For immediate release: November 1, 2002.
For more information, contact Jeff Bendix at 216-368-6070 or jxb34@po.cwru.edu.

CLEVELAND—In November 2000, a representative of United Jewish Communities, the umbrella organization for Jewish community federations in North America, approached Art Naparstek, the Grace Longwell Coyle professor at CWRU's Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences, with an intriguing proposition: Would Naparstek like to work for a while at UJC, applying the community-building techniques he developed in Cleveland to Israel and Jewish communities in other countries?

With the encouragement of then-Mandel School dean Darlyne Bailey, Naparstek decided to take a two-year leave of absence to serve as a senior vice president at UJC, overseeing the Israel and overseas component of its activities. And while he couldn't know it at the time, his tenure was to coincide with traumatic periods in the histories of both the United States and Israel.

Now back teaching full time at the Mandel School, Naparstek recalls how he was persuaded to take the job.

"They said, 'Art, this is a chance to institutionalize your vision of community building that you developed in Cleveland and put it to work in Israel and Jewish communities around the world,'" he said.

Shortly before he started at UJC, Palestinians in Israel had taken to the streets in what has become known as the second intifada, or uprising.

"I immediately saw that the agenda I'd gone in with was no longer relevant to the situation Israel was facing," he said.

Instead, he decided to focus on three areas-strategies for informing potential donors about the true needs of Israel and other Jewish communities overseas, improving the effectiveness of fund raising campaigns on behalf of Israel and advocacy by rallying American support for Israel.

The need for improving fund raising campaigns was evidenced by a steady decline since the early 1990s in contributions committed to helping Israel and other Jewish communities overseas.

"We felt we had to create an information strategy that really provided the opportunity for people to understand how the money they donate was being spent," he said.

Naparstek created what came to be known as an "information-based" system for assessing the needs and program outcomes of overseas Jewish communities. To do so he drew on the experience he gained in the early 1990s as chairman of the Cleveland Foundation Commission on Poverty and developing community-building models for public housing projects around the country. He organized and led teams of lay persons and Jewish federation professionals to meet with Jewish communal leaders and professionals in Israel, Argentina, Russia and Ukraine.

"Ukraine was a good example of how we approached the process," Naparstek said. "Fifteen years ago there was no visible Jewish presence in Ukraine. Today there are thriving communities.

"How did that happen?" he continued. "To get a better understanding through multiple perspectives, I had team members meet with community and religious leaders there and other stakeholders in the community to find out how their needs were being met and what needs were not being met."

Out of that process the team was able to develop a prioritized list of the needs of Jews in the Ukraine that could be used for fund raising back in the United States and Canada.

"The whole process was developed around community building, working with the existing strengths of the community and then finding out what their unmet needs were," Naparstek said.

The second area he focused on was improving fund raising campaigns among Jewish communities in North America on behalf of Israel.

"None of us were happy with the way campaigns were being developed," Naparstek said. "When the intifada broke out two years ago, $100 million was raised for Israel, but much of it was designated by donors for specific things Israel didn't necessarily need, like ambulances. There was no sense of a collective will to address critical issues."

To remedy the situation Naparstek convened a meeting in April 2002 of representatives of the Israeli government and representatives, both Israeli and American, of major fund raising organizations.

"We sat in a room for a day and a half and decided how money raised on behalf of Israel was going to be used," he said.

They came up with a list of priorities that included helping Jews from Argentina emigrate to Israel, keeping Israeli children safe during summertime activities, supporting victims of terror, enhancing support for the general population of Israel, helping vulnerable populations such as the elderly and recent immigrants and educating the American public about the nature of the crisis facing Israel. Since that meeting, Naparstek notes, UJC has raised more than $200 million on behalf of Israel.

"Art built a new paradigm for relationships between the North American Jewish federations and Israel and other overseas Jewish communities," said Stephen Hoffman, president and chief executive officer of the UJC and former executive director of the Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland.

"Eighteen months ago there wasn't a sense in America that there was a real existential crisis going on in Israel. The attitude seemed to be, 'they're fighting, they've always been fighting, they'll continue fighting,'" Naparstek said. "But I saw this (the intifada), as did many other people, as different from anything that had happened since Israel was founded in 1948 and threatened the country in very significant ways by penetrating its sense of security. And I don't think our government, or even Jewish people in North America, had a sense of the severity of the crisis.

"I was going to Israel every couple of months from about December of 2000," he added. "When I first went over, the intifada had already started but people saw it as a short-term thing. When I returned in February there was a noticeable difference. And by April streets were deserted and the death rate on both sides was climbing."

In response, Naparstek persuaded UJC to begin organizing rallies in support of Israel. The first one was planned for September 23, 2001. A press conference to promote it was held September 10, featuring the governor of New York, New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, both of New York's U.S senators, and the author Elie Wiesel. The following day, Naparstek found himself in his office in Manhattan, watching in disbelief as the World Trade Center towers collapsed.

"The Islamic fundamentalists' attack on America made clear that all Western democracies were under attack, including Israel, which is the only Western-style democracy in the Middle East," Naparstek said, "because America has stood with Israel, and said in effect this is now a war between Islamic fundamentalists and the rest of the world."

The September 23 rally was cancelled, and Naparstek organized a satellite rally in March 2002 linking Israel with more than 100 North American Jewish communities. He also spearheaded the UJC's role in the Washington, D.C. rally on behalf of Israel in April, an event that drew 200,000 participants to the capital.

Throughout his tenure with UJC, Naparstek continued teaching classes in the Mandel School's weekend program, commuting from New York. He is, he said, glad to be able to focus his attention on teaching again, although he remains involved in domestic and international issues through the Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland.

"It was a terrific experience because it drew on so much of what I had done professionally up to that point," he said.

The three initiatives—in assessment, campaign and advocacy created new, transformative models of how Jewish philanthrop would work in Israel and Jewish communities around the world. These are models I can use in my teaching and which will be valuable to my students in the coming years."

–CWRU–

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