The 60-year-old World Sephardi Federation is undergoing a potentially fundamental transformation — carefully crafted by its president and organizational DNA of the last 16 years, Nessim Gaon of Geneva.
Federation leaders, including Gaon, recruited more than 200 local Sephardi leaders from throughout the Jewish diaspora this summer to serve on the federation’s newly created board of governors, which was Gaon’s idea.
The obvious effect was to broaden the financial and power base of the federation, as the leaders, from 16 countries, each pledged $15,000 over the next three years, or $3,3 million.
Although the federation’s decision-making bodies now represent a wider geography of views, whether the federation will become any more democratic in its pursuits on behalf of Jews of Mediterranean origin is still in question. So, too, is the speed with which it can expand his programming, an avowed priority.
The federation did not even recognize the board of governors as an official policy-making body until Dec. 2, the last of three days of the federation’s World Sephardi Congress held here.
By then, the congress had no time to consider the other priorities that Gaon and other leaders had expressed throughout the congress:
To foster a general resurgence of pride and unity among the world’s 2.5 million Sephardim.
To improve and increase Sephardi education to prevent assimilation in the diaspora.
To resuscitate their traditions in Israel, including Orthodox but moderate religious practices, and reclaim their yeshivas from the Ashkenazi religious authorities.
To increase educational and developmental assistance to Israel’s 1.2 million Sephardim, a slight majority of Israel’s Jewish population, but an overwhelming majority of the Jewish poor.
To utilize their origin in Arab lands to the advantage of Israel by opening channels of dialogue with Arab states.
The congress left those issues to the presidium, the top policy-making body, which presumably will approve them. That procedure was Gaon’s idea.
REVIVAL BEGAN IN 1971
It was also Gaon, a 64-year-old Sudanese-born businessman and international Jewish leader, who revived the moribund federation in 1971. He has served as president of the world body ever since. His ideas and activity have spurred three recent major accomplishments.
He won approval in 1978, from then-Premier Menachem Begin, for Project Renewal, the diaspora-Israeli cooperative rebuilding of Israel’s impoverished development towns, which mainly comprise Sephardim.
Under his leadership, the world federation has introduced, with the Jewish Agency, a scholarship program that has sent 7,000 underprivileged students to Israeli universities, and a bar mitzvah program that has provided the education, ceremony and gifts to 5,000 underprivileged boys.
The recruitment of the board of governors, undertaken in cooperation with Alberto Nasser of Rio de Janeiro and Stephen and Liliane Shalom of New York, transported Gaon throughout the Americas in August. Both he and Nasser said the local leaders told them they had awaited for years the opportunity to move from their local posts into the world Jewish scene.
Why now? Until a few years ago, it was impossible to consider such a step or talk of a Sephardi resurgence, Gaon explained during an interview last week in his suite at the Laromme Hotel here, the site of the congress.
The Sephardim in Israel faced major problems even at the outset of the 1980s — institutionalized poverty, lack of educational opportunity, a dissolving family structure. “All this needed most of our time and attention,” he said, leaving few resources for other efforts.
But, the impeccably dressed, multilingual man added, “The situation greatly improved and is continually improving.”
In this new atmosphere, Gaon has urged the federation to centralize its programming in Israel with the establishment of Sephardi House, a combination Sephardi world community center and administrative office.
WZO ASKED TO HAND OVER DEPARTMENT
Gaon said ideally the house would include the Sephardi Communities Department of the World Zionist Organization, with its $650,000 budget. He complained that half the budget is earmarked for administrative and overhead expenses. He said the federation would ask WZO, which is considering restructuring anyway, to hand over the department.
Gaon, who is president of the Israel Bonds organization in Switzerland, proposes a parallel program in which the development towns would offer local bonds, backed by the national government or the Jewish Agency, in order to raise from $200 million to $400 million to provide opportunities for employment.
The vast socioeconomic differences among Sephardim were reflected in the makeup of this year’s congress. Some of the diaspora Sephardim had made fortunes in one or two generations, while the poverty of the Israeli Sephardim was a major focus of the proceedings. Did the Sephardim who went to the diaspora, Gaon was asked, make the better decision?
Israel always was the dream of most Sephardim, he replied, but many, including him in 1949, chose other locales. Israel confiscated their fortunes at the border, he explained, leaving them impoverished, and then left them to languish in development towns. That was all he would say.
Another diaspora-Israeli difference nearly ruptured the federation, but instead demonstrated Gaon’s personal suasion. The Israelis heatedly opposed Gaon’s approved organizational restructuring plan, because it lowered Israeli representation on the federation presidium from one-half to less than one-third.
The top leaders from both sides met in Gaon’s suite until the wee hours of last Wednesday morning, agreeing to give the Israelis 14 of 35 seats on an expanded presidium.
Superseding parliamentary procedure, Gaon then asked the congress to accept the new plan at its Wednesday plenary. It did, of course. Not that his every whim becomes federation policy. But when opposition arose, it was his charm and sometimes calculated forcefulness that overcame.
The federation is bigger now, and essentially new. Whether or not it succeeds in its goals, Gaon most likely will be the Building force.
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