Three American Jewish organizations are about to set up a joint office in Jerusalem, in a move indicative of changes in American Jewish organizational life that go beyond sharing office supplies.
For Israelis and visiting Americans with business at the branches of organized American Jewish philanthropy, putting the Israel offices of the United Jewish Appeal, the Council of Jewish Federations and the United Israel Appeal under one roof promises to cut down on confusion.
And at some point, consolidating the three offices, two of which are already in the same building, will likely save money.
But the move’s real purpose, say officials of the organizations, is to strengthen American Jewry in its dealings with both the Israeli government and the Jewish Agency.
“We’re going to be speaking with one voice,” said Joel Tauber, who assumes the post of UJA national chairman on May 19.
He added that working together, the organizations will be “taken more seriously as representatives of the broad base of the American Jewish population” by Israelis.
The combined office, dubbed by one observer as “an embassy of American Jewry,” highlights growing cooperation among the arms of American Jewish fund-raising.
“This is certainly a significant step toward bringing us closer together.” said Bernard Olshansky, assistant executive vice president of the CJF.
‘FOR THE COMMON GOOD’
“For the common good, it’s better to put everything together,” said Brian Lurie, president of the UJA.
Both Lurie and Tauber exemplify the closer relationship between the UJA, which coordinates the central fund-raising campaign for Israel, and the CJF, which represents the community federations which actually raise the money for both Israel and local Jewish agencies.
Not coincidentally, both of them have a foot in each camp: Tauber is treasurer of the CJF, and Lurie came to UJA last year from the federation world, having headed the San Francisco federation for 12 years.
Historically, there has been tension between the two organizations. UJA leaders focused on the needs of Israel, while CJF leaders, who rose from the ranks of local federations, were advocates for American Jewish needs.
“Today, you don’t have any difference of opinion” between the two groups, said Irving Kessler, the retired executive vice president of the United Israel Appeal.
The UIA, the smallest of the three groups, is technically a parent company of the UJA. (The other parent of the UJA is the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, or JDC).
The UIA serves as middleman, distributing the money raised by UJA to the Jewish Agency, which these days spends most of its money on new olim. The UIA oversees and approves each line it funds in the Jewish Agency budget.
Director general of the new office will be Menachem Revivi, who was formerly with the JDC and the World Zionist Organization. The present director general of the CJF office, the Israeli equivalent of executive director, Steven Donshik, will continue to work in the office.
But Naphtali Lavie, who served as Israeli consul general in New York before heading the UJA Israel office, has been forced into retirement, Lavie himself would only say that “I did not feel suitable to serve in an organization with a different structure from the one I was assigned to direct in 1985.”
UIA ROLE MAY CHANGE
The UIA representative, Neale Katz, will maintain his position, and will “continue to function in those areas that are the unique responsibility of the UIA. In other areas, we will work cooperatively to represent the American Jewish community in Israel,” said Herman Markowitz, executive vice chairman of the UIA.
As a result, UIA sources stress that what is at work is far less than a merger, as far as that organization is concerned. They note the UIA was asked to join the joint office after it had already been approved by UJA and CJF.
“Let’s use the word consolidation,” said the UJA’s Lurie, rather than the word “merger,” used in the press release eventually approved by the three organizations.
For the UIA, little will change on a day-to-day basis, said the organization’s outgoing vice chairman, Edgar Cadden.
But the speed with which UIA officials deny that any “merger” is taking place hints at fears that the UJA and CJF may be interested in moving in on its task of supervising the Jewish Agency.
A Jewish organizational official familiar with the polities between the organizations but not directly involved, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that one motivation for the combined office is “to counterbalance the Jewish Agency, to have another source of information.”
The UIA has always seen its role as being that source.
By contrast, much of the activities of both the CJF and UJA Israel offices have traditionally involved planning missions to Israel for American fundraisers and providing services in Israel for the parent organizations. While existing staff members from both organizations will continue to represent their specific groups, they will now be able to work under central direction and avoid overlapping tasks.
NEW OFFICE WILL HELP REPRESENT AMERICAN JEWS
They will also be able to represent American Jewish concerns more effectively in Israel. In 1988, for example, the CJF coordinated the arrival of American Jewish leaders to protest deals reportedly being made by Israeli political leaders to change the law of return. The new office, those involved say, will enable more missions like that to take place in the future.
Just where this combined office will be located remains to be decided. Currently, the UJA and UIA have separate offices in the Jewish Agency building, about a mile down the road from Jerusalem’s central intersection of King George and Jaffa roads.
The CJF offices are a few miles away, in the offices of the Joint, near Hebrew University, the Knesset and the Israel Museum Also sharing that space are the offices of a number of local federations.
(JTA correspondent Michele Chabin in Jerusalem contributed to this report.)
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
