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DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
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editorial
Arthur M. Horwitz
Publisher / Executive Editor
ahorwitz@renmedia.us
Jewish Fund Results Underscore Need For Full Population Study
F. Kevin Browett
Chief Operating Officer
kbrowett@renmedia.us
T
he Jewish Fund should be thanked
for providing the leadership and
funds necessary to complete a
major assessment of the community’s most
pressing social welfare needs. (See story
on page xx.) By wisely investing $86,700
in the study, the Jewish Fund now has
data and insights that will enable it to bet-
ter prioritize the grant requests it receives
from Jewish communal organizations. In
its 2014-2015 fiscal year, the Jewish Fund
awarded $3.5 million, 64 percent of it to
meet health and welfare needs within the
Jewish community.
The Jewish Federation of Metropolitan
Detroit will also benefit from the Jewish
Fund’s study, providing opportunities for
improved coordination among some of
its beneficiary agencies. In its 2014-2015
fiscal year, funds mostly attributable to
Federation’s Annual Campaign provided
$5.3 million for community services,
mostly benefiting the elderly and those with
other health and welfare needs.
This study, with its limited focus and
non-scientific sampling technique, is not
meant to be a replacement for a thorough
Detroit Jewish community population
study, last undertaken in 2005. Rather, it
underscores the need for a new one.
Much has changed over the past 11 years:
• Detroit and its Jewish community were
battered by a steep economic downturn
that slammed the automobile, housing and
banking industries;
• Michigan was at or near the top of the
list of states losing population;
• Detroit’s Jewish population of 20-some-
things — already extremely low based on
data reported in the 2005 study — declined
further;
• Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish
Campus Life now estimates that a major-
ity of self-identifying Jewish students on
America’s college campuses have one Jewish
parent;
• A 2013 Pew study shows that 80 per-
cent of Reform movement children are
intermarrying;
• Trends continue to show decline in
the Conservative movement, growth of
Orthodoxy, an expanding frail elderly popu-
lation and a weakening embrace of Israel by
younger generations of Jews;
• Meanwhile, a revival of business activ-
ity along Detroit’s Woodward Avenue spine
— much of it triggered by the companies of
Dan Gilbert — is creating expanded oppor-
tunities for employment and urban-style
living;
• And family foundations are now play-
ing more prominent roles in determining
community needs — and funding them —
based on their own interests and criteria.
Federation CEO Scott Kaufman is cor-
rect in stating that until the community
has an updated and scientifically sound
population study, it will be basing some
decision making on anecdotal informa-
tion. Good demographic studies aren’t
cheap — they can easily surpass $400,000.
However, Federation’s fiduciary respon-
sibility to the community is to assure, as
best as it reasonably can, that charitable
dollars it raises are being used efficiently
to address the community’s current and
emerging needs.
Considering what’s at stake, we are both
hopeful and confident that family founda-
tions — and Federation itself — will dig
into their wallets to assure that an overdue
survey of the Detroit Jewish community
occurs in the 2017 calendar year.
It’s time to know.
*
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commentary
U.S.-Israel Memorandum Of Understanding: An Unbalanced Deal
A
Memorandum of
Understanding (MOU)
is an agreement between
two parties — in this case, the
governments of Israel and the
United States. It is less than a
treaty, more than a handshake.
The first MOU was signed in
Shoshana
1981, recognizing “the common
Bryen
bonds of friendship between
the United States and Israel and
builds on the mutual security relationship
that exists between the two nations.” The
current MOU, signed in 2007, represented a
10-year commitment. The Obama admin-
istration and the government of Israel have
been negotiating a new 10-year agreement
that will come into effect in 2017.
It is hard to get the nuance right in a secu-
rity arrangement between a superpower and
a small country, even if the small country is a
first-world democracy in terms of education,
income, technology and political structure.
It is harder when large sums of money are
involved and harder still when the small
country is, in military terms, a “security
producer,” one that provides more security to
a region than it requires in assistance, but is
still uniquely threatened in the world.
The Obama administration is
making it harder, perhaps because
one of the president’s goals has been
to remove the United States from its
role as security guarantor not only
for Israel, but also for the region, and
possibly, it seems, for the rest of the
world, such as the South China Sea,
Crimea and the Balkans.
The administration proposes
somewhat more money for Israel — from
$3.1 billion to close to $4 billion — but with
important caveats:
1) 100 percent of the money will be spent
in the U.S., while Israel is presently able to
spend 25 percent in Israel.
This is a subsidy for U.S. defense indus-
tries and constrains Israel’s defense choices
by forcing the IDF to exclude weapons from
Europe and elsewhere. While some think
of Israel as an expense to the U.S., the fact is
that Israeli R&D innovations — shared with
the U.S. by agreement — have helped miti-
gate the decline in the U.S. missile defense
budget in an era of growing threats. Without
the ability to spend some money in Israel, it
will be harder for smaller defense and high-
tech industries to keep up.
2) The total figure will include money for
missile defense, which in this administration
has been an add-on from Congress. That
makes the increase substantially less than it
appears to be.
This could be particularly problematic: An
administration that opposes missile defense
in principle — as does the Obama admin-
istration — could effectively stifle Israel,
which protects its people with a layered
missile defense system. As Iran continues to
violate U.N. prohibitions on ballistic missile
testing, and Hamas and Hezbollah increase
their arsenals, the consequences could be
devastating.
3) Israel will be prohibited from asking
Congress for additional funds, effectively
removing a bipartisan center of support for
Israel’s security from the equation and reduc-
ing Israel’s flexibility in addressing rapidly
emerging threats. This year, Congress wrote
in $42.7 million for anti-tunnel cooperation
— something that emerged as essential only
after the 2014 Gaza war.
In deference to the outsized threats and
acknowledging Israel’s status as an American
ally, it has been U.S. policy for decades and
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continued on page 8
6 September 8 • 2016
JN A