B’nai Brith. Billy developed a friendship with Rabbi Marc
Tanenbaum of the American Jewish Committee, the two of
them inviting each other to speak in various venues. In 1977,
Billy received the first American Jewish Committee’s National
Inter-religious Award for his efforts to strengthen “mutual
respect and understanding between evangelicals and Jewish
communities.” As the late Rabbi Tanenbaum said, “The evan-
gelical community is the largest and fastest-growing bloc of pro-
Jewish sentiment in this country,” and “most of the progress of
Protestant-Jewish relations over the past quarter century was
due to Billy Graham.”
It helped that Billy’s daughter, Gigi, lived for a while on a kib-
butz. It helped that on his trips to the Soviet Union that Billy met
with persecuted Soviet Jews and pressed their case privately with
Soviet officials, urging the Soviets to allow Jews to emigrate and
to relax restrictions on rabbinic training and language instruction
in Hebrew. Billy said his goal was not to convert these Jews but
to rescue them from their oppression and bring them to lands of
freedom. It helped that Golda Meir, the late prime minister of
Israel, hailed Billy as “a great human being and outstanding
spokesman for peace and rich brotherhood.”
When some conservative Christians were quoted as saying,
“God Almighty does not hear the prayers of a Jew,” Billy distanced
himself from such remarks.
When his own Southern Baptist Convention singled out Jews
to be targets of conversion efforts, Billy disassociated himself.
While he confirmed his intent to present the message of Jesus to
everyone, he said, “I believe God has always had a special rela-
tionship with the Jewish people.... In my evangelistic efforts, I
have never felt called to single out Jews as Jews.... Just as
Judaism frowns on proselytizing that is coercive, or that seeks to
commit men against their will, so do I.”
Billy’s relationship with Jews took a major hit when, in early
2002, the National Archives released the tape of a ninety-minute
conversation recorded in the Oval Office in 1972 between Presi-
dent Nixon and Billy Graham. In an unguarded discussion, Billy
The Leadership Secrets of Billy Graham