Bill Berkowitz
November 30, 2006

Abramoff accomplice right wing Rabbi Daniel Lapin is still in business

Ethically-challenged head of Toward Tradition, one of the Christian Right's most reliable Jewish allies, decides to keep the doors of his organization open

A funny thing happened to Rabbi Daniel Lapin on his journey to constantly claiming the moral high ground: Toward Tradition, his conservative Jewish organization, got so deeply involved with the shenanigans of the now-jailed Republican Party mega-lobbyist Jack Abramoff -- Lapin's longtime friend and business associate -- that rumors of the organization's demise began to percolate in the media. But despite the rumor that Toward Tradition would shut its doors -- a rumor generated largely by the Rabbi's testimony before a congressional committee -- Lapin has now pledged to keep the organization's doors open.

Before deciding not to pull the plug on Toward Tradition -- which Lapin claims has 31,000 members, half Jewish and half Christian -- Lapin took a few minutes to cheap-shot Barbra Streisand, another old friend. In a column titled "Why The Streisand I Once Knew Was Never Obscene," Lapin scolded the singer for using foul language -- the f-word -- while combating a heckler during a concert in Madison Square Garden in early October.

Lapin claimed that Streisand's ill-mannered response must have been a result of her embrace of secular liberalism.

"As it turns out," the Jewish Daily Forward tersely noted, "Streisand could just as well have fired off her own statement, under the headline: 'The Rabbi I Once Knew Was Never Under Investigation by a Senate Committee.'"

A recent report by the Democratic staff of the Senate Finance Committee titled "Investigation of Jack Abramoff's Use of Tax-Exempt Organizations" "alleges that Toward Tradition and four other organizations may have violated their tax-exempt status by aiding Abramoff clients, quoted Lapin as telling congressional staffers that he was in the process of shutting down his organization because of all the bad press," the Forward reported.

In a phone interview with Washington Jewish Week, "Lapin acknowledged that the option [to close Toward Tradition] was at one time considered in the wake of revelations about how former lobbyist and Toward Tradition backer ... Abramoff had utilized the organization to influence a top staffer for then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay."

"A lot of energy and resources [were used] to deal with those things," he said, but "it wasn't considered for very long." Closing Toward Tradition "would be a betrayal" of the group's mission and backers, he said.

In addition to Lapin's Toward Tradition, the other groups named in the Democratic staff report were Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform; the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy, a group, journalist Frederick Clarkson pointed out, that was co-founded by Norquist and Gale Norton before she became Secretary of the Interior; Citizens Against Government Waste; and the National Center for Public Policy Research.

Jack's Daniel

According to TalktoAction's Frederick Clarkson, the Democratic staff "report shows via email traffic how Abramoff could count on Lapin to write columns that would cast his clients in a favorable light...[and] highlights [his]...intention to use Lapin to gain a meeting with [Focus on the Family's] James Dobson for Jeff Ballabon of the Channel One Network. On another occasion, Ballabon wrote to Abramoff and Lapin about the draft of a proposed newspaper column that would go out under Lapin's name attacking critics of Channel One's controversial in-classroom commercial television network."

The column, titled "Is it immoral to make an honest living? Your children think so," was syndicated by Knight Ridder newspapers, on April 15, 1999.

"In email correspondence about the article," Clarkson reported, "Ballabon described the company's critics as 'radical, anti-business operators and academics' and 'outside commie agitators.' Ballabon's idea of 'commies' included the PTA, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Federation of Teachers. The concerns being expressed by groups like these at the time were that the company sold school systems on child appropriate news they provide, along with free equipment to view it on -- but that they really deliver mostly commercials and what little news there is poorly done. They thought that maybe allowing the classroom to be hijacked by commercial interests wasn't such a good idea."

