Member Articles

*********************************************************************************************
The following articles, written by AJCOP members, reflect the view of the author or authors. AJCOP does not endorse any points made in any articles nor does AJCOP take any position. This area is provided as a forum for membership only. Discussion of articles takes place in the Discussion Area for AJCOP members.
*********************************************************************************************

AJCOP sent four of its members to Israel during the summer of 2007 as Rodkin Fellows to attend the World Council of Jewish Communal Service 11^th Quadrennial and to make in depth site visits with JAFI, JDC and a myriad of Israeli social service agencies. The group met at the airport in New York on June 18th and returned home much enriched July 4th. To chronicle their learning journey, they decided to each take responsibility for certain days of the itinerary. And so, we bring you the 2007 AJCOP Rodkin Israel Experience......

Day 1 - Tuesday, June 20, 2007
Reported by Maureen Wise, Director, The Ewa & Dan Abraham Project ~
Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County

Still jet-lagged, we rose bright and early for a breakfast briefing with Jewish Agency for Israel (JAFI) administrators Jeff Kaye, Director General of the Resource Development and Public Affairs Department, and Stuart Schrader, Director of Donor Relations, Unit for Resource Development and Public Affairs.

Jeff Kaye presented a three-pronged overview of the Jewish Agency, offering an historical perspective; a look at JAFI’s current structure and parameters; and an analysis of emergency campaign activities in the context of the war. He described the changing role of the Jewish Agency, which has been restructured many times to meet the needs of Israel and the worldwide Jewish community. What has not changed in Israel’s 60-year history is the importance of aliyah (immigration), klitah (absorption) and strengthening Jewish identity. Kaye delineated the transition of Israel from a socialist community to a capitalist society. Unfortunately, this economic growth has led to a dearth of quality leadership in Israel. With the most talented people moving into high tech industry, fewer people are entering public service. On the positive side, we are seeing the emergence of a class of wealthy Israelis, who are now beginning to contribute funding as well as ideas.

Judy Segal, Director of Development at The Israel Goldstein Youth Village of Hanoar Hatsioni, guided us on our visit to the boarding school. As we toured the facility’s beautiful grounds, she related the school’s remarkable 58-year history. After winning a major battle in the war for independence, General Zeev Schikler promised himself that he would establish a center for children who had survived the Holocaust. In the winter of 1949, he founded a boarding school on what had been Monastery Hill in the San Simon area of Jerusalem. Its first students were 40 orphans who were brought by boat from Europe.

Today, the Goldstein Youth Village is home to 450 residential students, with 200 more bused in each day for classes and activities. The students, who are aged 12 – 18, are in grades 7 – 12. They can remain in the program until they graduate, when they must enter the military.

The school’s demographic history echoes the state’s immigration history. The 50’s and 60’s brought an influx of émigrés from Arab countries. Soon, the school became a melting pot for Jewish kids from all over the world. As immigration slowed in 1970, the administration realized that they had to take in Israeli-born children from development towns and other culturally deprived environments.

Although the school began as an agricultural village, in the 1970s it became a vocational training school. To help eradicate the cycle of poverty, it became imperative to teach the students trades so they could find employment. Students studied applied arts, home economics, cabinet making, hotel management, fashion design and many other fields of interest.

In 1990, the Village took in the first group of Russian children from an area near Chernobyl. Two years later, 50 students – some as young as eight-years-old - were airlifted from Sarajevo. The first wave of Ethiopian students entered the program in 1994.

In 1993, the first Na’Aleh group of 80 students from the FSU were brought to live at the Village. This program continues, with 80 new students coming in each year. The teens come to Israel without their parents, and most choose to remain in Israel. About thirty percent of their parents eventually make aliyah as well.

The addition of Russian students, who are academically oriented, necessitated a major change in curriculum. The school no longer offers vocational training. Today, high level academic courses are the norm and the school’s music program is universally acclaimed. We were especially delighted to have the opportunity to meet and speak with several bright young Na’Aleh students, who came to Israel from Moscow, Ukraine and Kazakstan. They described their families, their interests and their reasons for coming to Israel.

Mevaseret Zion, which houses 1200 immigrants, is the largest of Israel’s 34 absorption centers. This and ten others have been adapted to meet the special needs of Ethiopian émigrés, according to Devora Gini-Malki, JAFI Absorption Division Director, who escorted us.

While most immigrants attend Ulpan language classes for 5-6 months, the program for Ethiopians runs 10 months. Among the Ethiopian population, 96% of the adults are illiterate in Amharic, their own language. Many come from remote provinces and have never used running water, electricity or gas. Because they experience culture shock, special counselors and social workers explain everything and offer assistance, support and inspiration.

The majority of Ethiopian Jews were airlifted to Israel through Operation Moses (1985) and Operation Solomon (1991). Israel is now home to 110,000 Ethiopian Jews, with 350 arriving each month. About 30,000 were born in Israel, and 3,500 are college educated.

It is estimated that 99.9 % of Ethiopia’s halachic Jews have already come to Israel under the Law of Return. The last remnant of Ethiopia’s Jewish population – close to 20,000 people – will be brought to Israel in the next three years.

At the absorption centers, each family receives a furnished apartment with a stocked refrigerator and pantry. Joint bank accounts are set up for the men and women. Classes are taught on computers, so adults and children can learn necessary skills. Children attend school and participate in after-school enrichment activities and summer camps. Most families live in the centers for 1 – 1 ½ years. After that, they obtain mortgages and buy apartments in development areas.

We were introduced to Kasi and Erez, two Ethiopian olim who were brought to Israel with their families as young children. Both became educated, served in the IDF and are now pursuing advanced degrees at Hebrew University.

Brenda Ganot, who is Project Manager for JAFI’s Economic Development Committee Partnership 2000 region in Beit Shemesh and Yehuda Plains, escorted us through one of the fastest growing suburbs of Jerusalem. She explained that the committee brings together local activists, professionals and volunteers to create and implement new business initiatives. It encourages networking and collaborative efforts among local artists and entrepreneurs.

The development committee selected several new initiatives to be funded for three years. Many focus on the area’s emerging identity as the “Cycling Capital of Israel” and its newfound prominence on the “Israeli Wine Route” (the area boasts some 30 vineyards). The cooperative projects include a “Tour de Beit Shemesh” bike race; a three-day Jewish Rock and Roll Festival; a Wine Festival; a Bible Festival and Quiz; an Artists’ Forum; and a Food Festival, featuring ethnic cooking demonstrations, wine tastings and art workshops.

A good deal of effort has been expended on the area’s Women’s Empowerment initiative. The government has provided classes and training in marketing, merchandising, budgeting, bookkeeping and other business skills for 12 local women. One of the participants is Tziona Levy, who cooks and caters delectable Kurdish delicacies in her modernized kitchen and serves lunches and dinners to visitors. Not only did we enjoy a sumptuous five-course meal at her dining room table, but we also explored the amazing “found-art” iron sculpture garden and museum created by her husband, Nissim Levy.

We capped off our visit to Beit Shemesh at the Ella Valley Vineyards, where we purchased wine for our Shabbat dinner at the Solomons’ apartment.

Responding to the need for a place where teenage girls and young women living in culturally deprived areas of Jaffa and Tel Aviv can find a safe environment, former criminologist Leora Kessel and social worker Mirit Sidi created the “Women’s Court” four years ago. The term “court” refers to the outer courtyard, which has become an extension of the renovated building that houses the center’s myriad of programs.

About 400 young women between the ages of 13 – 25 come through their doors annually. Everyone is welcome – Sabras, Russian and Ethiopian immigrants, Jews and non-Jews alike. Most come from families where men predominate and women are hidden away. They are largely uneducated, and many are victims of domestic violence.

Leora and Mirit convinced a leading Israeli hair stylist to partner with them. Together, they opened a small hair salon on the premises to attract the at-risk population. Young women can have their hair done and receive beauty supplies free of charge. The salon has accomplished its goals – building self-esteem, creating awareness and attracting girls to the Women’s Court.

