The most encouraging story we have received in 30 years from United Jewish Communities (or its predecessors, Council of Jewish Federations and United Jewish Appeal), came this week. Finally, the top leadership has realized that the mentality, the goals, the methods of operation, of the national federation system cannot be those that worked in 1975. Truth to tell, they were becoming outdated even then.
The form in which this dramatic development came was an announcement that UJC will consider overseas funding relationships with agencies other than the Jewish Agency for Israel and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. UJC referred, somewhat obliquely, to the wonderful growth in Israel. Translation: The State of Israel no longer needs the funding from the Diaspora that it once did. Further translation: Israel, though still physically threatened, is a financial success. Still more translation: The American Jewish community has been cutting itself, injuring itself, by not focusing on its own continuity, by not directing its considerable fundraising prowess to its own youth. Rather, we have sent the money to Israel, ignoring the dramatic statistics that tell the story of change.
When the UJA began as Israel began, the Diaspora covered roughly 50% of Israels budget. Israel would not have survived without this. Already by the late 1970s not to mention now that statistic dropped drastically and now hovers around one percent. As we observed already back in 1984 on this page (Oct. 12, to be exact), it is time to rethink the economic relationship with Israel. For decades, Israel has not needed the Diaspora to survive economically. The Diaspora, however, has needed its own funding to survive physically.
UJC, quite tactfully, is implying that the Jewish Agency for Israel is no longer critical to the survival of the Jewish people. To the extent that overseas aid from the Diaspora is still needed, it can be delivered more economically elsewhere. Although aliyah is never complete, every major Jewry in distress has already moved to Israel, in whole or in major part. The exceptions are the Western Jewries, for whom economic hardship is not a major impediment to aliyah. Ideology is. In a word, the Jewish Agency played a historic role in the miraculous reconstruction of the Jewish state. That role is essentially finished.
UJC, facing a new economic crisis and a longstanding demographic crisis in the US, is wise to begin the process of rewriting the playbook of worldwide Jewish philanthropy. As we have long argued, we can ignore the fact that Jewish society in the Diaspora has radically changed only at our peril. In the US, Jews are no longer centered in Jewish neighborhoods; no longer speak a mamaloschen; no longer assume Jewish literacy; and no longer is Jewish social interaction confined to Jews. All this creates a great meltaway. Still, the Diaspora sent the bulk of its philanthropic funding overseas. As it becomes harder and harder to raise funds, the jig is up. We have to rebuild internally. That is the larger message behind what might seem to be a mere bureaucratic announcement that the UJC may consider other overseas funding partners.
The agenda of the Joint helping poor Jews overseas is still vital. Even so, most of UJCs overseas funding has not gone to the Joint, which should be least affected by the current reevaluation.
We salute the present UJC chair, Joseph Kanfer, for asking the tough questions, for stating plainly that business as usual will no longer work, for challenging the assumptions upon which UJCs predecessors did heroic work and for helping us focus on the heroic work we must continue to do, for our own children, in our own communities, so that our own Diaspora Jewry does not gradually fade away.
The bulwark of our existence is, as always, mitzvot, and the best place they are taught is in Jewish day schools. They are taught elsewhere, too, and other venues must be supported; but proportionate to dollars invested, the best return is from the day schools.
