The heavy hitters of the organized Jewish world ware joining forces to try to double or triple the number of North American youths visiting Israel each year through organized programs.
Data repeatedly have shown in recent years that “Israel Experience” programs strengthen Jewish identity, but the number of participants has been flat since 1987, said David Harman, director general of the Joint Authority for Jewish Zionist Education, part of the Jewish Agency for Israel.
An agreement signed this week in Jerusalem formally established a consortium whose central purpose is to market Israel programs for youths in cooperation with local federations across North America.
Its members are the Council of Jewish Federation, the United Jewish Appeal, the Charles R. Bronfman Foundation and the Jewish Agency.
The consortium will be headed by Charles Bronfman and have over the next five years, said Martin Krarr, CJF executive vice president.
Between 7,500 and 10,000 North American youth now participate in Israel Experience programs.
“With all the fanfare” attached to the Israel Experience, “we’ve been surprised” by these low numbers, Harman said.
Last summer, 42 percent of “the appropriate age group” from England visited Israel, while the comparable figure from the United States was less than 2 percent, he said.
“It is tragic that the tool which appears to work best to enhance Jewish continuity and identity is so underutilized,” Harman added.
Even families who can easily afford the programs, which are subsidized, are not sending their children, “and we’re concerned that one of the major problems is marketing Harman said.
The consortium is emerging on the heels of the still-sensitive and acrimonious demise at the end of last December of the American Zionist Youth Foundation.
Founded by the World Zionist Organization, the AZYF for decades was responsible for arranging Israel Experience programs for youth groups and movements.
AZYF leaders and loyalists say they were shocked and disappointed by the decision in November by the Joint Authority to stop doing business with them.
The AZYF also ran the annual Salute to Israel Parade in New York City.
Because nearly all the Israel Experience programs go through the authority, that delivered the deathblow to the AZYF, which was left with $1.2 million in severance pay and other debts.
The authority has agreed to take responsibility for the debts with help from the Jewish Agency and the WZO, according to the AZYF and other informed sources.
The new consortium evolved from three years of aggressive pilot marketing projects with 11 federations.
The projects were sponsored by the Charles Bronfman Foundation, Jewish communal organizations and the Joint Authority.
“We learned that if you could mobilize federations on the issue of the Israel Experience, you could [increase] the number of kids enrolled as well as the whole community’s orientation toward Israel,” said Peter Geffen, director of the CRB Foundation’s Israel Experience Programs.
“We learned there was an unexpected degree of distance between active and affiliated American Jewry and Israel, both in reality and conceptually, as a center of Jewish life,” Geffen said.
Making all the federations “the central address” for the Israel programs, as the consortium will do, “put Israel on the communities’ agenda,” he said.
Harman conceded that for some families, the $5,000 the programs typically now cost is out of range.
But he said that with aggressive and creative marketing, the consortium aims to remedy the fact that many families chose to spend the same amount of money on other summer activities and programs outside of Israel.
Carefully measuring his words, Julius Berman, AZYF board chairman, said he wished the consortium members success.
Indeed, he said he expected it, “in light of the fact there will be substantial additional resources devoted to the cause.”
“I do feel, however, it wasn’t necessary to waste over a million dollars in closing down AZYF,” he added, referring to the debts that had to be paid.
For his part, Harman is philosophical.
“AZYF did its job for many years in a certain climate and that climate has changed. We though it was not longer the appropriate tool for the kind of aggressive marketing that is needed to increase participation.”
Berman said, “Our marketing was not pro-active. We had no money.”
His organization had a roughly $1 million annual budget.
The CJF’s Kraar rejects the characterization of the new consortium as a successor of the AZYF, saying that its role will be much broader.
He said federations’ involvement reflects their concern for transmitting Jewish identity “from generation to generation.”
Meanwhile, the consortium is “another step for the Israel-Diaspora relationships,” Kraar said. “It’s partnership of equals sharing an agenda.”
Jewish Agency Chairman Avraham Burg also emphasized the theme of partnership at the singing of the agreement in Jerusalem.
In a statement, he said the Jewish Agency was working “to best meet the needs of world Jewry in full partnership in the field with world Jewry.”
One Jewish organizational insider, who asked to remain anonymous, said he had several concerns as the consortium was launched.
He said it would be important to watch whether the initiative would be adequately funded and whether the money would be used effectively.
For instance, he said, research has shown that in order for the Israel trips to be “more than a marketing scheme,” they must be accompanied b strong educational programs before and after the visits.
He also voiced concern that the consortium does not include synagogue movements, which supply the majority of participants in the youth trips.
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.