They have created a non-threatening, welcoming environment where these women and teens can become comfortable enough to ask for help. They all come from different backgrounds and have different needs. They are encouraged to come in to chat, to have lunch, to use the computer room or to just “hang out.”

Once they are comfortable, the girls are given lists of classes, discussions groups and other available services and activities. They are presented with options to change the course of their lives. Women’s Court staff and volunteers can take the younger girls to social workers, schools and community organizations as needed. They can assist with medication, carfare to doctors and other services. They also offer crisis intervention and can place victims in sheltered environments.

Classes in group dynamics, writing CVs, basic computer and language skills help the young women prepare for employment. Activity groups enable them to participate in cooking, art, dance, theatre and other areas of interest. Next year, the girls will open a cleaning cooperative business.

Lily Engel, a former advertising manager, handles fund raising for the Women’s Court. The program operates with funding from JDC, several foundations, a government grant, and in-kind donations.

Together, Leora, Mirit and Lily are trying to affect social policy by working with government and community representatives. They hope to arrange for more funds to be directed to the plight of girls-at-risk who suffer from violence, poverty and hunger. Mirit’s doctoral thesis will provide data for the government to evaluate the needs of this community and, hopefully, to encourage attitudinal changes.

Participation in AJCOP’s Rodkin Fellowship program afforded me the opportunity to interact with colleagues from all over the world and to learn about the many amazing programs that are being implemented to meet the needs of Jewish people everywhere.

I returned to Florida brimming with ideas for new programs and imbued with a greater appreciation of all that we have collectively accomplished.

As Director of the Ewa & Dan Abraham Project, I am continually searching for dynamic speakers and performers to bring to the Palm Beach area. This journey to Israel brought me face to face with many distinguished scholars. Several of them, including Rabbi Daniel Gordis, will be speaking for the Abraham Project this year.

Our visit to Federation’s Partnership communities also opened the door to greater collaboration between Palm Beach and the Tzahar Region. This new network of personal connections will facilitate future Abraham Project programming – and provide ongoing access to many creative ideas.

Marcia Bronstein, VP of AJCOP, chaired a local Jewish Communal Professional Association (JCPA) program in Philadelphia on 3/30/06 . The featured speaker was Dr. David Teutsch, chair of the department of Contemporary Jewish Civilization at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and the director of the Levin-Lieber Program in Jewish Ethics and the Center for Jewish Ethics. His latest book, A Guide for Jewish Practice: Tzedaka speaks passionately about the shifting attitudes and practices in the Jewish philanthropic sphere. JCPA’s breakfast study session focused on how to motivate and educate volunteers and professional staff on this important topic. (A study guide was developed at the request of JCPA and can be obtained by contacting David directly.)

Our jobs as communal professionals often necessitate helping others to think through values and obligations on a variety of issues affecting the community. How then can we utilize an approach to thinking through tzedaka so that it has a profound impact on one’s personal life?

Ø Teach a Jewish vocabulary that explain Judaism as a lifestyle involving tzedaka

Ø Explain the steps to solicitation through becoming committed, connected and competent

Ø Raise issues such as determining how much to give, recognizing donors, protecting the dignity of recipients

Money plays a fundamental role in all our lives for the obvious reasons. (food, clothing & shelter) It also shapes how we see our selves in the world; allows us to meet the mitzvah of tzedaka and permits us to help people become G-dlike through their giving and their solicitations. Tzedaka allows us to reshape our sole, to open up our inner core and to share our desire to improve society by participating in Tikkum Olom. Its not only about the money, its about the process.

Interestingly enough, tzedaka is not a biblical word. Tzedaka as a word did not exist in the bible; the concept however was very ingrained as a daily action. Tzedaka was institutionalized after the decline of the agricultural era and the move to urban environs. No longer was the gleaming of fields and leaving the corners in tact enough. Nor was the harvesting of fruit trees just once to leave sustenance for the hungry. In urban environs, tzedak was just as necessary, but the way in which it was given was different. The Rabbis invented the word tzedaka to help the community move from an agricultural society to an industrialized society while still meeting the needs of those requiring help. A priority giving list was developed: Food, clothing and temporary housing. Poverty is not new. It was endemic, it still is and as Rambam noted, “The poor are always with us”.

What is different today, is the need for affiliation. In ancient times, affiliation was a necessary part of survival. Not giving tzedaka could sanction an individual. Therefore everyone could imagine himself or herself needing community help and support. Today, affiliation is voluntary and there is a real gap between the donor and the recipient of services. The empathetic connection is swept away as the social welfare system becomes more professionalized. It also creates a problem in getting people to understand needs and be responsive to them.

So today, professionals are faced with creating a funding case of needs that forms a sense of attachment and creates empathy. Volunteerism is a critical part of creating understanding and anchors charitable giving. Without the compassion, the whole system breaks down. Done correctly, a solicitation with a donor can be a transformative experience. It is an intimate experience which builds relationships and creates a web of mutuality.

This book can be used as an aid in launching board discussions, doing leadership development, training solicitors and calling attention to Jewish principles and values that underlie Jewish communal decision making. For information about the book, or to set up a speaking engagement contact teutsch@RRC.edu.

A snapshot in time that looks at the programs, challenges and opportunities that exist within Israel regarding Ethiopian Israelis and attempts to provide some recommendations on how to improve the situation for the future.

By Amy Wasser-Simpson,
Vice President for Planning and External Affairs, Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle

Amy Wasser-Simpson used the 2004 AJCOP Bernard Rodkin Israel Experience Award to study the resettlement of Ethiopian Jews in Israel.
Here is her report:

Bari Elias was presented with the 2004 Edell Fellowship Award by Elaine Steinger, Edell Committee Chair. (L-R): Danny Allen, Bari Elias, David Edell, Elaine Steinger and Lou Solomon.

Bari Elias is originally from Lawrence, Kansas, and moved to Minneapolis-St. Paul at age 12. After attending Camp Ramah in Wisconsin and Alexander Muss High School in Israel, Bari earned her BA in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University. She subsequently made Aliyah to Israel and worked for JAFI while pursuing her MA in Contemporary Jewry at Hebrew University. She returned to Minneapolis-St. Paul in 2002 to become the Young Leadership Director and Director of Israel Programs at the United Jewish Fund and Council of St. Paul. She is married to Eytan and has a son Yoav.

Attending the UJC General Assembly as an Edell Fellow was undoubtedly one of the highlights of my career in Jewish communal work, not only because what I experienced in the sessions and meetings, but also because it solidified my career choice and gave me my first real in-depth opportunity to concentrate fully on my professional development. Although I had attended other UJC sponsored conferences as staff through my position as a Young Leadership Director, this was the first time that I had really been able to concentrate on bettering myself as a professional and absorb the wisdom and thoughts of others.

Among the sessions I found to be most enlightening was the discussion on Gender Equity and Organizational Effectiveness. While unfortunately I did not find it surprising to hear that men tend to dominate the “top” of the Jewish communal pyramid, it was inspiring to hear that this was not the case in Israel, and that in fact, many Israeli nonprofits are headed by women—yet another of the many lessons that Americans can learn from Israelis. Now that we as professionals are becoming more aware of this issue, I look forward to being a part of making improvements in our own “system.”

Another session, on “branding”, which I attended with the intention of hoping to make improvements in my federation’s marketing, was especially important to me, as one of my goals as a professional is to raise awareness among my peers of the important work of federation. This session was one of the most practical of the sessions I attended, and provided me with many ideas of how to enhance our outreach, education, and ultimately, our fundraising techniques. Upon my return from the GA, I immediately put the knowledge I gained from this session into practice through presenting what I had learned to our marketing committee, who enthusiastically accepted many of the suggestions, such as staying with a campaign theme for several years in order to be consistent, rather than changing it every year.

A different session on the subject of the generational gaps that are so profound in the areas of fundraising and recruiting volunteers, I attended because I had recently read the speaker’s book and found it fascinating and extremely relevant to both my professional and private life. Having this background, I went into the session anxious to learn more. Although I did take away several new ideas, I also presented some concepts that have been successful in our community. It was this experience in particular that confirmed the innovation and strength of the St. Paul community, and how we can be a model for others, as our current programming is consistent with best practices throughout the country.

