Galperin to leave D.C. federation to take senior spot with JAFI
Misha Galperin has notified the board of the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington that he will leave his post as the federation’s CEO this summer to take a position at the Jewish Agency for Israel.
According to a source with knowledge of the situation, Galperin will take over the position that Maxyne Finkelstein is set to abandon when she officially steps down as the CEO of the Jewish Agency for Israel, North America this summer.
The position, however, will be broadened for Galperin, who is a close ally of the Jewish Agency’s chairman, Natan Sharansky, according to the source. And pending approval of the Jewish Agency’s board later this month, Galperin's title will likely be “director of global operations.”
“A JAFI committee will be presenting for approval its recommendations regarding structural changes, including this new position, when the JAFI Executive meets in Jerusalem on February 22, 2010,” the president of the Washington federation, Susie Gelman, wrote in an e-mail to her board of directors announcing Galperin’s resignation Monday.
The move appears to be a win-win for Galperin and the Jewish Agency. Galperin, who helped Sharansky secure the top spot at the Jewish Agency, is well respected in federation circles and his hiring would help position the agency in its fight to maintain its share of the $150 million that the federation system is expected to split between JAFI and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.
For the Soviet-born Galperin, a major player in the philanthropic landscape budding from Russian-speaking Jews, it appears to be a promotion.
“It brings him to the next level, and a much bigger playing field,” the source said. “It brings him front and center on international issues and theoretically he has more impact.”
Here is the e-mail from Gelman:
Dear Fellow Board Member,
I am writing to share some important information with you. Misha Galperin, our CEO and Executive Vice President, has notified Federation's Executive Committee of his intention to leave Federation in the summer of 2010 to assume what will be a newly-created senior position at the Jewish Agency for Israel (JAFI).
A JAFI committee will be presenting for approval its recommendations regarding structural changes, including this new position, when the JAFI Executive meets in Jerusalem on February 22, 2010.
As you know, Misha has been a driving force behind the continued growth and development of our Federation and our community. We are deeply indebted to him for his hard work, for his visionary leadership, and for Federation's many successes during his tenure. While it would be premature to wish him well, since the new position has not yet been approved, I have every reason to expect that Misha will bring to the Jewish Agency all of the energy, creativity and passion that have been of such benefit to our community during Misha's tenure.
In the coming days, I will be conferring with our Executive Committee to determine how best to proceed with the anticipated search for a new CEO. Misha has expressed his willingness to assist us during this transitional period, but I hope to conclude the process by the end of his current contract on June 30, 2010.
I will keep you apprised as to further developments. In the meantime, should you have any thoughts about the process or suggestions as to how we should proceed, please let me know.
With best wishes,
Susie Gelman
President, Jewish Federation of Greater Washington
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The philanthropy of Eli Broad
The New York Times has a story about the philanthropy of Eli Broad.
Broad, says the Times, has turned Los Angeles, where he has made his home for the past 40 years, into an arts center that it could not have been without the billionaire.
But his philanthropy should not be mistaken for simple charity, reports the Times, as his gifts often come not with strings, but with “ropes that could moor an ocean liner,” as Broad has been known to pull his support and not come through on commitments if things don’t go his way.
Broad’s $2.5 billion foundation has focused primarily on education and the arts, but it has become clear to those who work with him that he has little tolerance for working philanthropically in any manner that is not his own, according to the Times.
Says Lynda Resnick, who is a board member of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, from whom Broad withheld $6 million of a pledge over a dispute regarding the display of one of his art collections:
“When Eli gives, it is like negotiating a business deal. It is not altruistic. It is not blind charity. And there is a difference between being generous and being charitable. But it doesn’t matter in the end because the good was still done.”
Mr. Broad has been known to pull his financial support for other things.
In 2008 Mr. Broad and the Gates Foundation financed a political campaign, Strong American Schools, with the goal of raising the profile of education among the presidential candidates and the voting public. He and the Gates Foundation promised $60 million.
But Mr. Broad is fond of using a specific matrix to judge the success of his giving. Museums should see attendance rise and giving increase by board members. Schools should see test scores go up.