According to Clarkson, Lapin's op-ed piece was "evidently part of a ... far-reaching political and PR campaign that sought to head off hearings on the matter" by Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL). In a 2001 story for The American Prospect, journalist Russ Baker wrote:

Channel One dumped almost $1 million into a lobbying effort led by former Christian Coalition Director Ralph Reed and the powerful law firm of Preston, Gates, and Ellis--and effectively kept a lid on further action or hearings. Last spring a Shelby-sponsored sense-of-the-Senate resolution opposing commercialization of the schools was blocked by Republican Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas and heavy lobbying by Reed and former New York Senator Alfonse D'Amato. The company has other means of winning support: Channel One's Ballabon insisted on faxing me a mound of positive letters; several from students mentioned free trips to Channel One's Los Angeles production studios.

Lapin, a native of Johannesburg, South Africa who came to California in the 1970s, has for years been a favorite with conservative Christian evangelicals; appearing at conferences, rallies, on religious television programs, and signing onto hordes of evangelical-generated petitions.

He founded the Pacific Jewish Center, an Orthodox synagogue in Venice, California, which, according to Wikipedia, "views itself as functioning as part of the recent Baal teshuva movement, encouraging Conservative and Reform Jews to adopt and return to a more observant traditional Judaism."

Michael Medved, a radio talk show host and film critic who is on the Toward Tradition board, was a member of Pacific Jewish Center as was Barbra Streisand and actor Richard Dreyfuss. "Lapin's teachings," Wikipedia points out, "are also aligned with Modern Orthodox Judaism, in that while he promotes observant Judaism, he is strongly in favor of observant Jews having interaction with other faith communities (in his view, mostly conservative and observant Christian communities) and broader political action outside of Judaism."

After Lapin left the Center in the early 1990s his brother David took over; he left in 2003 to run the Eshkol Academy. In 2002, Lapin hosted a weekly radio talk show funded by Toward Tradition on KTTH-AM in Seattle. The show was cancelled earlier this year and Lapin took to hosting a Sunday afternoon program on KSFO-AM in San Francisco.

"Though he portrays himself as a business guru," Wikipedia points out, "Lapin has not been successful in his business ventures. While in California, he founded an investment company called Commonwealth Loan Company which bought and sold investment loans secured by Californian real estate. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in April 1992, six months after Lapin moved to Seattle. The company had losses in excess of $3 million dollars, much of which had been personally guaranteed by Lapin. In July 1994, Lapin filed for personal bankruptcy in a Seattle federal court, with more than $3 million in debts."

Lapin has long carried water for the Christian right: He was a strong supporter of Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ"; he was active around the Terry Schiavo case, supporting the campaign by her parents to keep her alive; is on the frontlines of the Christian evangelical-generated "War on Christmas," heroically claiming that its not offensive to say Merry Christmas; and has denounced recycling as "The sacred sacrament of secularism."

He has also been an aggressive critic of liberal Jewish groups; arguing that these groups focus too much on conservative Christian evangelical social issues that they disagree with rather than being grateful to Christian Zionists for their support for Israel. In a post on his website dated August 19, 2006, Lapin described Pastor John Hagee, the founder of Christians United for Israel, as "an American patriot, a great Christian leader, and an esteemed friend of all Jews, particularly me."

Lapin's description was prompted by a story in The American Prospect magazine which noted that he had appeared along with Pastor Hagee on the Trinity Broadcasting Network's talk show "Praise the Lord." On the program, Lapin explained the meaning of Purim -- the Jewish holiday that celebrates the day Queen Esther saved the Jews from annihilation -- to the Christian audience.

The American Prospect's Sarah Posner pointed out that Hagee's most recent book, "Jerusalem Countdown," claimed "that the Bible predicts a military confrontation with Iran." The book has sold over 500,000 copies, was the No. 1 best seller on the Wal-Mart inspirational best-seller list, appeared on Wal-Mart's list of top 10 best sellers for seven weeks, and also made the USA Today top 50 best-seller list for six weeks.

Lapin has also accused the Anti-Defamation League and other liberal Jewish organizations of trying to "driv[e] a wedge between American Jews and Christians."

In a post-Mel Gibson-meltdown column, Lapin, while acknowledging that the movie star/director had "provided some financial support to Toward Tradition," cautioned Jews not to rush to judgment about the actor's anti-Semitic ravings.