In addition to the interesting sessions and the extraordinary people, what became one of the highlights the conference took place after a session on the last day of the GA. I was speaking to a colleague following one of the final sessions when the waiter who had served dinner approached us and asked: “Could you tell me what Hillel is?” He proceeded to reveal that although he was Jewish, he had grown up almost completely disconnected from the Jewish community. Immediately we encouraged him to take part in Birthright Israel, an idea to which he was quite receptive. This encounter really affected me, as it put a face on the work we do as Jewish communal professionals—reaching and influencing unaffiliated Jews to make sure we don’t lose them. I hope that our conversation with him encouraged him to look into the possibility of going to Israel, or at least try to become affiliated with the Jewish community. Finally, I want to express my deep gratitude to AJCOP and especially to the Edell family for their foresight and generosity in establishing the Edell Fellowship and enabling me to have this incredible experience. I am proud to have the privilege of honoring the memory of Norman Edell, who from my conversations with his colleagues and family, I came to understand was a wonderful man who was truly dedicated to his profession. It was especially meaningful to be the recipient of such accolades in such a public forum, since I have found that recognition for professional accomplishments is the Jewish world not commonplace.

Additionally, just to be a part of a ceremony honoring two giants in the Jewish world, Shoshana Cardin and Ralph Goldman, was both humbling and awe inspiring. They are the embodiment of the famous words of Pirkei Avot, “It is not your responsibility to finish the work [of perfecting the world], but you are not free to desist from it either”, and they certainly have done more than their share of the work. After returning from the GA with these incredible experiences, I aspire to rise to the many challenges before us and am confident that I will be able to do my part to contribute to the betterment of the present and future of the world Jewish community.

About Albert D. Chernin
For nearly five decades Al Chernin has been at the center of the Jewish community's response to critical issues of concern to the American Jewish community as an activist and conceptualist. J. J. Goldberg cited him in his book on "Jewish Power" as a major player in the American Jewish community. He served as the Executive Vice Chairman of the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council from 1975-1990..

In the 1960s he launched the American Jewish community's campaign for Soviet Jewry. He was the American representative on the secretariat that organized the historic World Conference for Soviet Jewry in Brussels in 1971. In the years that followed he served on the International Presidium on Soviet Jewry. In 1967 he traveled to the Soviet Union bringing a personal message for Soviet Jews from then President Shazar. and in the years that followed he made four more trips to meet with Soviet Jews. As an advocate of Soviet Jews, he met with those on the highest level of the U.S. government including Vice Presidents, Humphrey, Mondale, and Bush and also with Secretaries of State Rusk and Schulz. He co-edited with Murray Friedman a book on Soviet Jewry, The Second Exodus, published by the New England University Press

He devoted most his time and efforts to getting 13 national NCRAC agencies and 122 CRCs to work together cooperatively to achieve the strategic goals of the Jewish community relations field. Ultimately their collective efforts had a far reaching impact on America in church-state, civil rights, immigration, and on American policy on Israel and Soviet Jewry..

For his role in the securing repeal of the infamous national origins quota system President Johnson gave him one of the pens he used in signing the immigration act of 1965 at the base of the Statue of Liberty. For his role in achieving the enactment of the law that outlawed any American participation in the Arab boycott of Israel President Carter gave him one of the pen he used in signing it into law in the Rose Garden in 1977.

On his retirement NJCRAC established the Albert D. Chernin Award. given annually at its Plenary Session to that American Jew whose life work best exemplifies commitment to the social justice imperatives of Judaism, Jewish history and the Bill of Rights. He was the first to receive it. Among the .other 14 who have received it since then were Justice Ginsberg, Senators Carl Levin, and Howard Metzenbaum, Allan Dershowitz and Leonard Fein.

He now serves as an officer for life of the JCPA in his capacity as Executive Vice Chair Emeritus. He recently completed The Search for Jewish Unity, a book, telling the untold story of how national and local community relations agencies worked together and failed to work together on the community relations agenda of the American Jewish community. It highlights the significant role played by the CJF and federations. It spans the years from 1938 to the year 2000. At the request of the American Jewish Historical Society he is now completing an abridged version, which focuses on the years 1938 to 1944, the year NCRAC was created by the General Assembly of the CJFWF.

Remarks Albert D. Chernin to AJCOP Federation Retirees February 23, 2005

Jewish unity has been a transcending Jewish value throughout the history of the Jewish diaspora. Accordingly, the commitment to Klal Yisrael has been a powerful force in pulling the community together, especially in the 20^th century.

Federation efforts in the 1930s to achieve Jewish unity among Jewish communal agencies led in the 1930s to the CJF successfully merging social service and fund-raising agencies on the local and national level, the, United Jewish Appeal, for example.

Rabbi Stephen Wise was unrelenting in his pursuit of Jewish unity. He believed that in those perilous times of the 1930s only a unified central agency could save the persecuted Jews of Europe and serve as a bulwark against anti-Semitism in the United States. To this end, Stephen Wise and the American Jewish Congress tried to undertake in June 1938 a national referendum of American Jews to bring about the consolidation of the four national defense agencies into a single agency. This referendum, while aborted, resulted in the creation of the General Jewish Council. On the outbreak of World War II Wise reiterated the demand that the agencies consolidate their resources including staff within a reorganized General Jewish Council. Despite their bitter resistance, Wise would not back off from that demand in the years that followed.

In some ways Joseph Proskauer his adversary in those struggles was no less ideological than Stephen Wise. They were poles apart on the concept of “Jewish peoplehood” which were anathema. to Proskauer and other leaders of the American Jewish Committee in those years..Thus they vehemently opposed the proposals of Wise and others to achieve Jewish unity.

Would a single agency have made a difference in those years in combating anti-Semitism in the U.S, and in stimulating the United States and other governments abroad to come to the aid of European Jewry? Had the resources of the defense agencies been combined thirty years ago, would they have had a greater impact on the policies of the United States and, possibly, on some European governments? Three decades later the concerted campaign for Soviet Jews did have a profound impact on U.S. and Soviet policy. I don’t believe a single agency was as crucial as a system that enabled the agencies to jointly reach agreement on priority strategic goals to which each agency worked to achieve in its own way.

The brutal truth is that neither a single agency nor a concerted campaign could have deterred Hitler from his inexorable drive to make Germany Judenrein. A concerted national campaign might have made difference in affecting immigration policies and practices of the United States, particularly in the years preceding the start of World War II , September 1939. Such a campaign that followed immediately after the news of the Holocaust came out might have stirred a public outcry by American Jews as well the public at large.

Even in the face of events in Germany, the General Jewish Council Congress from its very creation had been bogged down in interminable arguments over arcane proposals to consolidate the agencies’.Exasperated by those endless battles over structure, Isaiah Minkoff exploded that the agencies had spent all the time quarreling over structure rather than how they and the General Jewish Council should be responding to the persecution of Jews.

The General Jewish Council and the agencies did react in response to brutal attacks of Nazi Germany against Jews, Kristallnacht as a prime example. The leadership, meeting in emergency session, did not go beyond wrangling over what should be an immediate response. They did not move on to jointly developing a comprehensive strategic action plan for all the agencies to collectively come to the aid of the Jews under Hitler.

Henry Feingold has recalled in his book on the Holocaust that there was a desperate need for unity during those terrible years. The American Jewish community was never able to speak to President Roosevelt with one voice.¹ Nor did its leadership in meetings with the President give him definitive proposals for American action. A “single voice” could have sent a more forceful message to Roosevelt urging the United States to provide a safe haven for refugees. A single voice also might been better able to generate the passion called for by the emerging news of the Holocaust.

Hitler’s demonic fantasy was to make Germany Judenrein. In the years before the start of World War II, September 1939, Hitler appeared ready to achieve that result by deporting Jews/or letting them leave under certain onerous conditions. Opening the gates of the United States to the refugees of Hitler should have been the highest priority of the General Jewish Council and its member agencies. They viewed such efforts as unrealistic in light of a Congress comprised of the xenophobes, reactionaries, racists and anti-Semites. So the question wasn’t even debated.

