we are the entertainers, and they are economically enslaving us."
Ziman noted that another prominent African American preacher, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., the former pastor of Sen. Barack Obama, was recorded making comments about Israel that she thought were very negative.
"What I would like to achieve is for all reverends to stand at attention and know that it's not OK to spout anti-Semitic words," she said Friday.
Lee, president of the conference's Greater Los Angeles office, denied the remarks Friday. "I understand she thought she heard something," Lee said. "But it was completely inaccurate about what I said."
Lee said he strives to be a friend to the Jewish community and was planning to participate in a Seder April 17 organized by the American Jewish Committee and the Wilshire Boulevard Temple. The e-mail, he said, "is contradictory to who I am as a person and my work. It's unbelievable to me how this has taken on a life of its own."
Lee issued a public statement denying that he made remarks "offensive regarding the Jewish community" and sent an apology to Ziman for any misunderstanding.
Roz Rothstein, executive director of Stand With Us, an organization that seeks to educate the public about Israel, said she and others were outraged by the e-mail because it portrayed Jews as taking advantage of others when Jews see themselves as trying to be humanitarian.
She included Ziman's e-mail in a 50,000-person newsletter she sent out Wednesday morning and was getting calls on it 20 minutes later.
"A lot of Jews marched with Martin Luther King Jr., and Jews have always been involved in civil rights and work in AIDS," Rothstein said. "For Jews to hear something that is that divisive, that is painful."
