Founder
David M. Rosenberg-Wohl has spent well over one thousand hours consulting with Jewish students (and their parents) from grade school through graduate school in California and nationwide, professors at colleges and at law school, employees of institutions and consumers of services provided privately and by the State. He knows the attorneys involved in the recent legal efforts to combat antisemitism throughout the United States. He sees the situation on the ground and knows what it takes to turn the tide. Through IEG, David seeks to expand upon the efforts he has begun to undertake and make them self-sustaining.
David is uniquely qualified to lead IEG. He is President of Hershenson Rosenberg-Wohl, a Professional Corporation, through which he has advocated for his clients at both the US Supreme Court and the California Supreme Court. He has both represented and sued sizable institutions, brought race, sex and disability discrimination claims, and knows how to develop and shape class actions for maximum financial relief. David also has the historical background to contextualize the antisemitism of this time within the scope of Jewish history. He holds a Ph.D. in Jewish Studies from the University of California, Berkeley and the Graduate Theological Union (2014). One thing appears both clear and unique in the long history of Jews in the diaspora: in America we have a home in which we can stand up for ourselves, asserting our rights to equality under the law, without the risk of incurring more discrimination, much less expulsion or death. Judaism is not a privilege here but rather a right. Zionism is not an agreement to current (or any particular) Israeli policy but an intrinsic connection of Jewish faith and ethnicity to a homeland now established by the United Nations itself.
Since October 7, David has focused exclusively on advocating on behalf of the Jewish community and its allies. David regularly consults with Stand With Us, the Brandeis Center, the ADL, Hillel International, The Deborah Project and The Lawfare Group. His former law firm was instrumental in forming CALL (Campus Antisemitism Legal Line) with the ADL, the Brandeis Center and Hillel, among others, and he is the go-to lawyer to whom those organizations direct clients they are not able to take – not just in California but nationwide.
Currently, David provides advice about how institutions can and should resist antisemitism to Hillel of Silicon Valley as general counsel, how professors and university students can protect themselves from discrimination due to their religion, ethnicity and political viewpoint, and what parents’ groups such as the Bay Area Jewish Coalition and Jews in Schools can reasonably expect from the environments in which their kids go to school.
David represents individuals such as professors at San Jose State University in both defending and prosecuting claims under Title VII (hostile environment arising out of a faculty email chain), a disabled Jewish veteran in Groveman v. Regents (campus access precluded by Gaza encampment), and a grade schooler and her parents in at Miller v. California Department of Education (antisemitism hounding 12th grader to leave charter school in San Jose). He convinced the Academic Senate of De Anza College not to adopt the anti-Israel resolution developed by CAIR and adopted by numerous colleges and communities in California, and he has urged the Mountain View-Los Altos High School District Board of Trustees to reconsider its decision approving an ethnic studies course without having reviewed it and allowing public comment as required by State law. He has written numerous complaints under State law concerning teachers in Santa Clara Unified School District, Fremont Union High School District, and Cupertino Union School District and has recently finished a Title VI complaint against Santa Clara Unified School District.
IEG aims to build upon this work and mobilize the newly impassioned attack upon Zionism to empower Jews to defend their rights to their distinctive identity and shape a long-lasting strategy for combating and defeating the new face of antisemitism in our time.
David is uniquely qualified to lead IEG. He is President of Hershenson Rosenberg-Wohl, a Professional Corporation, through which he has advocated for his clients at both the US Supreme Court and the California Supreme Court. He has both represented and sued sizable institutions, brought race, sex and disability discrimination claims, and knows how to develop and shape class actions for maximum financial relief. David also has the historical background to contextualize the antisemitism of this time within the scope of Jewish history. He holds a Ph.D. in Jewish Studies from the University of California, Berkeley and the Graduate Theological Union (2014). One thing appears both clear and unique in the long history of Jews in the diaspora: in America we have a home in which we can stand up for ourselves, asserting our rights to equality under the law, without the risk of incurring more discrimination, much less expulsion or death. Judaism is not a privilege here but rather a right. Zionism is not an agreement to current (or any particular) Israeli policy but an intrinsic connection of Jewish faith and ethnicity to a homeland now established by the United Nations itself.
Since October 7, David has focused exclusively on advocating on behalf of the Jewish community and its allies. David regularly consults with Stand With Us, the Brandeis Center, the ADL, Hillel International, The Deborah Project and The Lawfare Group. His former law firm was instrumental in forming CALL (Campus Antisemitism Legal Line) with the ADL, the Brandeis Center and Hillel, among others, and he is the go-to lawyer to whom those organizations direct clients they are not able to take – not just in California but nationwide.
Currently, David provides advice about how institutions can and should resist antisemitism to Hillel of Silicon Valley as general counsel, how professors and university students can protect themselves from discrimination due to their religion, ethnicity and political viewpoint, and what parents’ groups such as the Bay Area Jewish Coalition and Jews in Schools can reasonably expect from the environments in which their kids go to school.
David represents individuals such as professors at San Jose State University in both defending and prosecuting claims under Title VII (hostile environment arising out of a faculty email chain), a disabled Jewish veteran in Groveman v. Regents (campus access precluded by Gaza encampment), and a grade schooler and her parents in at Miller v. California Department of Education (antisemitism hounding 12th grader to leave charter school in San Jose). He convinced the Academic Senate of De Anza College not to adopt the anti-Israel resolution developed by CAIR and adopted by numerous colleges and communities in California, and he has urged the Mountain View-Los Altos High School District Board of Trustees to reconsider its decision approving an ethnic studies course without having reviewed it and allowing public comment as required by State law. He has written numerous complaints under State law concerning teachers in Santa Clara Unified School District, Fremont Union High School District, and Cupertino Union School District and has recently finished a Title VI complaint against Santa Clara Unified School District.
IEG aims to build upon this work and mobilize the newly impassioned attack upon Zionism to empower Jews to defend their rights to their distinctive identity and shape a long-lasting strategy for combating and defeating the new face of antisemitism in our time.
Legal Support
- Joseph B. Hershenson (A.B., Harvard ’83; J.D., Stanford ’86)
- Patrick C. Cooper (A.B., Yale ’82; J.D., Yale ’85)
- Sharon Segev (Dual Degree, Law & Accounting, Tel Aviv University, ’97)
- Maissa Chouraki-Lewin (A.B. University of British Columbia, ’10; J.D., Berkeley Law ’15)
Administrative Support
Bay Area Jewish Coalition -- a grassroots organization that includes parents and community members
Advisory Board
- Maya Bronicki -- Bay Area Jewish Coalition
- Sarita Bronstein -- Executive Director, Hillel of Silicon Valley
- Joshua Holo (Ph.D.) -- Vice President of Academic Resources; Associate Professor of Jewish History, Hebrew Union College
- Leslie Johns (Ph.D.) -- Professor of Political Science and Law, University of California, Los Angeles
- Richard Steinberg (J.D., Ph.D.) -- Professor Law, Jonathan D. Varat Endowed Chair in Law, University of California, Los Angeles
- Rabbi Peretz Wolf-Prusan -- formerly Rabbi/Senior Educator, Temple Emanu-El, San Francisco; Instructor, New Lehrhaus