Even in retrospect it is questionable whether a more dramatic concerted response by the American Jewish community would have had any impact. The civil rights demonstrations throughout the South in the early 1960s are instructive. Those almost daily sit-in confrontations aroused the passions of the Black community as well as the fury of White Southerners, but they also stirred the conscience of a previously indifferent if not hostile nation. They fostered an unprecedented national consensus on civil rights and eventually the enactment of civil rights legislation in the mid-1960s, a milestone in American history.

In the late 1930s could the national and local agencies have mobilized American Jews to similarly carry out non-stop demonstration throughout the United States to arouse the passions of Jews and other Americans as the sit-ins did? They did hold protests in Madison Square Garden and at other sites, but those protests did not convey to the country-at-large the desperate need for the United States providing safe-havens for Jews persecuted by Hitler. Thirty years later the agencies did undertake on a concerted basis wide spread demonstrations for Soviet Jewry, month by month, year by year. Those demonstrations had an incredible impact on the immigration policies and practices of the United States and the Kremlin, When those those demonstrations were launched, they encountered skepticism and reluctance among some in the key leaders and rank and file. The crucial variable were pressures for such demonstration from the state of Israel. ^*

The impact of the “sit-ins and the Soviet Jewry demonstrations suggest that a concerted national campaign in the 1930s focused on the President. and on Congressman by Congressman might have widened the opening of the gates to the United States. That kind of campaign would have necessitated the mobilization of the entire national network of national and local agencies. It would have required an insecure American Jewish community to confront a revered President, a hostile Congress, and an anti-Semitic State Department bureaucracy. At that time county still recovering from the Great Depression and anti-Semitism was pervasive/. Such a campaign required a central body which could get the defense agencies to make those difficult decisions and which could coordinate their national campaign. The General Jewish Council was incapable of playing such roles. Such a campaign was never contemplated.

Had the Council addressed such a proposal many of its leaders would have felt in their gut that it would trigger a severe anti-Semitic reaction. State Department officials had warned some of the Council leaders that ill-advised actions of the Jewish community to liberalize immigration law would exacerbate anti-Semitism. Judge Sam Rosenman, a close adviser of the President, came in person to a Council meeting to inform the leadership that the President feared an aggressive Jewish posture would increase anti- Semitism.

General Jewish Council leaders felt that it was useless to seek the repeal of the restrictive and racist national origins quota system. Nor they did not campaign for more modest proposals that could have opened the gates to a large number of Jewish refugees. The Wagner-Roger bill would have permitted entry of 20,000 Jewish refugee children outside of quota. Secretary of Interior Harold Ickes proposed to Congress opening Alaska, then a U.S. territory, to refugees. Doing so, he told Congress, was in the best interests of the United States since it would lead to the development of an undeveloped Alaska. Ickes. contended immigration quotas applied only to the 48 contiguous states and not to territories of the United States.^*

Jewish agencies assumed that their open support of these proposals would be the kiss of death and bring out the vitriolic opposition – it surfaced anyway. So the Jewish community was almost invisible in showing support for these proposals as were like-minded allies. Thirty years later, Martin Luther King observed, “The Jewish community must take the lead if it wants others to follow,” He addressed those remarks to a number of community demonstrations for Soviet Jewry over a telephone hookup. .

The Jewish community did not provide that kind of leadership in pre-War America.. A strong, impassioned, united voice might have moved major national bodies including key national trade unions, national Protestant and Catholic bodies, and highly respected influentials like Governor Alfred Landon, the Republican candidate for president in 1936, to come together in a national coalition to fight for these changes in immigration policy. In contrast to the 1930s, the American Jewish Committee, American Jewish Congress, ADL and NCRAC jointly played lead roles in establishing the American Immigration and Citizenship Conference in the 1950s (also a difficult period). That broad coalition (still in existence) spearheaded the campaign that ultimately led to the repeal of the national origins quota system in 1965.

Such strategies were not the mode of operation of the agencies and the General Jewish Council in rhe 1930s. Apart from that, they did not even ask President Roosevelt to support these modest changes in American immigration policy. The President ducked taking a stand on them. He acquiesced in advocacy on their behalf by some members of his Cabinet. He didn’t encourage them in any way nor did he try to stop them.

In the 1930s thousands of idealistic young American Jews in colleges and high schools throughout the country might have responded to a call to join in demonstrations to break open the gates to immigration just as hundreds of young Jews responded to the clarion call of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. While Rabbi Stephen Wise, an eloquent voice of conscience in those years, urged public protests, he never called for non-stop demonstrations throughout the country to open the gates. The Madison Square Garden or Carnegie Hall protests did not reach the entire American Jewish community. They did not stir the passions of the Jewish community nor of the nation as a whole.

The sit-ins and the brutal response of the South emboldened a once reluctant President to urge passage of civil rights legislation Similarly sustained national demonstrations throughout the country to open the gates and the likely increase in anti-Semitism might have emboldened a reluctant but powerful President to support these proposals to open the gates of the United States to the refugees of Hitler.

Conceivably, massive demonstrations in Florida, Washington, and other major cities might have moved Roosevelt to permit those stranded on the St. Louis to disembark in Florida. His concern and distress about Hitler’s persecution of Jews were apparent after Krystallnacht when he recalled the American ambassador from Berlin and convened the multi-national conference on refugees at Evian les Bains.

Occasionally, when push-came-to shove, a reluctant Roosevelt would back down and do the “right thing”. When A. Philip Randolph, the head of the Sleeping Car Porters Union, threatened in a meeting with the President to bring tens of thousands of Negroes to march on Washington in 1941 unless he agreed to establish an FEPC. At first Roosevelt resisted Randolph’s demand, but soon afterward he set up FEPC by Executive Order. The president feared an enraged and possibly violent reaction of a segregated Washington D.C. to a Negro march. When he met the demand, apparently he overcame his concerns about an adverse reaction of a Congress controlled by Southerners.

Even in the unlikely event it was willing to do so, not any one of the organizations could by itself have effectively conducted a national campaign. It would have required the national mobilization of the grassroots of the American Jewish community. The American Jewish Congress did not have a massive national grass roots constituency throughout the United States nor did the American Jewish Committee. Apart from that, the leadership of the American Jewish Committee, reflecting their usual cautious posture, would have rejected such an approach out of hand. The B’nai B’rith did have a mass grass roots membership and also had a capable community relations arm in the ADL. Like AJCommittee, the B’nai B’rith culture also would have rejected such a campaign. Clearly the General Jewish Council never could have reached agreement on such an approach even if someone proposed it, but no one did.

A fundamental problem was that the leadership of the Genera; Jewish Council and its member agencies did think in strategic terms in their deliberations. They did not try to develop a comprehensive long term strategic action plan for the agencies to jointly undertake to respond to the plight of the Jews under Hitler Their focus was usually on an immediate response.

The leadership relied upon their access to the President and the many close aides of the President, who were concerned Jews. Judge Proskauer, Stephen Wise, and other prominent New New Yorkers had close ties to Roosevelt dating back to Albany. Those channels were exploited to convey the concerns of the Jewish community. They did not use them to press the President to support the proposals of Senator Wagner and Ickes. In any case the approaches of shtadtlonim would have had greater impact had they been backed up by widespread demonstrations of the grass roots sending the same message as was evident yeas later in the campaign for Soviet Jews.

Had the General Jewish Council authorized a national campaign it would have found a readiness to act in the emerging Jewish community councils and CRCs in such major cities as Cleveland, Detroit, Philadelphia,, Boston, Baltimore, Newark, and Los Angeles. They had dedicated and bold lay and professional leadership and their central structures were representative of their communities. They were eager for a national call to action which they never received. They would have participated effectively in a national campaign as as they did again and again in years to come on behalf of Soviet Jewry and Israel.

It is no more preposterous to think that such a campaign might have made a difference then to have suggested in the mid-1950s that widespread sit-ins in the South would turn around national attitudes on civil rights.

