Title Chairman & CEO Religion Jewish Name Shelley Rubin Employer Jewish Defense League | Term 2006–present Spouse(s) Irv Rubin (deceased) Predecessor Irv Rubin | |
Residence California, United States Known for Rubin v. City of Lancaster, a prayer lawsuit | ||
Shelley Rubin is an American social activist and the wife of late JDL International Chairman Irv Rubin, and is currently the chairman and CEO of the USA-based, Kahanist, Jewish Defense League, a group which was classified as "a right-wing terrorist group" by the FBI in 2001.
Contents
Biography
Rubin is Jewish, resides in California, and is the wife of late JDL International Chairman Irv Rubin. She is also the chairman and CEO of the USA-based, Kahanist, Jewish Defense League, a group which was classified as "a right-wing terrorist group" by the FBI in 2001. She is responsible for ideological and strategic direction, organizational development, activities coordination. and daily administration of the JDL.
She has been a member of the JDL since 1979, and served from 1985–2006 as Administrative Director (primarily under the leadership of her husband, late JDL International Chairman Irv Rubin), and has served as Chairman and CEO of the JDL since 2006.
In 1980, she was arrested during a scuffle at a Jimmy Carter rally, as she carried a Reagan-Bush poster.
In 1985, while she was administrative director of the Jewish Defense League, she said she and her husband had received "nothing but supportive feedback" from Fairfax area merchants in a preliminary opinion poll in which they sought support to change the name of Fairfax Avenue to Raoul Wallenberg Boulevard, in honor of a Swedish diplomat who saved Jews during World War II.
In 1988, she was editor of the B'nai B'rith Messenger.
In 2002, after her husband's death she called for an investigation, saying he would not have committed suicide. In the 18 months following her husband's death, she and her followers in the JDL faced a power struggle against the leaders of a number of local JDL chapters.
Lancaster City Council Prayer lawsuit
She and Maureen Feller filed suit in 2010 in Los Angeles Superior Court asking a judge to prohibit the City of Lancaster City Council sessions from including "a prayer wherein the name of Jesus Christ is invoked," after attending an April 2010 meeting where that took place and being upset and offended by it. She said of the invocation which named Jesus Christ the "only one mediator between God and man" by the Rev. Martin Brauer: "He's showing a lack of respect for every American who doesn't share his brand of religion". She filed the suit three weeks after Lancaster voters supported a ballot vote to allow the prayers. The case was assigned to Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Susan Bryant-Deason.
The City removed the case to federal court. In June 2011, Judge Dale Fischer of the U.S. Central District Court found against her and her co-plaintiff in a bench trial.
Rubin appealed the case. In March 2013, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, including District Judge Jack Zouhary, and Circuit Judges Alfred T. Goodwin and Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain, affirmed the district court ruling against her, upholding Lancaster’s prayer policy as not effecting an unconstitutional establishment of religion.