[6] AJCongress became effective as a pressure group in 1928 under the leadership of Rabbi Stephen Samuel Wise, who remained president and chief spokesperson until his death in 1949.

During World War II, the AJCongress acted as a liaison between the U.S. government and the WJC on issues relating to rescue attempts made on behalf of European Jews.

[8][better source needed] Riegner reported that the Nazis had planned, and were implementing, a policy to exterminate all of European Jewry; the cable also referred specifically to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.

After the U.S. State Department confirmed the accuracy of the information in the cable, now known as the Riegner Telegram, the AJCongress convened a Joint Emergency Committee.

[citation needed] After World War II, middle-class Jews of Eastern European descent with socialist-labor and professional civil rights backgrounds began to take over leadership roles in the Jewish community.

In contrast to the previous approach to placate the WASP elite in America, these leaders were eager and willing to join the public battle for Jewish civil rights.

[11] The AJCongress also supported coalition politics, legislative reform, and litigation as a means of bolstering a sense of Jewish identity and community.

[10] Jewish judges in New York, unable to gain the support of their colleagues to end religion matching of probationers, turned to AJCongress lawyers to craft a legal strategy.

Joint with other Jewish American organizations, the AJCongress announced the suspension of all their trips to Mexico on 28 November 1975, after 30 unanimous votes during an executive committee reunion.

[15] In the 1978 Regents of the University of California v. Bakke case, the AJCongress opposed racial quota systems and exclusive consideration of race in college admissions.

The AJCongress's legal director Marc Stern said at the time that "The Jewish community is less concerned about affirmative action than it was 25 years ago...We've all shifted.

[citation needed] In the late 1990s and into the 2000s, the AJCongress experienced the defection of a number of local chapters, including those in Boston, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles.

Finding the AJCongress had become too conservative, members of the Los Angeles chapter, for instance, created the Progressive Jewish Alliance (PJA) in 1999.

In 1994 the AJC along with the Anti Defamation League launched a campaign demanding that the IRS revoke the tax-exempt status of the Holy Land Foundation (HLF).

[20] The AJCongress suspended its activities and laid off much of its staff on July 13, 2010, because it had run out of operating funds due to losses in the Madoff scandal.

While the financial losses of the endowment were crippling, others noted that the AJCongress had long been in the shadow of larger American Jewish organizations such as the AJC and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).

While the AJCongress focused on religious freedom in America, free speech, and women's rights, donors showed more interest in Israel and anti-Semitism.

[23] While the AJCongress had a long history of fighting aid to religious schools, the effort proved to be in conflict with Orthodox Jewish communities that were very successful in attracting government funds for students.

An investigation by The Jewish Daily Forward showed that each year, tens of millions of dollars in federal Pell Grants go to yeshivas, which typically focus on Talmud study rather than secular subjects.

Past participants include Mayor of New York City Bill de Blasio, President of Argentina Mauricio Macri, Premier of Taiwan William Lai, and former Prime Minister of Italy Matteo Renzi.

[27][28] The AJCongress also created the Club 500, an executive speaking series which connects decision makers from around the world with members of the Jewish community via phone briefings.

[32] The CWE has turned its attention to the ethical, legal, and medical issues arising from research revealing that Ashkenazi Jewish women have higher-than-average frequencies of gene mutations predisposing them to breast and ovarian cancer.

[39][40][41][42] In the fall of 2007, the AJCongress announced that it had retained the services of Rabbi Israel Singer,[43] the former secretary-general of the World Jewish Congress – who left the agency after claims of financial irregularities were levied following an investigation by New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer[44] and followed up by accusations from then-WJC President Edgar Bronfman[45] about alleged theft.

Spillar stated that the magazine had "covered the Israeli feminist movement and women leaders in Israel ... eleven times" in the last four years.

The AJCongress, which had already been publishing Religion and the Public Schools: A Summary of the Law with the name of attorney Marc D. Stern on the cover,[48] adapted it to a "looseleaf form and expanding its distribution" in 1993.