espite the billions of dollars
poured into the Jewish
Agency over the years,
very few American Jewish
leaders had a reasonably
clear idea of what was
done with the money. And in the commu-
nities where the money was actually rais-
ed, the local federations did not have any
mechanism to educate their leaders about
what the Agency does and how its funds
are spent. On the national level, the United
Jewish Appeal tended naturally to be more
concerned about stimulating enthusiasm
for "the campaign" than providing critical
reports to its constituency about how well
Agency programs performed.
Why this seeming lack of interest in
what happens to 60 per cent — on the av-
erage — of all funds raised by American
Jewry through its local UJA campaigns?
Would community federations evince such
lack of concern about money spent on local
services?
Fifteen years ago, almost no one was ask-
ing such questions, perhaps because peo-
ple just did not want to know where those
dollars had gone. But the situation is
changing today at such a pace that in
another 15 years, it will be hard to under-
stand how this relaxed attitude towards
Agency accountability lasted as long as it
did.
lbday, in fact, a number of key Diaspora
leaders are making serious efforts to depo-
liticize the Agency by loosening the grip
of the World Zionist Organization on its
operations to • make it more efficient and
responsive to current needs. And American
federation leaders have been intensively in-
volved in recent efforts to create more
powerful organizational tools for American
Jewry to pressure the Agency into making
changes along these very same lines.
Such Chutzpah would have been un-
thinkable 25 to 30 years ago. At that time,
the relationship between the Israeli leaders
of the WZO who controlled the Jewish
Agency and the Diaspora fund-raisers who
contributed most of the money was fairly
clear-cut. The Israeli attitude could be
boiled down to "Give us the money and
keep your opinions to yourselves." It was
difficult then for the Diaspora leaders to
challenge this approach, given their lack
of sophistication about Israel and the
operations of the Agency, and their tenden-
cy to defer naturally to the awe-inspiring
figures of Israel's founding generation.
Since the mid-1970s — with the rise of
a new generation of Israeli leaders, the
decline of the myth of Israeli superiority
and the growing sophistication of Diaspora
leaders about Israel — a transitional period
has begun. The past several years have
thus been marked by more persistent and
effective efforts on the part of Diaspora
leaders to get a better grip on what the
Agency does, and to push through some
changes in how it is run.
What American
Jewish Leaders Are
Doing To Change
The System
Some key Diaspora leaders are making
serious efforts to depoliticize the Jewish
Agency by loosening the grip of the
World Zionist Organization on its operations.
CHARLES HOFFMAN
Special to The Jewish News
Where Do All Our Dollars Go?
14
Friday, June 27, 1986
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
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Art By Giora Carmi