THE JEWISH NEWS

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THIS ISSUE 60(P

SERVING DETROIT'S JEWISH COMMUNITY

OCTOBER 23, 1987 / 30 TISHREI 5748

Who Will Run The Jewish Agency?

Diaspora leaders are pushing for a compromise between laymen and professionals

EDWIN BLACK

Special to the Jewish News

Widespread Diaspora opposition
toward the nomination of Akiva
Levinsky to succeed Arye Dulzin as
chairman of the Jewish Agency is
creating a push for an unprecedented
sharing of power between North
American Jewish lay leaders and pro-
fessionals in Jerusalem.
If an alternative to the 70-year-old
Levinsky, currently treasurer, cannot
be found, key dissident Diaspora
leaders say they will insist that
Mendel Kaplan, the South African in-
, dustrialist who has been nominated
to succeed Jerrold Hoffberger as
(chairman of the Jewish Agency Board
of Governors, share "day to day
`power" with Levinsky. Kaplan is one
. of those who led the campaign to oust
Dulzin. (See accompanying article on
Kaplan.)
The Board of Governors, compris-
ed of 74 prominent Jewish leaders
and philanthropists, is dominated by
North Americans, and in many ways
is considered the arm of Diaspora
Jewry in the Jewish Agency.
The Jewish Agency is a

government-like body whose purposes
fall primarily in the social and educa-
tional realms, overseeing the distribu-
tion of hundreds of millions of dollars
raised outside of Israel to be
distributed in Israel. Historically,
there has been tension between the
Diaspora `fund-raisers' and the Israeli
professionals over how the agency
should be run.
Sudden Diaspora leverage arises
out of the new and to a certain degree
untested reciprocal "advise and con-
sent" powers now held by both the
World Zionist Organization executive
and the Jewish Agency Board of
Governors. Under its recent
reorganization, the Board of Gover-
nors must "advise and consent" to the
WZO's nominee for chairman. In
turn, the WZO must advise and con-
sent to the Governors' chairman.
A Jewish Agency insider explains,
"a trade off is in the making. If the
Levinsky people in Jerusalem will
ratify Kaplan, then the Governors
will ratify Levinsky." A denouement
is expected at the regularly schedul-
ed Board of Governors meeting Oc-
tober 25 in Jerusalem.
One of the reasons Kaplan was

I CLOSE-UP I

The Squiggly,
Quirky World
Of Cartonist
Roz Chast

Or, what is a nice
Jewish lady from
Brooklyn doing in the
pages of The New
Yorker? Drawing
"enkers" and "soods,"
that's what.

chosen was because he spends seven
months out of the year in Jerusalem,
explains Alan Marcuvitz of
Milwaukee, a member of the board of
governors. "He will be our point man
in Jerusalem."
There had been some initial con-
cern about having a non-American
head the board of governors for the
first time — Max Fisher of Detroit

and Hoffberger of Baltimore have
been the only chairmen to date — and
there were those wary of having a
South African in the limelight at a
time when Israel-South African rela-
tions have come under scrutiny.
Levinsky's nomination has been
under increasing attack by Diaspora
leaders for a variety of reasons. "He

Continued on Page 18

Campaign Leaders
Unruffled By Market

New York (JTA) — Jewish agency
professionals generally were of two
bents Tuesday when asked to
evaluate the effect of the rapid decline
of the stock market this week on their
agencies, which depend on financial
gifts.
Most said that fund raising would
likely be impaired, but they noted
that the suddenness of the drop in
stock prices and the market's subse-
quent volatility made accurate predic-
tions impossible. But one pointed

specifically to likely short-term cash-
flow problems.
And they all hastened to add that
operations would not be diminished
and that there was no panic among
their major givers.
In Detroit, Jewish Welfare Federa-
tion and Allied Jewish Campaign of-
ficials downplayed the stock market
crash, viewing it as a short-term
phenomenon with no major impact on
local fund-raising efforts.
Continued on Page 22