Ruth Abram, president of the New Israel Fund (NIF), today announced a million dollar campaign to support a score of innovative projects and organizations in Israel that deal with civil liberties, women’s rights, Jewish-Arab relations and other community services. These organizations are vital to Israel’s democracy, but are raely focused on by other American Jewish philanthropies, according to Abram.
The million dollar campaign received a major boost from Edith and Henry Everett of New York City who have pledged $300,000, the largest gift ever received by the NIF. The thrust of the NIF, Abram said, is to provide support for community-based programs in Israel that are dealing with social inequities in new and innovative ways.
It supports those working to improve Jewish-Arab relations; helps women and men who are victims of sexual violence or who are caught in the complex legal and religious divorce regulations in Israel; gives seed money to neighborhood groups in Sephardic communities; and finances one-third of the budget of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, the nation’s largest and most influential civil rights and liberties organization.
Altogether, close to 100 Israeli organizations have been helped by the NIF, either with direct grants or through Shatil, which was established by the NIF in 1982 to provide technical assistance and training to citizens’ action and self-help organizations, Abram said.
The goals of all these organizations, she said, is to defend and improve Israel’s democracy and to combat anti-democratic manifestations such as the rise of nationalist extremism.
The NIF’s fund-raising campaign will include 30 meetings across the United States between Thanks-giving and Chanukah in which the participants will “rededicate themselves to democracy in Israel,” Abram said. Many of these meetings will feature a new 30-minute video called “Shaping Our Future,” which was directed and produced by Carol Polakoff, whose films have been shown on PBS and network TV.
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