By Manny Frishberg, JTNews Correspondent
Rob Jacobs may be a new face around the ADL’s regional headquarters in Seattle, but he has been working for human rights throughout his life. He also brings some of the most varied experience to the regional director’s post in recent memory.
Before moving into his new office in late January, Jacobs was “heading up” the Center for Technology Entrepreneurship at the University of Washington School of Business, where he developed a Ph.D.-level Technology Engineering program. He’s also been a legislative aide in the other Washington—as staff to two legislative committees before becoming Maryland Sen. Barbara McCulsky’s legislative director—and a human rights lawyer, working with local attorneys in Ecuador, Guatemala and Peru.
That’s a long way around for a Pacific Northwest native who grew up in the Portland suburb of Lake Oswego, Ore. But Jacobs is accustomed to taking the long way around.
After high school he went east to obtain his undergraduate degree at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island before returning to Portland to attend Lewis and Clark Law School. Following his stint in Latin America, Jacobs was back in school on the East Coast, getting a business degree from Columbia University before coming home to the Northwest, settling in Seattle six years ago.
Even while staying in one place, Jacobs has kept moving. He moved to his UW post from overseeing Amazon.com’s “intellectual property portfolio,” and now finds himself at the center of the Jewish and human rights communities for a wide swath of the western U.S.
In his new role, as the Anti-Defamation League’s Pacific Northwest Regional Director, Jacobs is responsible not just for happenings in Seattle and the rest of Washington, but also in Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Alaska. Jacobs describes his entry here as a homecoming in a number of ways.
“This opportunity came up and, having grown up in the Pacific Northwest, it immediately jumped out and grabbed me jumped out at me,” Jacobs said. “It was a sort of a return to the interests that I had when I first went to law school and got involved with politics.’ Then too, he added, since getting married to Elizabeth Davis, who was already active in local Jewish affairs and having a pair of daughters—one of whom is enrolled at the Seattle Jewish Community School—“I just started feeling closer and closer to the Jewish community.”
Jacobs has dived into involvement with local Jewish organizations with both feet. He is on the board of Congregation Beth Shalom and a board member of the regional Hebrew Free Loan Association.
Taking on the leadership of the ADL is also a way to address issues that Jacobs has been personally aware of since he was a child.
“I remember, as a kid, being asked where my horns were, in Eastern Oregon when I was hiking around,” he said. “I also remember seeing newspaper ads on the Oregon coast from used car dealers saying, ‘Come in and Jew us out of a car.’
“People don’t really have an understanding of who the Jewish people are,” he said. “It struck home to me then and it’s striking home to me again, especially with something like The Passion [of the Christ] coming up, it’s striking home again.”
Jacob pointed out that the controversial Mel Gibson film is being heavily promoted by some of the evangelical churches in the area, which have bought up entire blocks of time in movie theaters to run nothing but The Passion of the Christ on all their screens for several days or a week at a time. Even if the film, in which the actors speaking in the ancient language of Aramaic, is not a blockbuster at the box office, Jacobs said, it offers “an opportunity to get out there and raise the profile for the ADL in this region.”
Some conservative groups have accused the ADL and its national director Abraham Foxman of using the Gibson film to raise funds for the organization while its mission to fight anti-Semitism in this case backfired. Jacobs defended the ADL position, saying the film was already gaining media attention and raising the issues of anti-Semitism and its portrayal of the Jews is aiding the effort toward dialogue.
In the Northwest, Jacobs acknowledges he must make the ADL’s presence felt across a huge geographic area that contains the lowest percentage of Jews in the country’s overall population.
“In comparison to the other regions, and especially the East Coast, the profile of ADL needs to be raised out here. That’s one of the things that’s going to be among the biggest challenges and one of the most exciting parts, as well,” he said.
Part of the job he has staked out for himself is to “make sure that, across the five states, there’s a presence, and, opportunity for people that need our assistance to get in touch with us. And to develop an educational network to make sure that we’re proactively heading off potential problems.”
Jacobs is coming to the job after it has sat vacant for the last eight months. He is quick to point out that the staff, including development director Tina Solomon, have kept things running smoothly since Brian David Goldberg left in June. Still, he admits there is some need for a broader outreach.
“We have some catch-up to do. A big part of my job is going to be getting back in touch with some of the organizations that we’ve been in touch with,” he said. At the same time, he is looking toward putting more speakers out to areas like Spokane, Tacoma and Olympia, for a start.
“We’re looking at closer work with the board members that we do have right now in the other states. We want to begin developing active boards in those regions and working with the board members that are there now,” Jacobs said.
One other priority is to develop closer working relationships with local police and with school districts throughout the region.
“We want to get running,” Jacobs said, “and make sure people are aware that we are ready to respond quickly to issues.”