In the case of Strong American Schools he suggested to Chad Kolton, the communications director for the campaign, that one way to judge its impact would be the number of column inches newspapers devoted to the subject.
The Times surmises that Broad is part of a new breed of philanthropist, who does not come from family money and wants control over his gifts. The way that he works is indicative of a general philanthropic attitude in Los Angeles that, unlike in New York where money is often old and controlled by longtime philanthropic families, is still forming and finding its way.
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Who are the Jews among the Slate 60 list of top givers?
Slate.com recently released its annual Slate 60 list of top philanthropic givers. The list, compiled by the Chronicle of Philanthropy, estimates who were the country’s top 60 philanthropists based on what they pledged and gave the most money in 2009.
According to our calculation, either 11 or 13 of the top 60 are Jewish. (When we were not sure about whether they were members of the tribe, we made a notation with an asterisk.) Among the top givers, two gave directly to Jewish causes: Irwin M. and Joan K. Jacobs gave $24.3 million to the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Fund at the Jewish Community Foundation of San Diego, and Steven L. and Carol Aaron gave $15 million to the Dallas Jewish Community Foundation.
Some big Jewish names are missing here, including Sergey Brin and Larry Page, and Sheldon Adelson.
Here are the presumed Jewish givers from Slate, along with their ranking on the Slate 60 and how much they gave in 2009:
- 1) ** Stanley F. and Fiona B. Druckenmiller, $705 million. (according to Gawker, Druckenmiller is Jewish.)
- 4) Michael R. Bloomberg, $256 million.
- 6) George Soros, $150 million.
- 7) Eli and Edyth Broad $105 million.
- 18) Ronald P. Stanton, $50 million.
- 24) Lawrence J. Ellison, $46.9 million.
- 31) ** David Eddings, $30 million. (I am not sure if the late fantasy author is Jewish, but he left $10 million to National Jewish Health in Denver for Asthma research.)
- 35) Sanford and Joan Weill, $26 million
- 40) Irwin M. and Joan K. Jacobs, $24.3 million Joan and Irwin Jacobs Fund at the Jewish Community Foundation of San Diego.
- 41) John W. and Janice B. Fisher, $22 million.
- 43) Stewart A. and Lynda R. Resnick $21 million.
- 52) David M. Rubenstein, $15.75 million.
- 54) Steven L. and Carol Aaron, $15 million Dallas Jewish Community Foundation.
- 56) Jeffrey S. Skoll, $13.7 Million to his Skoll foundation
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Idea #8: Jewish Artists Residency
At this point in the contemporary Jewish conversation, I’m pleased that most community leaders and members recognize that arts and culture play a meaningful role in our individual and communal lives. And increasingly we understand that contemporary art comes from people who draw from their visions to create the object, image, concept or creative work.
At the Six Points Fellowship, we are committed to supporting the creation of new Jewish arts and culture, and the human being who makes it and who needs to eat, live, learn and be inspired. We do that for a limited number of extremely talented emerging artists through funding, professional development, Jewish learning, retreats and the creation of a community of fellows. The work that came from our pilot cohort was of high artistic quality and rich Jewish content, and it received very positive critical and audience reception. We see how investing in people and projects, and supporting that development, is a successful model.
What we don’t do, and I’ve heard so many requests for over the years, is provide a physical space for artists to work and create. I have a vision of a Jewish Artists Residency where there is community, opportunities for learning, space for solitary practice, and an environment that nurtures the creative process free of interruptions and distractions.
I’d like to advocate for the residency happening outside of a city environment, even though the urban jungle is where we generally find both Jewish and artistic concentrations. Getting out into nature is viewed, for Jews and artists, as a way of opening to new experiences and insights. I envision a multi-disciplinary group of multi-generational artists gathering for communal meals and sharing their lives and work in the evenings. Working uninterrupted, and for at least their time in the residency, they would be free of the constraints of the art world and the hum and pull of the everyday. The place could be infused with Jewish values, be home to a Jewish scholar-in-residence, and have a staff that could serve as artistic and Jewish resources.