It is easy for American Jews living in the comfort and security of 21^st century America to attack the previous generation for their failure to take bold action. No one should doubt that the leadership in those years was tormented by Hitler’s persecution of the Jews. Even with their anguish, they could not bring themselves to risk initiating activities that might exacerbate anti-Semitism in the United States. Bear in mind, they as well as the government of the United States could not imagine in the late 1930s that the Jews under Hitler were destined for annihilation. The Holocaust was unimaginable.

The stubborn refusal of the agencies to cooperate was the fundamental reason the General Jewish Council failed to achieve joint action of its member agencies. Thus the CJF struggled for years to create a functional central agency for defense. The CJF might have earlier success had they pursued an agency built on both pluralism and Jewish unity. These twin concepts, obverse sides of the same coin, reciprocally reinforce each other. Jewish unity fosters Jewish cohesiveness; pluralism fosters vitality. Professor Horace Kallen described his conception of pluralism as analogous to a symphony orchestra. Each member plays different parts of a single composition under the direction of a single leader.

Kallen’s conception of pluralism became a motif of the field of the Jewish community relations and shaped its goals and vision in the decades following World War II. When NCRAC was created in 1944, it embodied pluralism and unity and it also brought together for the first time national and local agencies within the same body. The marriage of national agencies and CRCs as equal partners -- while without tensions conflict -- has enormously enhanced the efficacy of the field of Jewish community relations since the end of World War II. Within NCRAC they have brilliantly debated difficult and contentious issues from their own particular agency perspectives. With few exceptions they have been over course of a half century reach agreement on a broad range of policies, strategic goals, and priorities before adopting each year the NCRAC Joint Program Plan. Each agency carried out the Joint Program Plan, the “score”, so to speak, in its own way in concert with the other agencies.

Clearly, NCRAC was not a single agency in the sense that Stephen Wise envisioned. The cooperative process that has been the NCRAC experience has demonstrated that national and local agencies without surrendering autonomy have worked together with results of historic dimensions in such areas as church/state, immigration, civil rights, and U.S. policy on Israel and Soviet Jewry.

Joey Selesny, Community Development Associate with the Jewish Federation of Metro Detroit
AJCOP SteveFRD Award Winner for 2003

In November, I had the opportunity to attend the United Jewish Communities General Assembly in Jerusalem as the recipient of the Steve Rose Financial Resource Development Award. I was very privileged to have been selected to receive this award and the opportunity to attend the GA, and I am very proud to be a member of AJCOP, where Jewish Communal Professionals can get support, mentorship and a general atmosphere of camaraderie.

The GA was an incredible experience that all Jewish Communal Professionals should avail themselves of, not only for educational reasons, but for networking opportunities as well. From the day that I arrived at the GA I was truly inspired. Everywhere I looked, there were Jewish men and women, both lay and professional, all there for one common purpose: to meet and discuss the issues facing the Jewish people.

Upon check-in, I received a book, not a simple brochure, but a 250 page book of lecture options and other GA related material from “safety” to “sites to see”. As the recipient of the Steve Rose FRD Award, I focused on the FRD related lectures and planned accordingly. There were options from 7 o’clock in the morning through late at night, with of course, some quality schmooze time built in. One of the things that really fascinated me about the GA was the diversity. Virtually every stream of Judaism was present. There were booths from corporate Israel like ELITE Chocolate, Bank Ha’Poalim and EL AL to every charity and organization known to the Jewish world. In the same area, there were “Peace Now” and YESHA groups; groups focusing on youth at risk and next to them were groups focusing on eldercare services. The diversity was truly amazing, and heartwarming to see such a wide spectrum of Jews in one place.

I loved the “GA Experience”, and I would like to relate some of the information and experiences that I got from the FRD lectures that I attended. The first lecture I attended, “Make Fundraising Meaningful” started my GA lecture experience on the right track. The lecture basically brought us back to the basics of fundraising. Why do we do it? How do we do it? Each member of the panel answered these questions in a different way, and from a different perspective. While one mentioned that Israel was the anchor to Jewish fundraising, another mentioned that it is all about three main emotions: passion, meaning, and inspiration. The third panelist approached the question as a business plan: he called it “Businesslike Philanthropy”. His point was that the donor of today is not the same as the donor of yesterday. Today’s donor is not giving the “Jew Tax”, he is giving Tzedakah and wants accountability for it. The idea of “No taxation without representation” is a strong theme in the world of philanthropy. There are more educated donors now than ever before, and we as the facilitators of Tzedakah have to be prepared when we speak to our donors with information about the donor’s interests and the options for his Tzedakah dollars. It is critical to the future of Jewish philanthropy to make the donor aware of their options as well as for the professional fundraiser to educate them.

I attended many lectures, but one piece of information stood out from the National Jewish Population Study lecture that bothered me the most: the fact that so many Jews are unaffiliated, and many that consider themselves affiliated are only affiliated in a small way. Couple that piece of information with the fact that 1/4 of all philanthropy in the United States comes from Jewish donors, and of those philanthropic dollars, only ten percent goes to Jewish causes. That is extremely disturbing. We are facing two battles ahead of us. First, we are losing Jews, and second is that the Jews we have are not giving to Jewish causes when not long ago, they primarily gave to Jewish causes. What can we do? Who do we rely on? The Jewish Communal Professional? The Lay Leader?

The answer is both. We must both become leaders. We must both be involved in creating the solution. We must identify what needs to be done, and do it. We must influence others to be involved in the community. We must motivate and inspire the next generation. We must be models that our colleagues, our friends and our children will want to emulate. We must lead. If we do not, Jewish involvement in non-Jewish arenas will increase. Jewish donors will send their philanthropic dollars elsewhere. Jewish communities will no longer be able to support themselves. This cannot happen, and it will not happen as long as we ‘gird our loins’ and prepare to fight this biblical battle. The Jewish communities of America cannot wait. We must lead. Every Federation and other Jewish charity is in the same predicament, we face this challenge together. I charge you, the reader, to go to the GA next year in Cleveland. To those of you who have the ability to avail yourselves of Continuing Professional Development courses, take them. Be educated. Be motivated. Be Productive. Be proactive. Lead!

Hasbara and HaMatzav: Perceptions and Realities
forJewish Community Relations Professionals

Sam Sokolove, Executive Director American Jewish Committee San Diego Chapter
AJCOP Bernard Rodkin Israel Experience Award Winner for 2003

Perhaps you’ve met Harry Abelson: a retired septuagenarian industrialist living in Los Angeles, Harry lives and breathes Israel, declaring “Israel IS REAL!” and displays his love for the Jewish state by bedecking himself in Magen David buttons and by showing off the somewhat mangled results of his weekly Ulpan. Although Harry has no interest in making Aliyah, he feels that his annual multi-million dollar contribution is as sure a demonstration of his Zionist commitment as an Israeli passport.

In actuality, Harry is an invention of Rabbi Benjamin Levine of Gesher, whose one-man performance, "The "Four Faces of Israel", toys with the cartoonish image of the American Jewish community as Israel’s rich American uncle: devoted and loving, but only from a distance.

Such an unflattering depiction of vicarious Zionism, portrayed most scathingly in former Ha'aretz editor Matti Golan’s With Friends Like You: What Israelis Really Think about American Jews, belies – or underscores -- the fact that throughout the now nearly four-year old al-Aqsa Intifada, the organized American Jewish community has seen its primary function to be that of performing “hasbara ” or public relations on behalf of the beleaguered nation. Between rallies, media campaigns, and a flurry of “We Stand with Israel” coalitions, there are few community relations committees or synagogues that haven’t actively lent their support to the cause.

In the field of Jewish communal service I have been a “hasbara provider” for a number of years, almost immediately upon returning from my first visit to Israel in 1993 when the Federation-operated Jewish newspaper in my hometown profiled me as an example of the transformative effect of a Israel experience on a young adult. As a former Federation campaign staffer and current Jewish community relations professional, I have spent the better part of the last decade “making the case for Israel” to lay leaders and the media, soliciting financial and political support for the Jewish state.

