Defining a Mission’s Mission

With both tourism and national morale at a critical low in Israel, Los Angeles Jewish leaders are heeding the call of Israeli diplomats and boarding planes to Israel to physically show their support for the Jewish homeland. And while some trips nationwide are raising questions about safety concerns and the propriety of asking participants for charitable contributions, solidarity mission don’t seem to be having any trouble filling up.

“We’re really excited about the trip,” said Rabbi Mark Diamond, executive vice president of the Board of Rabbis of Southern California, who has organized The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles mission with Lois Weinsaft, director of the Federation’s Council on Jewish Life, for early next year. “The message that we want to send is people love to be there in the good times, and we want to be there in the tough times as well.”

That message, crystallized in the aftermath of the violent clashes unfolding in Israel since the High Holidays, summed up the spirit behind a larger trend taking place among Jewish federations nationwide. Solidarity missions are rapidly revising and refocusing the intent behind trips to Israel among North American Jewry.

Diamond and Weinsaft plan to accompany about 70 local community leaders and activists to Israel for a Jan. 8-14 stay in Jerusalem, with a day reserved to meet peers in Tel Aviv, L.A.’s sister city in Federation’s Tel Aviv-L.A. Partnership. The idea is to bring mission participants together with Israeli spiritual leaders, psychologists, journalists and experts in social, economic and military areas.

Solidarity missions such as this one are the result of discussions raised last month in Chicago at the General Assembly of United Jewish Communities (UJC), the umbrella organization for North America’s 189 federations. At this year’s convention, there was a tangible push for federations to arrange missions during this turbulent time, as Israeli officials appealed to American Jews to show physical support for the Jewish state.

And indeed, there are signs that American Jews are responding; at least 1,000 people across the country have signed up for these five-day trips. In fact, the L.A. delegation’s trip marks the seventh such itinerary since the political unrest began.

The first missions, which embarked just after Thanksgiving, sent 80 people from San Francisco and Dallas to Jerusalem. By and large, the missions cost participants less than $1,000, and they include meetings with top Israeli government officials, as well as visits to Israeli communities paired with American cities in UJC’s Partnership 2000 programs, which offer learning exchanges in the areas of medicine, science, social work and community relations.

“When the chips are down, we are able to mobilize people who have very different views, religiously and politically,” Diamond said. A former Bay Area pulpit rabbi, Diamond, who moved to L.A. just last summer, is heartened by the fact that spiritual leaders from a diversity of synagogues — Stephen S. Wise Temple, Sinai Temple, Congregation Beth Jacob and Young Israel of Century City, among others — have already confirmed participation.

Weinsaft added that enlisting participants for this leadership mission has been an easy sell. She named Wexner graduates, Hadassah campaign people, members of Federation’s program for young professionals, ACCESS, and rabbinical students among those who will be joining Jewish organizational and synagogue leadership in January.

There is no doubt that the primary intent behind these missions is to demonstrate support for Israel. However, some debate exists over whether some of the federations are overreaching by having the missions double as fundraising vehicles.

The UJC has a long history of effectively raising contributions to assist various charities and organizations in Israel. In 1999, federations allocated $237.7 million for overseas needs, approximately 75 percent of which went to the Jewish Agency for Israel, one of the two partners of the North American federation network. The Jewish Agency’s primary intent is to bring new immigrants to Israel and to help absorb them into Israeli society.

But some of the missions have raised eyebrows within the Jewish community for simultaneously soliciting contributions from participants. The Federation in Chicago, for example, required a $500 minimum campaign contribution from participants flying out on its Dec. 2 mission (a steep drop from the $5000 minimum on previous trips).

There are those who question whether such relief money for Israel should be raised on these missions. Most of the federations — including the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit and Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston — have decided against marrying fundraising drives with their missions.Robert Aronson, executive vice president of Metro Detroit’s federation (which is readying a Jan. 14 voyage), believed that the sole mission of such excursions should be “to express our concern and meet with people we know and care about.”

“This mission is going because what we were told and what I firmly believe is that the Israelis need to see us,” said Barry Shrage, the president of Boston’s federation.

Solidarity is very much in the forefront of the minds of organizers for the Jewish Federation in Palm Beach County in Florida. That federation’s executive vice president, Jeffrey Klein, noted that in addition to a planned mission, contributions, at over $4 million, are already more than double the amount raised at the same time last year. In fact, “Solidarity Sunday” was the theme of its annual Super Sunday phone-a-thon this season.

“If we raise our money more than ever before on the backs of Israel, then we have to make sure a representative portion goes overseas,” said Klein.

The UJC’s Overseas Needs Assessment and Distribution Committee (ONAD), committed to reversing the trend of declining allocations to international Jewry, recommended in June that federations across North America match or surpass their 1998 allocations to Israel and overseas communities.

Of course, capitalizing on the crisis in Israel is a less appetizing way of fattening campaign coffers than through the promotion of Israel’s positive attributes during times of relative peace.

“This is not the way we want to have heightened interest in Israel,” said ONAD chair Alan Jaffe.So in the wake of the Israel’s harrowing past 10 weeks, is a mission to the state a realistic gesture for American Jews to make? Is it presently safe to show solidarity?

While the media have helped paint an impression of Israel as a region in turmoil, nothing can be further from the truth, according to those involved with the missions.

Two months ago, following a rapid succession of violent flare-ups in the Middle East, the State Department reacted with an advisory discouraging American travel to the region. That alert created a ripple effect throughout the Jewish community, causing sign-ups to plummet and forcing organizations to cancel or postpone missions scheduled for October and November.

However, people who have recently returned from Israel bring back reports not of a society thrown into noisy chaos but of a country with major cities immersed in an audible silence, the result of an 80 percent drop in tourism and layoffs of more than half the workers in the travel industry, according to Weinsaft. “The airport was quiet, the streets of Jerusalem were quiet, the hotel was quiet,” said David Levy, campaign director of L.A. Jewish Federation/Valley Alliance, who just returned from an informal mission last week. “There was a depression going on. It was very different than every other trip I’ve taken, and I’ve been there once a year.”

B’nai David-Judea’s rabbi, Yosef Kanefsky, is among the community leaders who will be traveling with the Federation entourage in January. Overall, he seemed unfazed by what he felt have been exaggerated concerns over safety issues.

In fact, Kanefsky — who, in addition to the solidarity aspect, is looking forward to an opportunity to exchange ideas with his Israeli counterparts — said that he would have gone on such a mission even at the height of the tumult in October.

“I think we have a very warped perspective in the sense that, statistically speaking, any given person is going to be fine,” Kanefsky told the Journal.

And while Kanefsky hasn’t formally encouraged the congregants at his Modern Orthodox synagogue to participate in solidarity missions, he has encouraged other community leaders to participate.

“As comfortable American Jews who profess our deep sense of identity with Israel from our much more comfortable surroundings, the least we can do is be with her in her time of stress,” Kanefsky said.

Weinsaft, speaking bluntly and viscerally, said, “It is only a quirk of fate that I am sitting here and they are sitting there in Israel, based on decisions that our grandparents made, that it’s their children and not mine that are going into the army. If they say, ‘We need you,’ and I’m serious about my Zionism and I can do it, I get on a plane and go there.”n

Jewish Telegrahic Agency contributed to this report.