I CLOSE-UP
lYlonitoring
The Process
Five months after becoming
`Mr. Federation,' Bill Berman
maintains some lofty goals for
the Jews of North America
ALAN HITSKY
Associate Editor
1111
andell "Bill" Berman's
third-floor office overlooks
Franklin Road and North-
western Highway but the
view from the window con-
tinuously dissolves — via telephone —
to New York, Miami, California and
Jerusalem.
That afternoon, Jewish Agency
Chairman Mendel Kaplan of South
Africa and former Ambassador Sim-
cha Dinitz of Israel will share a
televised platform with Council of
Jewish Federations Frresident Bill
Berman of Detroit — a program to be
seen privately by 2,000 Jewish
leaders across North America. The
subject is Palestinian unrest in the
administered territories.
"This is enabling us to explain
what is happening in the West Bank
and Gaza to the media and to our con-
stituents," says Berman. "It is
especially helpful to our smaller
federations . . . We need to be able to
help our Jewish leadership deal with
the question!'
Life has changed somewhat for
Bill Berman since November. Active
in national Jewish communal affairs
for better than two decades, Berman's
role reached an even faster-paced
plateau in Miami when he was
elevated, on his 70th birthday, from
vice president of the Council of
Jewish Federations, the umbrella
im i411Dai
ra k
.. 15 1988
organization of the 800 Jewish com-
munities throughout the United
States and Canada.
Now he appears on closed-circuit
Jewish television via satellite, jets off
with Max Fisher to Jewish Agency
meetings in Jerusalem, and flies in
and out of New York more frequently
to take care of Jewish business. It's a
long way from Burlingame near
Woodward, but Berman has spent a
lifetime getting there.
I
he Bermans were the only Jew-
ish family in their neighbor-
hood, but Bill's mother was
strict in the family's religious
observance. "We- were not allowed to
play music on Shabbat," says Berman
of his post-World War I childhood in
Detroit. He fondly recalls attending
the United Hebrew School at
Philadelphia and Byron until age 17,
an association which later vaulted
him into the center of Jewish life in
Detroit.
His family also was active at Con-
gregation Shaarey Zedek, and Ber-
man helped organize junior congrega-
tions at both institutions. As an adult,
Berman served on the UHS board,
helping President Abe Kasle to lease
space from Detroit's Conservative
synagogues for the communally-
funded UHS branches. In 1959, Ber-
man was elected president of UHS.
, That position carried him into na-
tional battles over Jewish education
in the 1960s and an expanding Ber-
man presence in what was then call-
ed the Council of Jewish Federations
and Welfare Funds.
"The role of the federations now,"
says Berman, "is the central address
for the Jewish community. But back
in the 1960s, the scope was health and
welfare only. There was no relation-
ship with the synagogues. There was
no day school support. This was a
whole new subject!'
Berman and other supporters of
Jewish education turned to another
Detroiter to change the federations'
focus. "We had to convince Max
Fisher in 1972, and that's when the
floodgates began to open!' Fisher,
founding chairman of the
reconstituted Jewish Agency for
Israel, was Council of Jewish Federa-
tions president at the time.
Some would argue that the
Jewish federations have yet to widen
the stream of communal dollars in the
direction of Jewish education. But
placing the subject of funding on the
national agenda can be credited to
Berman and other supporters of
Jewish schools. Stressing the thesis
that Jewish education is directly pro-
portional to Jewish identity and af-
filiation in succeeding generations,
Jewish educators have elevated the
needs of the schools beyond "whether
to fund!' It is now "how much to fund
and what is the most effective means
for the dollar!'
Typical of this was the fight in the
1970s over support for the American
Association for Jewish Education.
Berman and others turned again to
the CJF president, Baltimore's
Charles Hoffberger; who followed
Max Fisher's path both at CJF and
the Jewish Agency.
"We had to convince Chuck Hoff-
berger to either abandon the AAJE or
support it," Berman says. He sees
federation support for national
Jewish agencies such as the AAJE
(now the Jewish Education Service of
North America) directly tied to how
each Jewish federation perceives the
agency as being useful to local needs.
"Every federation makes its own
decisions" on national funding, Ber-
man explains. "People are surprised
by that." CJF's Large Cities
Budgeting Conference each year
pressures the agencies and the in-
dividual federations on funding, but
Berman believes the process has not
been totally successful.
Detroiters George Zeltzer and
Robert Naftaly are recent chairmen
of the Large Cities Budgeting
Conference.
-IV
hile keeping busy on the
national front, Berman also
was busy on the local Jewish
scene. Less than 30 years after
co-founding Federation's Junior Divi-
sion in 1946, he served three terms as
Federation president (1972-1975),
then chaired the executive committee
as well as United Jewish Charities.
He never has strayed far from
Jewish education, however, or from
Congregation Shaarey Zedek. He
served his synagogue as an officer for
14 years, has been chairman of its
Clover Hill Park Cemetery since
1978, and headed the building com-
mittee from 1957 to 1962 when the
present Shaarey Zedek was designed
and built.
In the last two years, Berman and
his wife Madeline have made major
personal funding committments
toward the $3 million Hillel Founda-
tion under construction at the Univer-
sity of Michigan, and the Jewish Ex-
periences For Families project at
Detroit's Fresh Air Society.
These new projects are a reflection
of Berman's vision for the Council of
Jewish Federations. With the change
in attitudes toward education and
other Jewish needs came the dropp-
ing of the term "and Welfare Funds"
from the Council of Jewish Federa-
tions name. Berman wants to con-
tinue the evolution during his tenure
as president.
In the 1970s, Chuck Hoffberger
saw the need for a Jewish think tank,
and asked Berman to chair the effort.
"We couldn't get the funding;' Ber-
man recalls, "because many believed
that a think tank was not an ap-
propriate role for the CH."
But Berman learned appropriate
lessons. "We learned to think