Behind the Headlines: All Want to Aid Absorption Effort, but Few Agree Who Will Pay for It

Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir last week urged all Jews to “reach out to our brethren in the Soviet Union” and “assure them that the Jewish people is united and determined to respond to their needs and welcome them into the Jewish fold and into the Jewish homeland.”

A day later, the Jewish Agency Board of Governors pledged “to meet our responsibilities as we face the challenging opportunity of large-scale aliyah from the Soviet Union.”

But it remains unclear what practical measures the government and the Jewish Agency are prepared to take to meet the anticipated influx of thousands of Soviet immigrants and the enormous costs of their absorption in Israel.

The Jewish Agency has already raised its absorption budget this year by $34 million to $104 million.

But according to Mendel Kaplan, chairman of the agency Board of Governors, the anticipated arrival in Israel this year of 20,000 Jews from the Soviet Union and other countries could cost the Jewish Agency an additional $75 million.

In the meantime, the Jewish Agency’s overall budget has dipped by $28 million this year.

Acknowledging its financial limitations and hoping to eliminate duplication, the Jewish Agency Assembly voted last year to begin turning over most of its absorption responsibilities to government agencies.

But last week, the assembly voted to retain responsibility for running absorption centers for new immigrants for what one Diaspora leader described as “the reasonably long term.”

ANOTHER ‘SPECIAL CAMPAIGN’?

In an interview Friday, Kaplan declined to say whether that would require an additional fund-raising campaign in the Diaspora, from which the Jewish Agency derives its resources.

But he did talk of consulting with the main philanthropic bodies — the United Jewish Appeal, the United Israel Appeal and the worldwide Keren Hayesod — to “work together towards a program to meet our responsibility.”

Simcha Dinitz, chairman of the World Zionist Organization-Jewish Agency Executive, was blunter in talking about “the possibility next year of a special campaign.” But he called it a decision only the UJA, UIA and Keren Hayesod can make.

Martin Stein of Milwaukee, chairman of UJA’s board of trustees, said UJA is ready to do “anything and everything in our power” to accomplish the absorption of Soviet Jews.

But he also stopped short of talking about a new campaign that would extend this year’s “Passage to Freedom” campaign on behalf of the Soviet emigres.

Instead, the agency’s Diaspora partners will look to see “where we can cut other budgets without going further into debt,” said Stein. “We must remain responsible fiscally.”

For one, the agency has refused to consider getting involved in housing new immigrants, which it feels is a government responsibility.

Kaplan told Shamir last week that the agency would work with the government in developing a blueprint for absorbing 10,000 new immigrants, but “we cannot possibly be concerned” with housing, “because of the very large segment of costs involved.”

Various government ministries have proposed a number of housing and absorption plans.

Finance Minister Shimon Peres proposed a $120 million plan to create more housing, but it ran aground when Diaspora leaders refused to pick up $80 million of the tab.

U.S. FUNDS MAY HELP

Housing Minister David Levy’s plans have ranged from the pragmatic — tax incentives for builders and landlords, the rehabilitation of empty apartments in the North and South — to the ideological: a call for West Bank settlers to “adopt” immigrants upon arrival.

Kaplan has warmly praised one plan, discussed May 15 at the ministerial committee on finance, housing and absorption. It would make available 3,800 subsidized mortgages and 2,500 public housing units.

Kaplan said the agency and the government have to look toward a “larger strategy of absorption” that includes housing programs. With immigrants piling up at absorption centers, unable to find affordable or adequate housing on the outside, “housing solutions must be found so as not to clog the process.” he said.

There is some mild relief in sight. Both houses of the U.S. Congress have approved a supplemental spending package, which could provide up to $100 million in refugee assistance.

Of that $100 million, $75 million could go to the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, both of which are beneficiaries of overseas sums raised by the Diaspora philanthropies.

By freeing up more overseas funds for the Jewish Agency, the aid package “could be viewed as a $75 million foreign aid bill for the Jewish Agency. That would be its practical effect,” said to Ben Zion Leuchter, president of HIAS.

But longer-term solutions will need to be found. In the resolution on absorption it adopted last week, the Jewish Agency Assembly noted that “grave damage has been done to the immigrant community, both abroad and in Israel, as a result of the confusion created by the apparent inability of either the government or the Jewish Agency to take responsibility for absorption.”

Now that both sides have pledged to take responsibility, it is a question of who is going to pay the bill.