Like the most influential and important artist residencies, such as Yaddo, Skowhegan and the MacDowell Colony, artists must be working professionally and would be admitted based on artistic excellence and promise. Much of the work that has had a profound impact on contemporary culture has been nurtured in these places through residencies by artists such as Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, Michael Chabon, Meredith Monk, Helene Aylon, Saul Bellow, Phillip Roth, Howard Nemerov, Stanley Kunitz and Bernard Malamud. Imagine what might have happened at a Jewish residency with all of those acclaimed Jewish artists.
In the past few years, I’ve talked with a number of different types of Jewish institutions that have been interested in creating artist residencies. We’ve talked, brainstormed, and created preliminary plans and budgets, but few programs grew out of the conversations.
In reflecting on those processes, I’ve realized that there has been a fundamental misunderstanding around the creation of art and its role in our community. We all agree that art is a powerful way for people, young and old, to connect to Jewish identity and ideas, and can be a useful and meaningful part of an educational process. These uses are a second step to the creative process, not a parallel track. To have high-quality, appealing art to use as engagement tools, we need to create the time and space for artists to create their work.
In general, these organizations have been seeking teaching artists to serve and teach their audiences, campers and participants, and seeing a residency as a kind of barter. I support giving artists jobs and paying them as educators to share their vision and work, but this route is not generative to the creative process. It can feed the artists (in a literal sense) and potentially free up time when they don’t have to wait tables, but high-quality, deeply researched and felt work cannot effectively be created when an artist has to teach twice a day or entertain visitors to the studio whenever anyone happens by.
We already have many physical spaces in our communities that could work for such as program -- places like Brandeis-Bardin Institute and Eden Village, or the network of summer camps that have studios, facilities, housing, kitchens. Many of the residency programs in the Northeast started as a summer estate of someone dedicated to supporting the artistic process; there must be a beautiful home on some wooded grounds somewhere that is waiting to be bequeathed to support the future of Jewish culture. Artists could come for three weeks to three months with their living expenses covered, with a commitment to work, and be part of a creative Jewish community.
I wholeheartedly believe in the notion of contributing to a community that supports you, but we need to approach this type of project with the idea that we will provide the artist with a residency and their communal contribution may be less direct or immediately obvious. The creative process is complex, and ultimately the artists’ contribution is the way that their work allows us to discover new things about ourselves and the Jewish community, and create a meaningful dialogue around Jewish life for the future.
(Rebecca Guber is the director of the Six Points Fellowship, a partnership of Avoda Arts, Foundation for Jewish Culture, and JDub Records, with significant support from UJA-Federation of New York. Visit Jewschool.com to read "Idea # 7: Central game portal for teaching Hebrew" and Jewcy.com on Tuesday to check out Idea #9. You can also visit 28days28ideas.com for the full list of ideas as they progress.)
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Jewish Agency: Russia nixes St. Petersburg meeting
My breaking news report:
NEW YORK (JTA) -- The Jewish Agency for Israel has canceled plans to hold its upcoming board meetings in St. Petersburg over concerns that the Russian government would not allow the gathering to take place.
The agency had announced in the fall that it would be holding the meetings there with the intent of showcasing to its 120-member board the projects that the organization operates in Russia. But despite several months of planning, the Russian government recently cooled to the idea, according to a letter the agency sent Tuesday to its board of governors.
“Two weeks ago we were advised for the first time about some outstanding issues regarding the legal status for the Jewish Agency in Russia,” the letter said. “We immediately submitted all the required documentation and have since been waiting for an official response. In the interim we have received numerous unofficial messages but no clear answer. Today we heard via the office of the Israeli Ambassador in Moscow that the Russian Foreign Ministry still maintains that our legal status in Russia is not adequate for convening a meeting of the Board of Governors.”
The meetings will now take place Feb. 21-23 in Jerusalem.
The decision to change locations comes at a critical time for the agency’s operations in the former Soviet Union after having had to slash its programming in the region because of recession-induced budget cuts. The agency’s new chairman, former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky, has made it a top priority to resuscitate funding for projects in the region.
