A federation considered one of this country’s staunchest supporters of overseas causes plans to spend more of the funds it raises at home promoting Jewish education, sending less money to Israel and Jewish causes overseas.
The move by the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit worries advocates of overseas aid, who see an accelerating trend in which Israel receives a declining percentage of federation money.
Actually at stake is less than $1 million, as the Detroit federation reduces over the next three years the share forwarded to the United Jewish Appeal to 50 percent of gross campaign revenues from its current 53 percent share. The Detroit campaign last year raised a total of $26.3 million.
The move highlights a growing sense, both in America and Israel, that the needs of American Jews may have been neglected for too long. It comes at a time when Israeli officials, from Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin down to consular officers in the United States, say that American Jewish continuity is at least as much a part of the Diaspora-Israel partnership as is supporting disadvantaged Israelis.
And it comes at a time when the generation whose links to Jews overseas was forged by the Holocaust and the founding of the State of Israel is being replaced by a generation less viscerally connected to Jews overseas.
Detroit’s planned decrease in overseas allocations will leave Detroit with one of the highest ratios of federation funds going overseas. But it is precisely because of Detroit’s longstanding commitment to the UJA that national fund-raising professionals in New York are worried.
“There is no way of knowing if Detroit is the end of the wave of reductions (of overseas allocations) or the beginning of the next wave,” said one official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
‘TIP OF THE ICEBERG’
“It’s only the tip of the iceberg,” said another professional. “If the line can’t be held in Detroit, it can’t be held anywhere.”
This person noted that the Motor City is home to leading UJA engines like Max Fisher, the grand old man of the United Jewish Appeal and the founding chairman of the Jewish Agency, and Joel Tauber, UJA’s national chairman.
During the 1980s, the tradition of federations’ sending at least half their funds to Israel weakened across the country, as is evident from figures comparing federation allocations in 1982 to those in 1990.
Over that time, UJA’s share shrank from 50 to 42 percent, and local agencies’ shares rose from 29 to 34 percent. In terms of absolute dollars, UJA increased its revenue by 22 percent — less than inflation — while local agencies received 70 percent more dollars.
UJA is not opposing Detroit’s move.
“I wish other communities would give 50 percent of gross,” said UJA Executive Vice President Brian Lurie. “It keeps clearly to the concept of shared partnership,” he said.
And in a sharp departure from the past, when Israeli officials would talk darkly of conducting a competing fund-raising drive if federations cut their allocations to Israel, the Detroit move is being greeted with equanimity by Israel.
“If it’s to fund Jewish continuity, then I have nothing to say against it,” said a consulate official here.
Indeed, the executive vice president of the Detroit federation describes his motivation in just that way. “We needed to have a shifting of funds to continuity, while remaining a pre-eminent funder of UJA,” said Robert Aronson. He said the move was studied for a year and a half.
“This process was well under way before the whole Beilin-shmeilin thing,” said Aronson, referring to Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Yossi Beilin’s recent controversial remarks that Israel no longer needed Diaspora “charity.”
Shortly before the decision was announced, the Detroit Jewish News editorialized in favor of such a shift of priorities.
“We just felt there were so many programs in Detroit that were being asked to stretch their budgets that it makes sense to keep our money here,” said Phil Jacobs, the paper’s editor.
The squeeze on local programs reflects the confluence of the U.S. recession, which has cut into fund raising in recent years, and the Israeli absorption of more than half a million immigrants from the former Soviet Union and Ethiopia.
ALIYAH NEEDS CUT INTO LOCAL GIVING
To help pay for the immigration, the UJA has run a campaign — separate from the regular federation campaign — which will have raised more than $1 billion when it concludes this year.
With donors giving to that campaign, they were unable to increase their donations to the general campaign, which includes local agencies.
But for the Jewish Agency, the quasi-governmental social service agency that receives the bulk of the UJA money in Israel, the special campaign meant more money was received, despite the shortfalls in the regular campaigns.
While the Jewish Agency received $1.1 billion from federations during the four-year period of 1986-89, it received $1.6 billion in the subsequent four years, an increase of 40 percent.
But advocates of sending money to Israel worry that reductions in UJA allocations do not simply reflect the recent squeeze on local agencies, and the recent additional funding the Jewish Agency has received because of Operation Exodus.
They fear that Israel is decreasingly the motivation for giving, as the events of the 1940s become history and the younger generation rises to Jewish leadership and big-donor category.
A senior official at a federation that has so far not reduced its overseas allocation agreed that “the strength of the voices on the side of local needs has been growing in the past several years.
“Our campaign workers are telling us that our contributors are becoming more and more concerned about local needs. I don’t think that (Israel as a priority) is as strongly felt today as five years ago,” said the official.
Some federations try to balance the demands of key donors to maintain a 50-50 Israel-local split through bookkeeping changes. One leader said the goal is to continue overseas obligations but keep local needs of Jewish continuity in mind.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