Increasingly, however, I have felt that the language involved in so much of American hasbara work has grown superficial, and is often received as simplistic and one-sided by the intended audiences. Moreover, I felt that my own effectiveness has been undermined by a matter of proximity, or namely the fact that I hadn’t been to Israel since before the outbreak of the current violence in September of 2000, and therefore could not accurately gage how my own efforts reflected what life is really like in Israel today; whether or not American Jewish hasbara accurately conveys the situation; and how Israelis view American Hasbara efforts.

Seeking answers to these questions, in August of 2003 I participated, with support provided by the Association of Jewish Community Organization Professional’s Bernard Rodkin Israel Experience Award, in the program titled, HaMatzav: Understanding the Current Situation in Israel. Presented by Livnot U'Lehibanot and Muss Israel Seminars with Alliance and a coalition of Israel experience programs, the HaMatzav program offered young professionals a ten-day overview of the “matzav,” (“situation” or “condition,” the term that Israelis use to describe the events in Israel since 2000) the program was created as an opportunity for participants to see beyond the “edited sound bites and media coverage (that has) only blurred the issues ”and meet with government officials, journalists, performers (including Rabbi Levine) municipal employees, and visits to the “Seamline” separating Jerusalem from the Palestinian town of Tulkarm.

While the program succeeded in providing insight into Israeli’s current dilemmas, the experience proved, in an expectantly Jewish fashion, to raise as many questions as it answered.

Sadly, for most Americans, Israel has become synonymous with terrorism. It is rare that a week passes without reading of a bus bombing or violent assault, and the fear of harm has all but crippled Israel’s once-vibrant tourism industry. Therefore, it was all a sad inevitability that I would hear the dreaded sirens, which I did en route to the Dan Jerusalem hotel around 9 p.m. on August 19^th. A few minutes later a fleet of ambulances went by and the radio confirmed our fears: a bus had been bombed, with many riders dead or wounded. A woman in our cherut burst into tears and panic set in. Badly shaken at the front desk, an American asked the hotel clerk how she could bear such horrors week after week. She shrugged and continued typing away at the keyboard. “If you can’t take it, don’t live in Israel.”

I expected the city to shut down, but no such thing happened. Within an hour after the bombing, as bodies and body parts were being cleared from the wreckage of Egged bus No.2, the cafes were crowded, the pizza restaurant across the street from the hotel packed with diners. For those who can take it, life in Israel goes on. And meanwhile, the local news footage featured an appalling loop of a dazed, blood-soaked teenaged girl being carried away on a stretcher. In our hotel room I watched images of the unfolding carnage and listened to the wailing sirens through an open window.

Citing the previous evening’s bombing, at breakfast Eve Harrow, a member of the Efrat council, blasted the remaining members of the Israeli peace camp. “The future of our people depends on recognizing what we’re up against,” she said. “We did not come to the Middle East to make peace – we came here because this was home!”

Turning her anger towards “American Jews (who) think that we (Settlers) are the Hitlers,” Harrow declared that Hasbara needs to, “start with the Jews.” “We’re always out for everybody’s rights, but we’re blind to our side,” she said. Although religious, Harrow stressed how few friends Israel has left in the world, and urged her American audience not to ignore the support Christian Evangelicals have shown Israel, a particularly troublesome issue for many Jewish communal professionals and lay leaders. “We both believe in the messiah of peace,” Harrow explains. “So we’ll ask him, ‘is this your first time or a return trip’?”

Less interested in theological and political matters than in making sure that the adults and children she counsels who have witnessed terrorism are able to cope with the trauma of their experiences, Dr. Donna Katzir is one of the one hundred and fifty psychologists in Jerusalem who are regularly called to serve a stressed-out and often despairing city. Katzir’s techniques include, for her adult clients, putting events in context, as in reminding them more Israelis are killed every year in automobile accidents than in terrorist attacks. For children it’s the reassurance that, “we went through this before and we’ll get through now.”

She was once called to a kindergarten near the site of a suicide bombing. With the windows shattered, and the classroom in ruin, Dr. Katzir had the children express themselves by painting a mural on the schoolhouse wall, or, as she tells it, “painting away their fears.”

With the Israeli response to terror generally an immediate clean up of the site of the horror, such as when the Sbarro’s Pizzeria in Jerusalem was rebuilt in several weeks, Dr. Katzir was asked whether this kind of coping is actually a form of denial. She answered, “We couldn’t survive without some kind of denial. The abnormal is normal in Israel.”

She finds strength, however, “In our ‘truth,’ in our right to be here, the fact that there’s something worth protecting. The desire for revenge takes a back seat to, ‘how am I going to get on with my life?’” Conversely, I met a woman in Tzfat, a mother of a teenaged daughter, told me that Israeli society has become more fatalistic, recounting how she and her daughter had “laughed all the way” during a bus trip to Tel Aviv, expecting at any moment to be blown up in a suicide bombing. “What choice do we have but to laugh?” she asked. Another Israeli I met in Tzfat dismissed the suggestion that there could ever be a clear-cut solution to the turmoil. “America is all about fixing its problems,” he told me. “Israel is about having the strength to deal with its problems.”

Addressing the HaMatzav group at the Jerusalem campus of Livnot U’lehibanot, Rabbi Seth Mandel, Director of Camp Koby, a therapeutic gathering place for Israeli victims of terrorism named in memory of his murdered son, Koby, personalized the general sense of both resignation and resolve in Israeli society. Recounting his and his wife’s initial agony and shock of having unwillingly joined the “exclusive club” of parents having lost a child to terror, Rabbi Mandel told how he answered his wife’s question, “how are we going to get through this?” by responding, “We’ll get through this because we have three other children, and we won’t let Koby’s murder ruin their lives.”

From my perspective, the comments of Eve Harrow, Donna Katzir and Rabbi Mandel personalized Israel’s societal turmoil, putting a human face to the seemingly constant images of gutted busses and bloodied victims that have become almost visual clichés to American Jews. As organizational fundraising and advocacy for Israel tends to focus on garnering an emotional or visceral response, there is often little room for the resolved-but-fatalistic sentiments of Dr. Katzir and others that realistically capture the peculiar tone of what it means to live in Israel today without urgent sloganeering.

In August of 2003 revenge was on everyone’s mind as IAF helicopters fired four missiles into a station wagon traveling through Gaza City, killing Hamas kingpin Abu Shanab. Amid this tense background, back at the Pardes Institute Rabbi David Levin-Cross led a discussion on the responsibilities of power, stimulated by a Jerusalem Post article on the IDF loosening it’s legendarily complicated open-fire regulations. Citing Chulin 89a as a counterpoint to the policy, Rabbi Levin Cross cited the words of Rabbi Ilai, who said, “The world endures only because some restraint themselves during conflict.”

Another passage was offered for discussion: “When one is willing to let their rights pass without insisting on them, all their sins are forgiven.”

An Israeli reservist responded to this passage with disgust. “This is the most pathetic statement I’ve ever read,” he spat. “It’s like we’re begging to be an eternal victim.” a heated exchange followed within the group, with some Americans making recommendations for how “we” should deal with Israel’s enemies. The pronoun choice didn’t go unnoticed, and provoked a discussion on the appropriateness of American Jews using “we” when referring to the actions of the Israeli government or military.

It was a discussion that I particularly welcomed, having observed for years how American Jews (particularly those with vivid memories of Israel’s birth and the Six-Day war) unhesitantly make suggestions about what actions “we” – i.e., Israelis – should take in response to hostilities (cf., a recent letter to the editor, written by an author in a tony San Diego neighborhood, published in the San Diego Union Tribune: “Israel would be the first to welcome peace and be the first to help the Palestinians build their state…because we are a compassionate people who believe in social justice.”) One Israeli informed the group that, “When you Americans say ‘we’, Israelis feel that we’re not alone, but people who don’t serve in our army have no right to say that Israel should or shouldn’t do anything.” A HaMatzav participant agreed that, “I don’t think that we have the privilege to use the word ‘we” (in regard to Israel) because we don’t put our lives on the line.” However, this opinion wounded another participant, who defensively responded, “I say ‘we’ because if Israel falls, we all fall.”