The Russian government, according to a Jewish Agency source, has been focusing on the fact that the Jewish Agency is registered in Russia as a local NGO, but the board of governors meeting is an international convention.
An agency insider dismissed this line of argument.
“It is not as if they didn’t know who we were three months ago,” the source said. “They put up last-minute, ostensibly bureaucratic, hurdles."
"Apparently they didn’t want it to happen," the source said. "The Jewish Agency is Israel's largest nonprofit with diplomatic links to Russia. In an ironic way, this justifies our need to be there."
It is unclear how much the change in venue will cost -- or save -- the agency. The organization had chartered a plane to fly many of the 200 registered participants from Jerusalem to St. Petersburg.
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Jewish Agency scraps plans to hold board meetings in Russia
The Jewish Agency just announced that it has scrapped plans to hold its upcoming Board of Governors meetings in St. Petersburg, Russia. Instead they will be held in Jerusalem.
Here is the press release:
The Jewish Agency Board of Governors meetings to be held in Jerusalem and not St. Petersburg as originally planned
The Chairman of the Jewish Agency, Natan Sharansky, announced this evening (Wednesday afternoon, Feb 3) that the Board of Governors meetings planned to be held at the end of the month in St. Petersburg, Russia, will be relocated to Jerusalem.
The Jewish Agency started the preparations for the meetings three months ago and coordinated with the Israeli Foreign Ministry and with the office of the Governor of St. Petersburg. Two weeks ago the Russian authorities advised for the first time about some outstanding issues regarding the legal status of the Jewish Agency in Russia.
The Jewish Agency immediately submitted all the required documentation and have since been waiting for an official response. In the interim the Jewish Agency received numerous unofficial messages but no clear answer. Today a message was received via the office of the Israeli Ambassador in Moscow that the Russian Foreign Ministry still maintains that the legal status of the Jewish Agency in Russia is not adequate for convening a meeting of the Board of Governors.
Following these developments and due to the short amount of time left before the meetings, the Jewish Agency decided, to relocate the Board meetings to Jerusalem. According to Mr. Sharansky, the Jewish Agency acted and will continue to act in understanding and cooperation with the Russian authorities. At the initiative of the Natan Sharansky, the Chairman of the Executive, the Jewish Agency Board of Governors planned to convene in St. Petersburg at the end of February for three days. Sharansky's initiative was meant to strengthen the connection between the Jewish communities in the Former Soviet Union and the Jewish Agency and Israel. The schedule in St. Petersburg included meetings with the members of the Board of Governors and the leaders of the local Jewish communities, visits to centers of activity of the Jewish Agency in St. Petersburg and meetings with Russian Government representatives.
The Chairman of the Executive, Natan Sharansky, and the Chairman of the Board of Governors, Richie Pearlstone, instructed to relocate the meetings to Jerusalem at the planned time from February 21st through February 23rd. The Board of Governors of the Jewish Agency meets three times a year in Jerusalem and Sharansky intends to convene it once a year outside of Israel, in cities with Jewish Agency programs and activities.
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Idea #1: Jewish media mashups
The story of the year in 2008 -- Jewish or otherwise -- was the U.S. presidential election and the fight for Congress. JTA had two reporters for the conventions and the stretch run, but I often found myself imagining the possibilities of a real D.C. bureau, with another reporter or two, and a videographer.
These days I find myself dreaming about it again, as I ask myself what we, the Jewish media world, could be doing differently.
Of course, it is always possible to better serve our readers by improving content and embracing new technologies. But the main focus, considering the tumultuous economic and business climate facing our industry, should be on finding ways to cut costs and improve quality by increasing our level of cooperation.
I know I'm not the first to make this argument, but no idea is entirely new. And, more important, despite plenty of buzz, whispers, calls, lunches, meetings, etc., not much movement has occurred. One notable exception was the JDub-Tablet strategic partnership. But while these two entities sharing space and a marketing team is a good first step, the partnership is an exception to the rule, underscoring how the Jewish media world generally has failed to come up with creative ways of working together to reduce back-end expenses.
