Maurice Davis (rabbi)

Maurice Davis (December 15, 1921 - December 14, 1993 ) was a Rabbi, and human rights activist. He was a past director of the American Family Foundation, now known as the International Cultic Studies Association. Davis was the rabbi of the Jewish Community Center of White Plains, New York. Davis was a regular contributor to The Jewish Post and Opinion, where he had a column. Davis served on the President's Commission on Equal Opportunity, in the Lyndon B. Johnson Administration.

Davis has also been quoted as saying:

We know, and we must never forget, that every path leads somewhere. The path of segregation leads to lynching. The path of anti-Semitism leads to Auschwitz. The path of cults leads to Jonestown. We ignore this fact at our peril.

Family life
Rabbi Davis married Marion Cronbach, daughter of Rose Hentil and prominent reform rabbi and known pacifist (and Davis' teacher) Abraham Cronbach. Davis and his wife had two children, JayR (Bahir), who has two children and is Rabbi of Rocky Mountain Hai, a trans-denominational Havurah based in Colorado; and Michael, who has four children and is Rabbi of Congregation Emanu-El, Wichita, Kansas.

Civil rights work
In 1952, Davis founded the Kentucky Committee on Desegregation. In 1965 he marched with Martin Luther King, Jr. from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama and was appointed to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission by President Johnson.

Opposition to the Unification Church
In 1970, when two of his congregants' children became involved with the Unification Church, Davis began to educate himself more about the nature and methodology of cults. He soon became involved in assisting the parents of "cult children". Davis directed and appeared in the film, You Can Go Home Again, produced by the Union of American Hebrew Congregations. Davis observed commonalities among the young people he counseled that had joined cults. He found that most of these individuals were dropouts from mainline churches and synagogues - and that they were on a quest for idealism, community and a sense of belonging.

Davis founded and headed the national anti-Moon organization called Citizens Engaged in Reuniting Families, which in 1976 comprised 500 families. Davis stated that he received letters from distraught parents all over the United States, telling "the same story". He elaborated his points, asserting that the recruitment tactics used by the Unification Church are "a form of hypnotism". In November 1976, Rabbi Davis spoke at Temple Israel of Northern Westchester, New York, on the topic of "The Moon People And Our Children". He has also compared the Unification Church to the Nazi Youth movement, and to the Peoples Temple.

Other work opposing controversial groups
At one point in time Davis had sold Jim Jones a synagogue building which in the mid-1950s became the home for the first Peoples Temple group in Indianapolis, Indiana. When informed of the massacre at Jonestown, Guyana, Davis remarked: "I keep thinking what happens when the power of love is twisted into the love of power". In 1981, Davis was quoted in Ronald Enroth, Ph.D.'s book Youth, Brainwashing and the Extremist Cults as comparing the Church of Scientology to "the Nazi youth movement".

Davis later testified at a Congressional panel organized by Senator Bob Dole that he had received death threats due to these statements. In 1982, Davis received the Leo J. Ryan Award, named for the only Congressman to die in the line of duty, Representative Leo J. Ryan. In 1990, Davis criticized the Jews for Jesus movement as being "devious" and "deceptive". He further stated that "people who accept Jesus as the Messiah by definition Christians; they are not Jewish."

Later life
Before he died, Davis was treated at a rehabilitation center in Florida.

Herbert L. Rosedale, at the time president of the American Family Foundation, said of Davis: "A great and gentle radiance has left our scene with the death of Rabbi Maurice Davis. He was one of the people who first brought me into the circle of those devoted to helping cult victims. His compassion and vision were inspiring. He saw clearly the dangers which awaited those who lost their free will to totalism."

Education

 * Hebrew Union College, Rabbinical degree

Awards, honors

 * 1982 - Leo J. Ryan Award

Works

 * You Can Go Home Again, film director, produced by Union of American Hebrew Congregations