Evangelicals' Rabbi Asks Why Gentiles Have To Keep FSU Jews Afloat While Israel Refuses To Pay

Evangelical donations keep Russia's Jewish community functioning as Israel and individual Jewish donors default on pledges and schools close.

Evangelicals’ rabbi wants to know why the Jews aren’t saving FSU Jewry
By Jacob Berkman · JTA

Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, the president of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, which raises about $100 million per year in small donations from evangelical Christians and gives the money to Jewish and Zionist causes, is miffed that the Jewish people are not coming up with more money to help Jews in the former Soviet Union.

He is miffed that the government of Israel is seemingly Welsching on several million dollars that it pledged to help the Heftsiba school system in the FSU.

Heftsiba, which was started as a covert operation run out of the office of Israel’s prime minister during the 1960s as a way to sneak Zionist education, Hebrew education and Jewish religious supplies to Soviet Jews, became its own school system after the fall of communism. It was run out of the Israeli Education Ministry for nearly 20 years before being handed off to the Jewish Agency for Israel about two years ago, according to Eckstein.

Last year the 26-school Heftsiba system looked like it was going to be a casualty of the economic downturn, the Madoff scandal and the Jewish Agency facing an $80 million budget cut. But then in February Eckstein’s IFCJ stepped in with emergency funding. 

Eckstien said that he would match up to $5 million in funding over the course of this year to keep the schools afloat, so long as other Jewish donors matched the funds. The Israeli government pledged to pitch in $1 million. Based on that pledge, the fellowship cut a $1 million check to Heftsiba.

According to Eckstein, Israel has yet to pay up, even though it said it would do so immediately.

“The bottom line is that the government said it would take care of Heftsiba, but it hasn’t even sent the money it owes from six months ago, and yesterday I get a letter from the school in Harkov, Ukraine, that they are closing their doors,” Eckstein told The Fundermentalist on Tuesday. “They never got the money from the government of Israel and have no reassurance they will be able to get funding in September, so there goes 125 Jewish kids in Harkov, who don’t have a Jewish future.”

Eckstein said that he has been pushing the government to come up with the money. But the responsibility for paying the $1 million is being passed from ministry to ministry, with no one wanting the money to come out of their own budget, Eckstein said.

He had a meeting with Knesset members on June 2 to press for the money. He was unable to get an answer, but was told that the Education Ministry will take over the Heftsiba system from the Jewish Agency next fall.

The Israeli government pledged to “give $1 million, and it hasn’t even done that yet, and they are going ahead and accepting commitments for next year before they have even honored their commitment from past six months,” Eckstien said, chiding the Israeli government. “Who is to believe them? I certainly don’t.”

The money to Heftsiba was part of an $12 million pledge that the fellowship made to save three Jewish school systems in the FSU, including $6 million to keep the Chabad school system running. The Chabad system was heavily financed by Lev Leviev, the diamond mogul who saw his stock plummet by 90 percent, losing him a half a billion dollars over the past year.

The fellowship also gave $1 million to the Shma Yisrael school system, which had been heavily financed by the Reichmann family of Canada.

While most charities are floundering, the fellowship is on pace to raise more money this year than it ever has. Last year the organization took in roughly $90 million; this year, Eckstein said, it is already 20 percent above pace. He project that the fellowship will end up raising between $110 million and $120 million in 2009.

But Eckstein wants to know why the Jewish community is not stepping up to offer more assistance to Jews in the former Soviet Union, after spending 20 years of helping to build a community there.

“The Jewish community can’t come up with $2 million for future of Jewish children?” he said.

Even taking into account the Madoff scam and the economic crisis, Eckstein said it was a "shonda" -- or shame -- "that world Jewry, can’t pay for the $2 million and it has to have Christians from California or from Florida pay.”

Comments

[ah-pee-chorus]

its very fortunate for israel that the christian fundamentalist delusion wants a strong jewish israel. these people give lots of money. yippee. i guess sometimes religion is a good thing.

[Meir]

Typical of the state of Israel. It likes to talk but not to pay. It is time that the state stands on its own and stops shnorring from diaspora Jews. If one WANTS ro be supportive, that is a worthy thing

[Dave Marshall]

APC, that's all very well, except the Christian Fundamentalists always have a hidden agenda.
Anyway, why should you care, since you do not believe in God at all. Why do you care if Israel remains Jewish?, since once again, you don't believe in God, or so you say.

