THE NEW JEWISH CHARITIES
worked with AJWS projects. "You see a
lot of Jews in the development communi-
ty, in the Peace Corps."
But until the creation of AJWS, she
said, there was no way for these people to
participate in the movement for interna-
tional development in a distinctly Jewish
context.
"I see it as a way of using our own tra-
dition to build something very important
in a very inter-dependent world," Reiser
said.
JEWISH FUND FOR JUSTICE
A teacher helping
children in the day
care center of a
battered women's
shelter in Israel, a
beneficiary of the
New Israel Fund.
Dollars Raised For Jewish Charities
Listed below are the amounts raised in the last decade
by Detroit's Allied Jewish Campaign as compared to
all federations in North America and four new
charities — Mazon (founded in 1985), the New Israel
Fund (1979), the American Jewish World Service
(1985) and the Jewish Fund for Justice (1984). Con-
tributions to the Allied's regular campaign have
increased each year. The fluctuation in the totals is be-
cause of one or more special campaigns in certain
years.
ALL*
CAMPAIGN
YEAR FEDERATIONS ALLIED MAZON
EI kEflg
a761 million
739 million
778 million
802 million
b873 million
504 million
21.8 million
23.4 million
24.3 million
25.7 million
26.9 million
26.3 million
—
162,785
550,206
871,510
1.3 million
446,171
NIF
AJWS
JFFJ
1.2 million
1.9 million
2.6 million
3.3 million
5.1 million
5.0 million
406,875
860,719
1.3 million
2.5 million
2.1 million
604,000
78,000
362,000
535,000
563,000
620,000
75,000
— total for all campaigns of the 187 Jewish federations in North America.
a — included $56 million for Operation Moses.
b — included $50.1 million for Passage to Freedom campaign.
c — at latest count.
Source: the charities
28
FRIDAY, JULY 6, 1990
This theme of inter-dependency is
clearest in the Jewish Fund for Justice, a
project that grew out of the experiences
of a Jewish community organizer.
"I've been working in the South as a
Jew for 25 years," said Si Kahn, one of
the group's founders. Kahn, the son of a
rabbi, is a folk singer and community ac-
tivist who has immersed himself in an
environment in which Jews are rare.
"Sometimes I've felt like an ambas-
sador from the Jewish people," Kahn
said. "There have been many situations
in which I've been the only Jew they've
worked with."
Kahn was concerned that grass-roots
anti-poverty groups were being sup-
ported by a number of Christian groups
— but not in any organized way by the
Jewish community.
"When people asked me about national
institutions within the Jewish communi-
ty that they could go to for help, I had to
say there weren't any," Kahn said. "That
made me feel bad."
The result of that feeling was the Jew-
ish Fund for Justice. The group was
founded in 1984 with 50 contributors.
Now there are over 6,000, and the number
is growing. Last year, the group collected
$620,000.
Fund money has gone to a matching-
grant program to involve synagogues in
local community action projects. A ten-