Jewish Charities Seek $300 Million for Israel

Activist Rabbi Criticizes Fund Drive, Says U.S. Jews Should Help Lebanon, Too

An umbrella organization of North American Jewish charities said yesterday that it will seek to raise a minimum of $300 million in emergency humanitarian funds for Israel this year, one of the largest short-term goals in its history.

The fund drive drew immediate criticism from at least one prominent rabbi who called on American Jews to raise money for the reconstruction of Lebanon, not just Israel. But experts on Jewish philanthropy predicted that the campaign would receive broad support, following a well-established pattern of giving by U.S. Jews in times of crisis for the Jewish state.

Howard Rieger, president and chief executive of United Jewish Communities, formerly known as the United Jewish Appeal, said its approximately 120 board members voted unanimously to launch the Israel Emergency Campaign during a teleconference yesterday.

Rieger said the $300 million figure is "a floor, not a ceiling," and the amount raised probably "will grow beyond that."

By comparison, United Jewish Communities raised about $360 million in its previous emergency campaign. But that was over a three-year period during the Palestinian intifada, or uprising, from 2001 to 2003. The aim this time is to raise the money fast, ideally within weeks, UJC officials said.

Rieger said that since Hezbollah kidnapped two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid, triggering three weeks of fighting between Israel and Lebanese militants, UJC has spent $12.5 million a week to evacuate children and elderly residents of northern Israel beyond the range of Hezbollah rockets.

He said the additional funds would be used to set up summer camps for up to 15,000 displaced children in southern Israel, provide trauma counseling, create a $20 million fund for victims of the rocket attacks and their families, rebuild social services and refurbish bomb shelters that lack air conditioning and are in disrepair.

Doron Krakow, senior vice president of the UJC's Israel division, said the campaign is "fundamentally committed to helping Israeli communities under siege, and that means helping Israeli Arabs and Druze, as well as Jews."

But Rabbi Michael Lerner of San Francisco, editor of the liberal Jewish magazine Tikkun, said that commitment was not enough.

"This is a time for the Jewish community of the United States to signal a new open-heartedness toward those who've been our adversaries if we want to break through the cycle of violence," Lerner said. "So we should be raising funds for Israel, as well as for Lebanon, as well as for Gaza, as well as for the West Bank.

"Donations to the federation at this point are simply a 'yes' vote to continued Israeli militarism and a 'no' vote to the Israeli peace movement that is calling for an immediate cease-fire and a negotiated settlement of all the issues that have led to war in the past 60 years."

Brandeis University professor David A. Mersky, an expert on philanthropy, said that Lerner "is entitled to his opinion," but that it is probably "on the fringe" of U.S. Jewish opinion. A far more common view, he said, is: "We have to take care of our own."

Jonathan D. Sarna, a leading historian of American Jewry who is also on the faculty at Brandeis, said he believes there is "great sympathy" among U.S. Jews for "the Lebanese people who have been held hostage by Hezbollah." Many Jews have Lebanese friends in America and remember that during the 1967 war, Lebanon was the only neighbor that did not attack Israel, he said.

"If there is a cease-fire and the terrorists are chased out and Lebanon is a democracy, then I think there will be a strong sentiment among American Jews that we want to help rebuild Lebanon. But I don't think we're there yet," he said.

Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center, the public policy arm of Reform Judaism in Washington, also predicted that many U.S. Jews will contribute, in time, to rebuilding Lebanon.

The U.S. government has pledged $30 million in emergency aid to Lebanon, and European and Middle Eastern governments have pledged hundreds of millions more.

"There are roughly the same number of refugees in Israel as there are in Lebanon, and the entire world is militating to invest in relief and reconstruction in Lebanon. But you don't hear the Arab countries talking about reconstruction in Israel," Saperstein said.

"So for the Jewish community to say once again we're going to have to do it on our own is certainly a legitimate moral and humanitarian stance."