Maximizing economies of scale, however, will save only so much. And it will do little to address the fundamental goal: making sure that Jewish publications are producing compelling and high-quality content that is being read by a critical mass of Jewish consumers.
Yes, we should all be looking to save some money by sharing accountants, ad sales reps and tech staff, or creating a wider health insurance pool. Yet for the most part, we are nonprofit organizations, not businesses. So the main question driving our efforts to cooperate should not be whether there are ways to reduce costs but whether there are ways to better pursue our collective mission of informing Jewish readers, building Jewish identity and creating Jewish community.
The bean counters out there might say: Did the Forward, New York Jewish Week and JTA need a total of four Washington reporters during the 2008 election season? Why not just share one, or maybe two? I'd put it another way: Keep all four, but instead of having them chase the same stories, bring them together to create that robust D.C. bureau of my dreams, capable of competing with any media entity in the world and, more important, producing the sort of specialized, high-quality content that would attract more readers, keep Jews better informed and, if done properly, create new revenue streams that weren't there when we all were doing our own thing.
Along those lines, JTA's philanthropy blogger/reporter Jacob "The Fundermentalist" Berkman is formulating a proposal for creating a new Jewish philanthropy news service -- Little Tin Box -- that would bring together the reporting of several media entities. The assumption is that readers (and business interests) would be better served if three or four reporters working independently for their respective publications found a way to coordinate their efforts to create a specialized brand featuring more reporting and new premium content.
The same goes for almost any area of coverage, from Israel to religion to Jewish arts and culture.
It is the premise behind the highly successful Web site Politico.com: that the secret to success in this new information world is to specialize, allowing yourself to do more, and to do it quicker and smarter than general interest publications with stretched budgets and stodgy ways of operating. And it is the premise that will allow established Jewish publications to reach and serve greater numbers of readers where they are, on the issues that matter most to them.
The way to get there is to work together.
(Idea #2 will be published at Jewcy.com on Tuesday Feb. 2. Visit 28days28ideas.com each day to see the latest ideas for transforming Jewish life.)
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Federations shift site of GA and talk about plans for recruitment
NEW YORK (JTA) -- Last year, the run-up to the annual conference of Jewish federations saw the federation’s umbrella body announce a name change and install a new CEO.
This year, months before the conference, the organization is making a late change to the conference’s venue -- to New Orleans from Orlando, Fla. -- and unveiling five new priority areas.
It’s all part of the ongoing struggle by the decade-old umbrella organization for federations -- now called the Jewish Federations of North America -- to prove its value to its 157 Jewish federations and, more specifically, to help the federations cope with the challenging philanthropic landscape brought on by the economic crisis.
The decision to move the 2010 General Assembly and the annual women’s philanthropy conference, the International Lions of Judah Conference, to New Orleans was due to practical considerations, federation officials said: Orlando simply didn’t have the necessary space.
“We needed to re-evaluate the venue," said Jerry Silverman, president and CEO of the Jewish Federations. "Unfortunately, the space in Orlando does not meet the needs that would best accommodate both events, and the alternatives in Orlando logistically would have compromised the momentum built from GA 2009.”
New Orleans, for which the federation system raised some $30 million in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, was an attractive substitute.
"In reviewing our options, it became clear that New Orleans was a community where we, as a Jewish community and family, could reflect on our collective responsibility and action together,” Silverman said.
Silverman addressed the other major change at the Jewish Federations -- the announcement of its new priority areas -- on a conference call Monday from Dallas, where the organization was holding its board meetings.
The five areas of focus that the organization hopes will guide the federation system into the future are financial resource development; positioning for the future; talent; the power of the collective; and Israel and overseas.
In harnessing the power of the collective, the federation system wants to figure out how to use the collective experience of its 157 member federations to do better fund-raising and programming, and share best practices and talent.
The focus areas have been developed over the past several months through discussions with dozens of local federations.