[ah-pee-chorus]

Dave Marshall : i'm well aware of the chr. fund. agenda. fortunately their vision of what is to take place is as likely as moshiach, so i'm not too worried.
as i have stated before, i am a proud jew. i descended from the people of judea. and we, as jews, both need and deserve a place where we are in the majority if for no other reason than to ensure our safety from our many enemies. it gives us something to be proud of. these reasons in no way require a belief in god. if israels existence were at stake and there was anything i could do to help, i'd be on the next plane.
on a different level, can you understand a yankees fan wishing them to succeed even if he knows god doesnt care either way
?
and you make yourself look silly when you write "you don't believe in God, or so you say" as if holding that position can't exist if it differs from yours. do i question your claim to belief? while i may not agree with it i would never insinuate that it is not genuine. nor should you. i've read your posts and most are thoughtful. this one is beneath you.

[justayid]

"Typical of the state of Israel. It likes to talk but not to pay. It is time that the state stands on its own and stops shnorring from diaspora Jews. If one WANTS ro be supportive, that is a worthy thing"

er, the complaint is that Israel is not funiding education in the diaspora (in this case Russia). And of course the Jewish Agency HAS paid for these educational programs for years, but has recently cut back.

Times are tough all over.

[Reader]

The Jewish Agency ruined those schools when it took them over because it didn't want to fund religious education. Just like before the war they want the Eastern European Jews to die in the Diaspora, while bringing in much wealthier Jews from the Western countries (in conveniently much smaller numbers).

[Shmarya]

Actually, there is no proof for either of your accusations.

[Yoel Mechanic]

It's nice to have friends who help, and the agenda of Xtians is hardly hardly a hidden agenda, it is just that today they do their outreach by being nice rather than making overt sales pitches. In either case however, it is certainly their right to do outreach. However, I question the wisdom of using Xtian generosity as an example from which to tell Jews "Look at them... why don't you shape up"

[yirmiyahu]

It might interest some to know that the IFCJ is set up in such a way so that there is no "client contact" between the Christian donors and the Jewish recipients. The money comes into the IFCJ and it is then distributed by the IFCJ. If there are Christians who are giving money to the IFCJ for missionary purposes, then for them it is "arois gevarfene gelt".

[Dave Marshall]

APC, the reason why I said that is that as far as I am concerned personally, in my humble opinion, being Jewish is too difficult if one wants to be an atheist. Why bother being Jewish? You can easily assimilate. Just stop doing anything connected with Judaism. Eventually you'll just be part of the rest of the world.
I suspect that really you are disillusioned with the practitioners of Judaism, so you want to reject the religious aspect of the Jewish people. That's fair enough. However, quite frankly, without our religious teachings, we're a pretty mediocre bunch of people, culturally speaking- we're just a tiny and shrinking minority, some of whom were originally from eastern Europe, or the Middle East, or Ethiopia and a few other places. We're not exceptional. There are many overseas Chinese who are equally smart and equally rich, and there are other minorities around the world who are also equally intelligent and equally rich. Chinese traditional non-religous culture is far superior to secular Jewish culture.

[ah-pee-chorus]

Dave Marshall :

+++being Jewish is too difficult if one wants to be an atheist. Why bother being Jewish? You can easily assimilate. +++

thats like saying being black is too difficult if one wants to be gay.
in addition to being a religion, judaism is also a race. my race. and i love every part of it except for the god part. it is who i am and i would never want to hide it. i couldnt decide not to be jewish any more than one could decide not to be black. and hitler would have killed me too.
also, just as one doesnt choose to be gay (if u accept the scientific evidence as i do) i didn't "want" to be an atheist, it is simply the only rational result my brain offerred me given the evidence. that said, i want what is best for the jewish people and when i see the actions of many which i find repugnant who use judaism as the justification for said actions, it makes me sad and angry. i would love for judaism to more resemble secular jewish humanism.
and there was still no reason for you to have questioned the veracity of my position. i don't and wouldn't do it to you and my ethical values while self derived tell me you were wrong to do so.

