Cleveland Jewish News:
Embattled Jewish Agency To Promote Identity Over Aliyah
New Emphasis on ‘Peoplehood’ Reflects Economic Reality and Russian Roots
By Gal Beckerman
Natan Sharansky knows he’s disturbing the status quo. Days before the most recent meeting of the Board of Governors, the body that oversees the Jewish Agency for Israel, Sharansky, its relatively new chairman, declared that the agency’s traditional mission had outlived its usefulness.
“It’s not enough to speak about aliyah,” Sharansky said, talking in front of a delegation of American Jewish leaders. “It’s almost prohibited for the head of the Jewish Agency to say so, but it can’t be our goal [just] to bring more Jewish people [to Israel].”
With these words — and the recent appointment to key positions of people who share his views — Sharansky has signaled his intent to bring about radical change to the financially strapped Jewish Agency, shifting its focus away from Israel and toward strengthening the secular identity of Diaspora Jews.
At the center of Sharansky’s plan is the notion of peoplehood. He and a tight group of ideological allies — mostly other Russian Jews — believe that the Jewish Agency must now become a global promoter of Jewish identity, particularly among the young. Peoplehood, according to its proponents, is defined as a sense of connectivity between Jews who share a common history and fate. It is still an amorphous concept for some critics. Others wonder if it is too weak a foundation on which to base educational programs — especially since this vision of peoplehood is not predicated on having any kind of religious or spiritual identity.
Nonetheless, this new role for the Jewish Agency is one that Sharansky, by all accounts, seems to be pursuing with great passion. It also comes out of necessity. Ever since the establishment of Israel in 1948, the agency has been financed through a combination of Israeli government funds and money from the Diaspora. In the Agency’s heyday, North American Jewish federations regularly contributed between 50% and 70% of the money they raised every year to fund it. But as the large-scale immigration to Israel began to ebb, so, too, did this source of money. By 2004, the last year for which the Jewish Agency provided this statistic, only 23% of combined Jewish federation money was being sent overseas, to be split by the agency, which received 75%, and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, which got the remaining 25%.
By now it is clear that this source of money has long since dried up. Whereas in 1989, the Jewish Agency received $275 million from the North American federations, last year it received only $130 million, and the projected intake for 2010 is $110 million. Given that Diaspora money makes up one-third of the agency’s budget, the drop has been catastrophic for the large bureaucracy.
“The Diaspora institutions, from the 1970s on, began to cut allocations and put pressure for cuts,” said Irving “Yitz” Greenberg, a prominent Modern Orthodox rabbi who was the founding president of the Jewish Life Network, an organization focused on revitalizing American Jewish life through educational and cultural initiatives. “And the agency, instead of giving up some of its functions and making a real transformation, suffered a slow death by a thousand cuts. It’s been cumulative, and by now they see that they can’t just do less of all of the things they are doing currently.”
Immigration to Israel is also not the giant task that it once was. In recent years, private organizations like Nefesh B’Nefesh, which helps North American Jews make aliyah, have been praised for providing better, more efficient services than the Jewish Agency. And though immigration is still a large budget category, this year it will account for barely more than the education department ($100.59 million, as opposed to $94.29 million for education, out of a budget of $321.71 million).
Two recent appointments to high posts in the agency are further indication of a change in direction.A new senior position has been created for Misha Galperin, the current executive vice president and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington. He will be based in New York, and provisionally be in charge of, what the Agency is calling “Global Public Affairs and Financial Resource Develoment.” [Read the rest]
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