I found it fascinating how this particular discussion, perhaps as much as a discussion of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, generated tension amongst the participants. For a generation of Jews educated with the Hebrew language, Israeli music, culture and a general fandom of Israel that could be analogous to rooting for one’s home team, the suggestion of a nationalistic disparity between American Jew and Israeli Jew was clearly jarring to some. “I’m a Zionist because my parents were Zionists and their parents were Zionists,” one participant emotionally explained in defense of his own sense of solidarity with the Israeli people, but an earlier comment from Seth Mandel, explaining his reason for making Aliyah, argued against parity: “(I was living) a second-rung life as a Jew in America.”

Hasbara viewed by the Intelligentsia

On a clear day you can see the Dome of the Rock from the patio of Yair and Bambi Sheleg’s Harmon Ha’nasi apartment. Everyday, however, you have an unobstructed view into the Arab village only a few hundred yards away, and despite the growling of the stray cats and dogs lurking through their streets below, and the chatter of their three young children inside, it’s a quiet Sunday evening in Jerusalem.

The Shelegs are important voices in the world of Israeli journalism: Yair is a member of the Editorial Board of the daily newspaper Ha'aretz, the author of two books, and a scholar with the Israel Democracy Center, a think-tank where he currently researches the policy implications of settlement dismantlement. His wife Bambi is the founding editor of the groundbreaking Israeli magazine Eretz Acheret (“A Different Country”), which deals with issues of Jewish and Israeli identity. Theirs is a religious home, with thick, opened volumes of Talmud in view, and I fear that my visit has disrupted their study. But the discussion this Sunday evening is of HaMatzav, and the heaping bowl of grapes and plums that Bambi has laid out is a sweet counterpoint to the bitter subject.

Yair senses that Israeli society has been taken over by “a quiet despair.” “People are not talking about it,” he says, “but they’re asking themselves, ‘what will be the future of Israel’s place in the Middle East?” To Yair, Israel has two options: continue with the current situation, and deepen control of the territories, or unilaterally separate from them, which is what he believes most Israelis would support, as well as the closing of some settlements. But he fears that unilateral withdrawal would give Palestinian terrorists the courage to continue with their campaign of bloodshed.

The options are all bleak, and politicians, he says, prefer to maintain the status quo than to deal head-on with problems. “The desire of most Israelis is to separate, but it’s easier to just continue along the same line.” Bambi agrees, opining, “Israeli society is much better than its leaders and know better then them.” Bambi disagrees, however, with her husband’s “quiet despair” assessment. She concedes that Israelis are troubled, but thinks despair is more likely to be found among intellectuals, or the “desperate part (of Israeli society), which lost its identity.”

“We appear ourselves to be weak,” she said. “Rabin said he signed Oslo because Israel didn’t have enough strength to go another year (living with terror).” But Bambi thinks Israeli society has proven itself to be far stronger than even the Israelis themselves expected. Still, “Israelis love life, especially the good life, and for a Western society to get into such a situation is no piece of cake.”

Yair is careful to explain that “quiet despair” doesn’t mean that Israelis are not ready to fight or are going to leave the country in droves. What he means is that people are, “looking into their hearts and asking questions about the future that they cannot answer.” Bambi agrees with her husband, but thinks that Americans, post September 11^th, are also asking the same questions, “Because the world is no longer a safe place.”

Despite the situation, Chilean-born Bambi, the daughter of German survivors, is resolute in her commitment to the Jewish state, and insists, “Most of the Jews who live in Israel couldn’t imagine living in the Diaspora. This is our place, we did not come here to leave, and the Arabs have to deal with it.”

When the discussion turns to the Israel advocacy efforts of North American Jews, Yair expresses his opinion that Diaspora Jews unfairly blame unflattering media portrayals of Israeli actions on the failure of Israeli hasbara. He felt this acutely when a mission from the Los Angeles Federation came by at the beginning of the Intifada and blamed Israel for not doing more “damage control,” and demanded better public relations, which he thinks spoke to the mission participant’s “own feelings of shame.” Still, Yair emphasizes, “It has been very important to Israelis to have American Jewish support, especially at the beginning of the uprising, because at that time we didn’t have the support of the Clinton administration, which condemned Israel following images of Palestinian children being ‘oppressed.’” Although he doesn’t know if this appreciation is the feeling among average Israelis, he is confident that the importance of the Diaspora, specifically the United States, is clearly understood.

Yair is also sensitive to the fact that many Americans view the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a battle between a Palestinian David and Israeli Goliath, to which he responds, “The fact that the Palestinians are the weaker side doesn’t make them the right side – (although) in a Christian society, the weaker side is always right”

As an observer of the sometimes strained dynamic between Israeli identity and the Jewish character of Israel, Bambi is convinced that the deepest issue of the Matzav is indeed that of identity: “We have to fight for our lives,” she says, “but what the Matzav does is force us to deal with the most important issues of our times.” For example, for one issue of Eretz Acheret she invited Israeli Arabs to write about their identities within Israeli society, which exposed the dichotomy between a Jewish State with Western values existing among Arab countries. “Israel’s major problem is that it doesn’t share common values with the Arab world,” she says. “This is why Oslo didn’t work: it was a Western solution. Peace must come from them. We cannot force it.”

But for Bambi, the impact of recent history weighs heavily on the Israel conscience as much as the current terror. “I believe that Jews have not overcome the Shoah, “ she says. “We’ve not dealt with it because we couldn’t do it. We’re just survivors. We haven’t had the time to reflect on it and deal with it philosophically…I think that it’s important because we can’t go on with the internal quarrel that started 2,000 years ago. I think that the Shoah has a certain energy that eats us up to this day.”

Israelis have to create a new philosophy for the nation, Bambi insists. “We are at the end of the stage of building the land. Now we have to decide what will it be. And when we know where we want to go, we’ll have energy again.”

Rejecting the influence of academics and pundits who claim Israelis live in a “Post-Zionist” era, Yair asserts, “If you ask most (Israelis) if they would like to do without the Zionist Character (of Israel), most would say no.” As for the charge that Israelis have discarded the patriotic zeal of the Zionist founders, Yair responds, “Most people are talking about the ‘fact level’, that Israelis are less committed to the ‘Biblical’ meaning of Israel, and more concerned about their security, political issues…but there is a strong sense of solidarity around the situation, “ he affirms, and that, “after the Holocaust, many Zionists looked at Israel and said, we don’t have any other place.” Therefore, Israel remains a refuge for all Jews, despite the ongoing troubles.

As I prepared to leave, I remarked to Bambi how much Israel has changed since my last visit. You can feel the weight, I told her, the enormous heaviness of everyday living.

Hasbara and the Media

Paramount to hasbara efforts has been the monitoring of local and international media for evidence of bias in regard to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In cities including Los Angeles, Chicago and New York, protests and boycotts have been organized following some incident of alleged bias, and watchdog organizations such as CAMERA and Honest Reporting have been active in responding to community dissatisfaction.

The efforts have gone beyond America’s Jewish community: while in Israel I came across a blurb in the Jerusalem Post announcing that the Glasgow Jewish Representative Council has created a website with the mission of, “countering unfair and factually inaccurate statements which are detrimental to Israel.”

As the author of a bi-weekly “Media Watch” column in a San Diego Jewish newspaper, I was particularly interested to see how the news from Israel compares with the actual situation. While watching BBC News in a Jerusalem hotel, I learned that one experiences a strange disconnect between their Middle East coverage and what’s actually happening on the street below: doom and gloom reporting from the BBC predicting the apocalypse to come as a result of some Israeli “aggression” in Gaza, while outside you’ll find a bustling, sun-drenched market packed with chattering shoppers and people on their way to and from work.

