Jewish leaders aren’t happy with Russell Simmons for supporting Louis Farrakhan’s address to a packed crowd in Detroit last month.

The Def Jam mogul has done commercials along with Jay-Z saying “I Am a Jew” to fight anti-Semitism - and he founded the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding with Rabbi Marc Schneier - the head of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has called him a “hypocrite.”

Simmons co-chaired Farrakhan’s event, where the Minister urged people to read “several notoriously anti-Semitic books,” including “The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews” by the Historical Research Department of the Nation of Islam, “The Secrets of the Federal Reserve” by Eustace Mullins, “By Way of Deception” by Victor Ostrovsky and “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid” by former President Jimmy Carter.

“Farrakhan may have held his anti-Semitic views in check while on the dais,” said ADL National Director Abraham Foxman, “but if this is what he wants people to read, then the leopard hasn’t changed his spots.”

Foxman has noted that Farrakhan notoriously called Hitler a “great man” in 1984 after Nathan Perlmutter of the ADL referred to the Minister as a “Black Hitler.”

The 73-year-old leader, who has suffered from prostate cancer, also proclaimed Judaism a “dirty religion” - though the Nation of Islam’s Final Call explained, “…in Minister Farrakhan’s vocabulary the phrase ‘dirty religion’ has a particular meaning … ‘dirty religion’ is the distorted faith which emerges from its manipulation by hypocrites or sinners.”

Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, agrees with Foxman. “I did not see anything in [Farrakhan's] words that would lead me to believe that he’s changed his ways,” Hier tells us. “He has never apologized in direct terms to the Jewish community.”

But Simmons said Tuesday that the only way to end any hate is to communicate.

“I’m just trying to get an open dialogue between all these people,” Simmons told us. “The ADL has put up a long fight, and that fight has been so hurtful to both blacks and Jews. When you have that kind of fight between a leading Jewish organization like the ADL and Minister Farrakhan, what it does is separate whole communities.

“But it’s not about blacks and Jews or about Muslims and Jews, it’s about all ethnicities and the simple common notes that they can play. I just try to bring people together. I think that’s my job.”