Jerusalem
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An historic agreement appears to have ended the fierce feud
between two organisations promoting aliyah from the United States and
formally ended the dominant role played by the Jewish Agency for Israel.
The deal involves the Jewish Agency, the quasi-governmental
organisation that historically played an almost exclusive role in
promoting and facilitating immigrations to Israel from across the
globe, and Nefesh B'Nefesh, a relatively new nonprofit group that has
used cash incentives to help encourage 16,000 people to move to Israel
since 2002.
Both organisations announced that they had agreed to a "collaborative venture" to increase North American aliyah.
The
complete details of the deal have yet to be made public, but according
to officials with both groups, Nefesh B'Nefesh will take the lead on
marketing aliyah - a major departure from the era when the
Jewish Agency was essentially the face of aliyah. The Jewish Agency
will continue to oversee administrative dealings with the Israeli
government, including the task of handling the immigrants' paperwork.
Prospective
immigrants in the past had to fill out one application with the agency
and, if they hoped to receive grants from Nefesh B’Nefesh, an
additional form with that organisation. Now the process will be
streamlined to one application.
"We are not ceding responsibility
for aliyah to Nefesh B'Nefesh, we are entering into a collaborative
effort with them," said Shoel Silver, the chair of the Jewish Agency's
budget and finance committee.
Silver negotiated the deal with
officials from Nefesh B'Nefesh, the Jewish Agency and the Jewish
federation system, which provides funding to both organizations.
The
agreement ends a sparring match between the Jewish Agency and Nefesh
B'Nefesh that had existed since Nefesh B'Nefesh started to gain
traction several years ago, with a modern marketing scheme and
deep-pocketed financiers hoping to unseat the agency.
The feud
came to a head in the summer of 2007 when the two groups broke off a
long-standing arrangement under which the Jewish Agency would give
Nefesh $1,000 for each new immigrant the organization brought to Israel.
Nefesh
accused the agency of failing to live up to its financial commitments.
The agency claimed it had paid $1.2 million to $1.5 million in advance
to Nefesh for immigration targets, but wanted the money back because
the new group had failed to meet the prescribed goals.
During the
brouhaha, agency lay leaders went so far as to call into question
Nefesh B'Nefesh's nonprofit status and suggest that donors should be
wary of giving to the organisation.
Prior to the deal, Nefesh
B'Nefesh had been in discussions with the Israeli government in an
effort to secure permission to open its own portfolios for immigrants,
which would have allowed the organization to entirely circumvent the
Jewish Agency.
But this latest agreement ends the spat and Nefesh
B'Nefesh has dropped that pursuit, its chairman and co-founder Tony
Gelbart told JTA.
"This deal means that the Jewish Agency and
Nefesh B'Nefesh have decided that working together for the Jewish
people and for aliyah, and that having a working relationship and
partnership, is better than simply working alone," Gelbart said in a
telephone interview from Israel. "Whatever differences we had, we
decided we should put them aside to work for the original goal, which
is to increase aliyah.”
(c) JTA