Dan Diker thinks he knows why the news coming from Israel is almost always so bad, and why perception so frequently doesn’t match reality. Speaking at the Hadassah Youth Center on Mt. Scopus, Diker, a Knesset and economic affairs reporter for Israel Broadcasting Authority's English News and media affairs consultant at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs/Institute for Contemporary Affairs, has been keeping a close eye on how the international media never misses an opportunity to portray Israel in the worst possible light.

“Ha Matzav is top news both locally and internationally,” Diker, a resident of Efrat, says. “ ‘The Israel Story’ for the international press is basically the conflict, whereas something like the recovery of the Israeli real estate market would be ignored.” The coverage that greeted Christopher Reeve’s recent visit, he notes, was an anomaly, as it was a positive human-interest story set in Israel. And “The Israel Story” in the international media invariably evolves around the Palestinian narrative, which is essentially, “Occupation. And if Israel would move from the territories we would have peace.”

“Context and perspective doesn’t exist in the international media,” Diker explains, using the media’s coverage of the brief Hudna as an example; according to Diker, Hudna is an culturally-specific Arabic term which means a temporary cessation of battle before the next round can begin, like a seventh inning stretch, rather than a ceasefire, as it was widely portrayed.

Interestingly, Diker thinks that some of the bias comes from a purely aesthetic place. “99% of foreign reporters hang out at the American Colony Hotel, which is Austrian owned and Arab staffed, and which gives a romantic sense of what Jerusalem was a hundred years ago,” he says. “At five o’clock you’ll see reporters coming ‘off safari’ reporting on ‘the revolution’.” The accessible, idealized and Israel-free image the American Colony provides journalists is disturbed by the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which makes it easier for them to simply resort to the Occupier vs. the Occupied paradigm.

Also, Diker believes that reporting the complexities – the lack of human rights in the Palestinian authority, the indoctrination of Palestinian youth – is ignored in large part due to the Palestinian Authority’s close control over who gets to speak to the press. And in the non-democratic Palestinian society, foreign reporters are afraid that if they offend the Palestinian Authority with unflattering reporting, their access to official sources will be cut-off, thus leaving them unable to get “the Palestinian reaction” for a story.

As a worse-case example of Palestinian media control, Diker recounted the story of the Italian journalist who attempted to document the October 12, 2000 lynching of two Israeli reservists in Ramallah before receiving threats from the Palestinian Authority. Amazingly, his network later apologized to the Palestinian Authority for filming the murderers.

Countering the Palestinian restrictions imposed on the press, Diker describes the access afforded by Israeli authorities to journalists as evidence that Israel truly is a “Hyper-democracy.” Abu Dabi television, for example, has full access to the Knesset even though it has been labeled as hostile to Israel. In the interest of accuracy, Diker tries to speak to Israeli elected officials themselves, rather than their spokespersons, which in Israel’s informal political scene, is possible, and journalists frequently approach MK’s directly, sometimes by just calling them on their cell phone rather than wading through a sea of aides.

Despite this access to a wide variety of Israeli viewpoints, Diker laments how the foreign press will often seek out someone whose views most closely meet those of the reporter – which are generally very left of center -- to speak on behalf of the Israeli people. “(Former Justice Minister) Yossi Bellin represents six percent of the Israeli opinion,” Diker says, but he is frequently quoted as speaking on behalf of all Israelis. Diker fears that a “peripheral” voice like Bellin’s doesn’t accurately reflect to the world the key concerns of the majority of Israelis, which come down to, “show me security and give me a job.”

Diker views much of Israel’s media drubbing as a public relations war, and acknowledges that the Palestinian Authority were wise to hire Ed Abington, a former US State Department Council General in Jerusalem, as their media advisor, whereas the Israeli government secured the services of Howard Rubenstein, a public relations maven with no real experience in government, which puts, Diker feels, Israeli hasbara at a crucial disadvantage.

As for the charges that Israel perpetuates the “cycle of violence” by targeting Hamas members, Diker points out that suicide bombings take weeks of preparation and are never spontaneous responses to Israeli actions, which is how the Israeli public correctly understands such horrors as the Aug. 19^th suicide bus bombing in Jerusalem that killed 21, including several children. But as this more complicated picture doesn’t fit into the simplified and largely inaccurate narrative that the international media has relied on throughout the last three years, Diker expects that the rare fair journalists – such as Peter Herman of the Baltimore Sun, whom he singles out for praise – will continue to be outweighed by those far less informed.

Diker’s analysis confirms that even though community is an intangible thing, there is something mooring in the way that, for the last four years, Jews have been exchanging, via e-mail or jagged newspaper clippings, a John Leo article that captures the justness of the Israeli cause, or a particularly moving profile of a young victim of the nightclub massacre in Tel Aviv. Our collective sensitivity has been sharpened to the point where we detect a contemptuous tone in a Peter Jennings’s voice that seems to escape other audiences; for example, when I mentioned to a Jewish friend a story I had heard that morning on NPR, she sneered, “you mean National Palestinian Radio?” and I doubt that you would hear such a response from a friend who was not beholden to what historian Jonathan Boyarin labeled, “the Politics of Jewish Memory.”

Changing Images

Aubrey Issacs, Education Director of the WUJUS Institute in Arad, recalled that the message he received from the Israeli Consul General in his native Ireland during the Yom Kippur War was, “don’t come; send us your money.” Today, Issacs feels that the image Israel projects to Diaspora Jewry is, “we’re strong and we don’t need your help, so don’t come.”

Yet, in a recent article for Ma'ariv, Natan Sharansky wrote, “Israel has few strategic assets as critical as American Jewry. The fact that the world's leading superpower is a steadfast ally of Israel is due in large measure to this proud and activist community.”

Michael Jankelowitz, the Jewish Agency for Israel’s media liaison, believes that Israelis are very much aware of American Jewish activism on behalf of Israel. Over coffee in the Jewish Agency cafeteria, Jankelowitz acknowledged that the diminishing number of American Jews visiting Israel over the years has been noticeable, with the exception of the fully subsidized Operation Birthright programs for college-aged first timers, which were the majority, even though the number of participants had decreased significantly. But Israelis don’t blame Americans for not coming, Jankelowitz insists. “They don’t expect them to come in the thousands…it’s hard to make a demand of (American Jews) to come to Israel when it’s not safe.” Although solidarity missions were succeeding in bringing already-committed lay leaders to Israel, “Joe Jew,” to use Jankelowitz’s terminology, chose to stay home.

Jankelowitz expressed concern that even among Jewish organizations, staffers, however well meaning, were largely ill informed of the Matzav and therefore unqualified to make policy reccomendations. “Israelis don’t like when Americans get involved in internal Israeli politics when their necks aren’t on the line.” As for the much-reviled security fence, Jankelowitz invites Americans to, “come and learn, but don’t condemn (from afar).”

Tzippi Barnea, the Assistant Director of the American Jewish Committee’s Jerusalem office, disagrees with Jankelowitz’s assessment, “In general Israelis don’t know anything about (American Hasbara efforts) and don’t care about it,” she says. “The average Israeli knows nothing about what American Jews are doing to help.” The AJC’s Jerusalem office sees one of its responsibilities to teach Israelis about the American Jewish community, and annually sends Israelis from the political left and right to learn about American Pluralism, which, according to Barnea successfully imparts, “how influential the American Jewish community is (which most) Israelis do not know.”

A close observer of how the pro-Israel message is stated in America, particularly on college campuses, Jankelowitz feels that focusing on the “moral message” that Israel is a democracy is insufficient. “We have to explain the Jewish historical connection to Zion,” he insists. Evangelical Christians are a major block of support because they know the history. “In today’s world, you have to think about the PR effect,” Jankelowitz acknowledges. “However, there’s a limit to the extent that you can do PR and ignore history.”

Noting that Palestinian public relations tries to break the emotional ties between American Jews and Israel, Jankelowitz fears that American Jews don’t understand the nuance of what’s being communicated by Israeli officials. In his opinion, American Jews are missing the true culture of contemporary Israel, which no longer is influenced by an Ashkenazi majority, and has transformed into an “Oriental” country. “(Foreign Minister) Silvan Shalom doesn’t speak perfect Engl