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Art By Giora Carmi

in Israel for Diaspora youth, students and
others. Greater attention has also been
paid in recent years to the two funds for
Diaspora Jewish education connected to
the Agency and WZO, the Pincus Jewish
Education Fund for the Diaspora and the
Joint Program for Jewish Education.
The amounts spent each year by the
Agency and WZO on Diaspora Jewish
education, Israel programs and shlichim
run over $40 million, most of it spent by
the WZO. Many Diaspora leaders and
Israelis would like to see the WZO as a
"ministry of education for the Jewish
people," but they are forced to admit that
the reality falls far short of this. The main
causes of the ills of the WZO lie in its
system of rampant politicization that
stifles professionalism and provides for
little accountability to the groups that it
is supposed to serve.
As a former shaliah familiar with the
WZO from the inside, this writer is aware
that there are good, bad and indifferent
shlichim, just as there are good, bad and
indifferent programs and departmental
staff. Some of the good ones are blocked
by the system, while other good ones
manage to survive despite the system.
This means, however, that there is some-
thing wrong with the system itself.
The doubts and complaints about the
WZO system of shlichim had reached such
proportions in recent years from practical-
ly all quarters of the Jewish world that
even the WZO found it hard to resist pres-

.

Israel's parties and their Zionist affiliates
abroad.
Hence the pressures that led eventual-
ly to the formal separation of the Agency
and WZO in 1971, an event known as the
"reconstitution" of the Jewish Agency.
The Agency took responsibility for work
carried out in Israel in the areas of rural
settlement, care of immigrants, education,
youth training, and urban rehabilitation
through Project Renewal. The Agency's
budget for 1986/87 comes to $429 million,
about 80 percent from funds raised by the
UJA and most of the remainder from
funds raised by Keren Hayesod in other
Jewish communities around the world.
The WZO was left with Jewish and

Zionist education carried out in Israel and
abroad, Zionist political activity and the
promotion of aliya (immigration) from
western countries. Its budget for 1986/87
comes to $59 million, which is provided, ac-
cording to the official version, in about
equal parts by Keren Hayesod and the
Israeli government. This separation has
not been airtight, however, since the
Agency has also been developing Jewish
education programs in recent years.
The major sources of Diaspora interest
and complaints about the performance of
the WZO have centered on the shlichim
(emissaries; singular, shaliach; nominal
form, shlichut) sent by the thousands over
the years to carry out educational and
other Zionist work in Diaspora communi-
ties; and the long and short-term programs

Part Two