Behind the Headlines Jack Weiler Pilots JDC Through Invigorating Review

Jack D. Weiler of New York City, communal leader and philanthropist par excellence, is now devoting his seemingly boundless energies to a fundamental stocktaking and revamping of the Joint Distribution Committee whose chairman he became last December. In Israel last week to attend the Jewish Agency’s fourth annual Assembly, Weiler a member of the Board of Governors, spoke of his plans and hopes for the “Joint” with JTA’s executive vice-president Jack Siegel and Israel bureau head David Landau.

At the very first meeting of the “Joint’s” powerful board of governors under his chairmanship, Weiler said, he put forward the potentially traumatic proposal for the venerable organization to conduct a thorough and in depth study of its role and activities. The proposal won immediate and enthusiastic support from the 40-odd board members. It is time, Weiler said, after 61 years of service, to reconsider where we are headed, to reexamine our priorities and our aims.

The most superficial survey of the “Joint’s” manifold world-wide activities poses questions, Weiler said. Why keep the head offices in Geneva? Perhaps move them to Israel? Why spend 40 percent of the annual $30 million-plus budget in Israel? Perhaps spend more in Israel, perhaps less? Why cannot the Iranian Jewish community become self-sufficient in its social services, allowing the “Joint” to divert funds and manpower elsewhere?

The board, acting on Weiler’s proposal, commissioned an outside team of experts–comprising some of the best-known and most highly regarded “professionals” in American Jewish life. This team will review all the “Joint’s” activities, in the U.S. and around the world, examining procedures, interviewing key officials, checking budgets and will report back to the Board.

Weiler concedes that the overhaul–naturally–has caused some concern among the “Joint’s” staff. But this, he says, is unavoidable in the interests of a better, more modern, more relevant and more efficient JDC. In the interim, Weiler as chairman does not remain idle (his constant vigor belies his 70 years). He himself regularly visits centers of JDC operations–in Israel, in Geneva, in Iran and in Rumania, and last month in South America.

PROJECTS FOR AGED IN ISRAEL

In Iran, he points out, the Jewish community contains several men of wealth who do not–as yet–do their share in alleviating the social plight of other, less fortunate Jews. Weiler feels these wealthy Jews must be persuaded, by a process of education, to undertake the sustenance of their own communal welfare organization. The “Joint” can help, he believes. It is already beginning to teach Iranian Jews “how to fund-raise” –an art which has become highly sophisticated in the West but is still in its infancy among some Oriental communities.

While in Israel Weiler signed on behalf of the JDC a $16 million agreement with the government of Israel represented by Health Minister Victor Shemtov, providing the financing for Jerusalem’s “Brookdale Institute of Gerontology-JDC.” The Institute, headed by one of Israel’s foremost sociologists, Dr. Israel Katz, former head of the National Insurance Institute, is doing the research and planning for the eventual establishment of a 50-apartment facility for the aged and a geriatric wing to be part of the capital’s “Misgav Ladach” Hospital in the Katamon Quarter.

Weiler said at the signing ceremony in the Knesset that he hoped the project would contribute towards Israel’s becoming a leader in the field of old-age medicine and social work.

MOBILE HOMES PROJECT STALLED

Jack Weiler has become known in Israel over recent years for his efforts within the reconstituted Jewish Agency to introduce modern building techniques into the Israeli construction industry. He initiated the “Tach”–the Technological Advisory Committee on Housing–(a group of mainly American building experts) attached to the Jewish Agency, and this in turn hosted a visit of Israeli builders and housing officials to the U.S. to study techniques there.

Weiler hoped to have a factory set up here turning out American-Style mobile homes (by another American, Dan Katzman who was ready to put up the money and build). Weiler himself planned a “pilot project”–a housing estate in a Tel Aviv suburb in which he would display the best of American techniques and living-comforts–and show that they were achievable cheaper than the regular Israeli-style construction. Tach, however, has petered out. (The Agency Assembly last Thursday passed a resolution deploring this ) Katzman’s factory was never built, and Weiler’s “pilot project” also never materialized for various reasons which he frankly prefers not to analyze.

Far from being dismayed or despondent, Jack Weiler shakes off his disappointments with a shrug and a smile. Perhaps, he says hopefully, the Israeli builders and officials will come up with the same ideas in two or three years time, asserting they are their own ideas–and therefore workable, Weiler won’t mind. He is not looking for glory, only for ways of aiding Israel’s chronic housing problem and improving living conditions for the thousands of families still without adequate accommodation. The disappointments, he says with a determined laugh, “will never stop me from working for Israel.”