“We know we need to create a pipeline of talent both from within and outside of our federations,” said Kathy Manning, the Jewish Federations’ top lay leader. “We want to make sure we are creating a culture where federations become the place to be in the Jewish community.”
While the details have yet to be worked out, the umbrella body is considering creating a professional training program to help recruit talented recent college graduates into the federation system, Silverman said.
Silverman said he would like the program to be a collaboration of the entire system that could either funnel talent through the national office to local federations or cultivate talent on a local level.
“We have to flesh it out, put it to budget, size it and see how we can do it -- then pilot it,” he said. “We’re getting it ready for recruitment in the fall, when it is ready to rock ‘n' roll.”
The General Assembly also will take place in the fall, with slightly different dates than originally planned: The GA will be Nov. 7-9, and the Lions of Judah Conference will take place Nov. 8-10.
The concerns with the original venue, Walt Disney World’s Yacht and Beach Club Resort, centered on whether the resort could handle the GA’s dining needs and how much it would cost to shuttle conference participants from location to location at Disney World.
The CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Orlando, Hope Kramer, said she found out about the decision within the past two weeks. While her federation is missing out on an opportunity, she said, Kramer believes the umbrella group made a decision that it felt was best for the entire federation system.
Having the GA in town “does invigorate and engage those who have not been involved for a while or are tired or getting stressed. That is a great shot in the arm; that is what I will miss,” Kramer told JTA. “I am concerned about the way it came to me, but it was clear it was just the best decision for the federations.
“Disney can do a lot of things, but we are talking about 6,000 people,” she said. “These hotels get really booked around here.”
The federations had a contract with Disney, and the financial ramifications of canceling were not immediately clear.
“We feel we will be able to work though it with minimal liability,” Silverman said.
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Jewish Agency reconsidering North America strategy
A media advisory went out last week announcing that the CEO of the Jewish Agency for Israel North America, Maxyne Finkelstein, has told agency officials that she would leave her position when her current contract expires in July.
As the CEO of the agency's North American office, Finkelstein was in charge of North American fund raising, public relations and overseeing the 300 emissaries, or "shlichim," posted by the agency in North American Jewish communities.
Some Jewish Agency insiders are whispering that Finkelstein's decision to leave may not have been entirely her own, with all arrows pointing to this one coming from the agency's new top professional, Natan Sharansky.
There are plenty of ifs here to sort out, but if Sharansky indeed pushed out Finkelstein, it would be a fairly significant development.
That's because the North American branch, known as JAFINA, has its own board, which in theory has the authority to decide about Finkelstein's future (assuming there was one). JAFINA chairwoman Carole Solomon would not comment on whether her board was looped into this personnel move.
Whatever the real story, the decision appears to have little to do with Finkelstein's performance. Instead, it seems to be mainly about the agency's rethinking of JAFINA.
In recent years, JAFINA has taken on a more significant role as a fund-raiser, hiring five full-time and one part time professional "relationship managers" to make the case for the agency to local Jewish federations. In addition, it created a council of 50 lay leaders from local federations who were supposed to lobby for the agency to their peers.
The idea was for the agency to raise more money on its own from federations to become less dependent on seeing how much the system as a whole would annually kick in.
The relationship managers have brought in more than the $2 million annual cost of the program -- but not enough to meet expectations, said Jewish Agency officials.
The agency's chairman, Richard Pearlstone, said that even though the model pays for itself, it might need to be tweaked or perhaps scrapped.
"We need to find someone new and make sure the job description is right," he said. "If we have the wrong model, the model has to be changed."
One school of thought has Sharansky and those on the other side of the ocean wanting to put an Israeli in Finkelstein's position and returning to a model where the CEO of JAFINA would simply oversee the shlichim in the United States.
Such a move would not fly with many lay leaders on this side of the Atlantic.
"The only comment I will make is that I think [Finkelstein] did an excellent job both running the shlichim and running the North American operation for the Jewish Agency," Solomon said. "I don't think you have to be an Israeli to do it.
"But if the home office, so to speak, feels differently, that is their prerogative."
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Shas joins WZO: What does it mean for Jewish Agency?
