[1] BACSJ was one of the largest and most active local grassroots organizations in the American Soviet Jewry movement.

[2] After the fall of the Soviet Union BACSJ was renamed Bay Area Council for Jewish Rescue and Renewal and shifted its focus to monitoring the human rights conditions in countries throughout Eastern Europe and Central Asia and assisting former Soviet Jewish communities in need.

[3] Activities of the BACSJ included monitoring and reporting the conditions of Jews in the USSR, organizing protest demonstrations in front of the Soviet consulate in San Francisco, vigils and other events on behalf of Soviet Jewry, visiting and delivering spiritual and material aid to Soviet Jewish Refuseniks and Prisoners of Conscience, maintaining community-wide letter-writing and phone call campaigns, assisting recent émigrés from USSR and keeping elected officials representing Bay Area informed and involved in the movement to help Soviet Jews.

In the early 1990s Bay Area Council for Jewish Rescue and Renewal helped the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews to establish human rights bureaus in the Former Soviet Union to support and protect Jews and other religious and national minorities.

[5] David Waksberg led the organization from the mid-1980s to early 1990s, simultaneously holding leadership positions in the UCSJ.