Jewish Agency for Israel

March 26, 2009

JAFI was created in 1929 in order to build a Jewish state. The agency basically developed a shadow government during the time of the British mandate after WW I. After the declaration of the State of Israel in 1948, many of the units of the Jewish Agency became the ministries for the new state. The Jewish Agency became the Jewish Agency for Israel. The primary focus of this newly named entity during the early, turbulent years of the state was to manage the absorption of hundreds of thousands of Jews: Holocaust survivors, from the ravages of war-torn Europe, and, Middle Eastern Jews expelled from Israel’s neighbors after independence. Over time, JAFI added Zionist/Israel education--building the idea of Jewish peoplehood with Israel at its center--to its mission, and a broader view of absorption that now includes programs for at-risk children and youth. JAFI is one of the two main partners (the other is the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee) of UJC, which means that these two organizations are the primary recipients of the overseas dollars raised by the annual campaigns of Jewish federations. In 2008, JAFI received about $135 million and JDC about $40 million from the campaign. To put these figures in perspective, some estimate overseas foundation and philanthropic support for Israel to be as high as $1.5 billion, so that the UCJ contributions to these two partners represent a significant, but ultimately a minority fraction, of the dollars flowing into Israeli nonprofits, like the New Israel Fund, Hadassah Medical Center, Orthodox yeshivas and on and on. To add further perspective, the Gross Domestic Product of Israel is upwards of $160 billion, so that the historical context for philanthropic relationships with Israel has changed, indeed transformed, dramatically from that of a poor, struggling nation-building effort, to a middle income country on the threshold of becoming one of the top countries economically and socially.

JAFI, justifiably proud of its fundamental role in establishing the State of Israel and assuring its early survival, faces several challenges that can be summarized into two categories—political and financial. The governance of JAFI seems to be a remnant of its early role. Half of its Board of Directors are representatives of Zionist organizations, such as Hadassah, that clearly played a major in the building of the state. It’s not clear how this composition contributes to effective governance today. In recent years, however, Israeli philanthropists, have joined the Board and are playing a growing role, as they should. A second, and to me troubling, aspect of JAFI’s governance is the official relationship with the government of Israel, such that JAFI is not really an NGO (non-governmental organization) and not really a government ministry. This relationship stems from the early years. This link is further complicated by the fact that the Executive Director of JAFI is approved, if not actually appointed, by the Prime Minister. While it is not supposed to be a political appointment, the most recent Executive Director, Zeev Bielski, stepped down in February after he was elected to the Knesset and the position has remained vacant because of the jockeying that has been going on in the creation of the new government. In history that is shared by individuals across the agency and political spectrum, about 8 years ago when there was serious discussion of necessary major restructuring and cuts in funding for the Jewish Agency, the then Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, stepped in to prevent those likely productive changes from taking place. Is JAFI a government ministry? Is it a nonprofit organization? The answers to those questions are important to guide strategic thinking about it.

The financial challenges that JAFI faces, in its traditional role as a major UJC partner, stem from globalization. Just as capital, jobs, education and other resources are now part of a global, electronically-linked, complicated nexus, so is the world of fundraising. Donors can learn about needs all over the world and recipient organizations have access to donors all over the world. Many of you are familiar with the moving scene in the movie Exodus when the characters are following the U.N. vote on partition on 1947. People were huddled around short wave radios or telegraph machines; all the information was funneled through very limited distribution sources. It’s a new world. How many of us receive regular emails from Ruth Messenger of the American Jewish World Service, soliciting support? How many contributed electronically to the $600 million that Obama raised for his campaign? In addition to a global “market” both for donors and recipients, donors have become much more strategic in meeting their own interests, in part because of this newly described global capacity for information. Instead of contributing to a pool of funds and accepting that an entity such as the JAFI would make the strategic choices, many donors want to make those choices themselves. Donors have the capacity to create their own partnerships with other donors and with recipient nonprofits/NGOs. As we have each heard in many different contexts, “it’s not our grandmothers’ world any more.” Every organization has to be clear in its mission, effective in communicating that mission, and provide assurance that the needs of individual donors are addressed. Think Netflix as the model for tzedakah! Politics aside, this sentiment is what the New Israel Fund tapped into 30 years ago when it became probably the first entity to challenge the monopoly on fundraising and more importantly allocation of those funds in Israel. This sentiment must have guided Partnership 2000 of the UJC when the national system began to promote partnerships between individual communities in the U.S. and Canada and individual communities in Israel to address needs of mutual interest to the donor and recipient communities. None of this is to say that JAFI and JDC are not important organizations with the potential to enhance the fabric of life in Israel, but there are many, many new neighbors/partners and many ways for them to connect in the fundraising world of the 21st century. In a later post, I am going to address challenges that arise from “globalized” tzedakah.