[Proton Soup]

this is a surprise to me. i was always under the impression that money being solicited from christian evangelicals was for the purposes of relocating jews from russia to israel. this seems like more of an extravagance.

[Dave Marshall]

I sincerely apologize to you.

However, in your secular Jewish world, even though you are personally tolerant, there is no place for me. Since I am Sephardic, I am not of the majority secular Jewish culture, and therefore I can never play Jewish geography. Since I am not part of the Ashkenazi culture, as friendly as I may be, I will never be accepted. Even though you may accept me as being part of the Jewish race, believe me most other secular Jews will not and have not. I have personally experienced feelings of being irrelevant. I hope you have not had to go through that. So basically I am not part of the Jewish race, according to the cultural/ ethnic construct of the 80 percent of Jewish people who are Ashkenazi. I am basically irrelevant. (I am only less irrelevant now, because Sephardim are 50% of Israel's Jewish population- but that is purely political- nothing to do with culture/ ethnicity- I still haven't become Ashkenazi) Not only am I irrelevant/ a curiousity, what about people like Rabbi Natan Gamedze, a Swazi prince who converted to Judaism? What about Moshe Hattori, a Japanese guy who converted to Judaism? They aren't part of the 80 percent? What about them? Will they really be accepted, since after all, they don't know Yiddish, and they don't eat bagels and lox. You say, once one takes the religous aspect of Judaism out of the Jewish
Please understand, I am not Orthodox, although I currently attend an MO synagogue.

When one defines the Jewish people as having a religious aspect, then I am at least officially accepted as being Jewish, and since I happen to be descended from 5 Iraqi rabbis, I at least officially would have "yichus" in the MO world.

Apart from all that, I sincerely believe in God, although I do not believe in Torah mi'Sinai, I do believe that the Israelites prayed for guidance and God's response was to give them the Torah. Whether it took 40 years or 1 day for Moses to write it down is not important for me, I do believe it was divinely inspired.
Just as you are comfortable being atheist, and possibly wish everyone else would appreciate the intellectual strength of atheism, so I believe in God and wish every one else would believe in God, and am genuinely sorry that they do not.
I agree with an Orthodox rabbi who once said (unknowingly echoing something my Dad says)- God doesn't need us, we need God.

[Dave Marshall]

Sorry, I meant to say:
APC, I sincerely apologize to you.

[ah-pee-chorus]

dave: apology accepted. i dont run in secular jewish circles and have friends of many religions and varying levels of belief. i'm sorry for you that you feel like an outsider. i judge people as to whether they are good , not their education level,color, or beliefs. if i am correct then this life is all we have and i think many would benefit from this knowledge and have a happier existence making the most of it.
and i agree mostly with your rabbi, " God doesn't need us, we need God" which is why god didn't create man, man created god.

[Dave Marshall]

Thanks, APC.
Well, we can agree to disagree. I believe God created man.
Thanks for your support.

[Klass]

How sad that so many Jews ignore their own peoples' plight.

Then again the Likud and the American neoconservative movement have almost as much to blame for this.

The invasion of Iraq and the saber-rattling with Iran has only downgraded America, Israel's protector, in the world considerably.

Our image around the globe has been in freefall in the past few years.

While I didn't vote for him and I didn't necessarily directly support him, all I can say is thank Jesus Almighty Barack Obama is our president instead of those cultist kooks in the neocon-hijacked Republican party or that opportunist wacko Hillary.

I give money to the IFCJ because I am a German. While I was born in the 70s, my cousins(well, the cousins of my grandparents) committed heinous acts against God's people.

When I see these old Jewish people in the former Soviet Union who's family my people liquidated because of our insane leaders at the time, it makes me cringe and makes tears drip from my eyes.

Laugh if you want, in the ultimate form of irony, several yrs. ago the Israeli govt. pressured the German govt. to slow the immigration of Jews:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/20/world/europe/20iht-rhine.html

Israel trying to slow Jewish immigration to Germany? More Jews want to go to Germany than to Israel?

Maybe Bibi needs to stop saber-rattling and needs to focus more on bringing his people home where God wants them to be.

Israel continues to have my unquestionable support but the members of one Israeli political party need their priorities checked.(Likud)