Shas last week became the first fervently Orthodox, or haredi, group to join the World Zionist Organization. And thus far the Israeli media has focused on the positive, homing in on the idea that Shas -- an Israeli political party and religious movement with strong support among Moroccans and other Mizrahi Jews in Israel -- had to amend its own by-laws to incorporate the Jerusalem Covenant in order to join the international Zionist body founded by Theodor Herzl, according to Haaretz.
The covenant reaffirms the foundations of Zionism and the centrality of the State of Israel in the life of the Jewish people.
The move, however, could spell trouble for the Jewish Agency.
First, a refresher: The board of governors of the Jewish Agency is comprised of members of three constituents -- the Jewish Federations of North America and Keren Hayesod (the respective American and European fund-raising bodies that supply the agency with most of the money for its core budget), as well as the WZO, which founded the agency in prestate days, when it served as the de facto Jewish government in Palestine.
The federations have 30 percent of the votes on the agency's board, Keren Hayesod has 20 percent and the WZO has 50 percent.
The WZO's influence on the Jewish Agency has long been a sore spot for American donors, specifically because the WZO has been highly politicized.
It has been seen as an organization that serves as a landing spot for Israelis who are not elected to public office but are owed political favors -- a culture that was passed onto the Jewish Agency.
In recent years, however, Jewish Agency leaders have been working hard to separate their organization from the WZO's politics. The agency seemed to take a huge step last year when its leaders passed new governance laws that eliminated the by-law stating that the agency's head professional and the leader of the WZO had to be the same person.
In addition, the agency over the course of a few years was to cease its role as the WZO's primary funder.
These changes, of course, came with a price tag. The agency agreed to pay the WZO some $60 million in real estate and other assets.
Here's the issue: Now the WZO is essentially autonomous from the Jewish Agency, can choose its own leader and can bring whomever it wants to its own table -- but the WZO still holds 50 percent of the vote, wielding important influence on policy and budget decisions made by the Jewish Agency.
The WZO is made up of dozens of religious and political bodies, ranging from Hadassah to the American Zionist Movement to the Orthodox Union to the Reform movement.
While Shas seemingly has become more open to modern Zionist ideals, it certainly has not become more open to the pluralistic approach favored by many Diaspora Jews on issues like "Who is a Jew?" and conversion.
Introducing Shas into the WZO means that it will likely end up butting heads directly with those more to the left on the religious spectrum -- an eventuality it readily acknowledges.
"But the other school of thought holds that when Shas enters the WZO, it dilutes the influence of other movements, including Reform and Conservative," Shas executive director Yaacov Margi told The Jerusalem Post. "That was the approach that was adopted."
And when the WZO has to make a decision for the Jewish Agency as a 50-percent stakeholder, there could be a real mess.
For now, the agency's lay leaders in the United States are scratching their heads about what this might actually mean for the Jewish Agency.
"I can't answer because I don't know the answer," the agency's chairman, Richard Pearlstone, told me Thursday. "I don't want to speculate because that could only lead to trouble."
Others are more certain Shas' entrance into the WZO will create headaches.
"I am sure there are certain areas where our mission is compatible with theirs and other areas where it isn't," Carole Solomon, the former chairman of the Jewish Agency's board of governors, told me.
"I am not even saying I believe Shas is terrible entity; I don't. But it makes things much more complex," she said.
"Their social service programs, their identity and their traditional approach to identity in and of itself is not a negative thing at all. But I think it will be harder to come to decisions," given Shas' history of feuding with the Reform movement and others.
As it is, the Jewish Agency's board could spend hours upon hours trying to hammer out language regarding Jewish identity, Solomon said.
(And while we're on the topic: Will Shas forces try to stop Jewish Agency funding of projects backed by Reform and Conservative Jews, or vice versa?)
In the end, Solomon said, bringing Shas into the fold could end up dealing a real blow to attempts to de-politicize the Jewish Agency.
That said, Solomon added, having granted WZO leaders "their independence, we can't micromanage them. They have the ability and the independence now to affiliate themselves with anyone they wish."
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