CJF Votes to Increase Funding to Hillel in New Collective Plan

The Council of Jewish Federations strongly endorsed a plan his week aimed at dramatically increasing funding for Hillel and other Jewish activities on campus.

More than 80 percent of the votes cast by the CJF Board of Delegates on Monday nigh supported the proposal, which for the first time assigns each federation a recommended level at which it should fund Jewish campus life.

The vote was held at the CJF Board Institute meeting in Phoenix, with some federation casting their ballot by telephone. ..TX-“Our feeling is very upbeat that we are moving along a track on the total Jewish identity agenda, for which university students are a focal point at the moment”, CJF President Maynard Wishner said in an interview after the vote.

“I want to thank you for triggering a Jewish renaissance”, Richard Joel, international director of Hillel, told the Board of Delegates after the vote.

Legally, the CJF plan does not bind any of its member federation.

But CJF officials are optimistic that participation in the plan will be well above 90 percent.

All the largest federations either voted for the plan or abstained for procedural, rather than substantive, grounds.

Wishner said approval of the plan shows that federations recognize “that there are moments where we come together collectively”.

Previous examples have included the “collective responsibility” formulas by which the costs of resettling Jews from the former Soviet Union in both the United States and Israel were allocated to CJF member federations based on their size and income.

The question of collective responsibility, however, remains a sore point for many federations that are fearful of losing control over their allocation process

This was reflected in several comments before Monday’s balloting.

Miriam Schneirov, past president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia, expressed her community’s concern that “in a time of decreasing or flat campaigns, there is a demand of premandated allocations off the top, and that we not move forward with these premandated allocations”.

Nevertheless, her federation voted to support the plan.

A representative of another federation, which voted against the plan, explained its rationale in similar terms.

“There’s a concern about precedent, about where collective responsibility is going in the future. The fact that we are entering a new era generates our concern”, said the representative.

Michael Rukin of Boston, who headed the CJF task force that drew up the plan for campus funding, told the CJF Board of Delegates before the vote that “the action before us is a first step in collective continental action for Jewish continuity”.

But Rukin assured his listeners that CJF “has heard your concern” that other plans for “collective responsibility for Jewish continuity” might be coming down the road

He assured the federations that the student funding ” is unique” because of the dispersal of students across the country. “It is unlikely that other collective responsibility issues for Jewish continuity will come to the table”, he said.

The CJF expects that the new, higher level of allocations to the campus will begin for the next academic year.

Already, federations have begun meeting to organize the new regional bodies called for in the plan. These bodies will bring federations together to fund campus activities jointly in their area, in an effort to eliminate some of the current inequities, which leave some campuses in small Jewish communities underfunded.

The new plan calls for total federation allocations to Hillel programs to rise from $11 million to $20 million over the next seven years.

At the same time, Hillel is expected to increase its other funding sources from $10 million to $30 million.

One of these sources will continue to be B’nai B’rith International, of which Hillel had been a division. In January, B’nai B’rith voted its approval for the new Hillel structure, which makes Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life an independent organization.

B’nai B’rith will join CJF in maintaining a significant role in the new entity. B’nai B’rith voted to continue contributing at least $2 million a year to Hillel and to encourage local B’nai B’rith chapters to support local Hillels.

“We see this as something that will enable Hillel to thrive and B’nai B’rith to maintain its historic relationship to it”, said Harvey Burke, director of communications at B’nai B’rith.