NEW YORK — Avraham Burg, the popular and charismatic Israeli politician, has hit the campaign trail.
He’s not running for political office in Israel yet, but personally fund-raising for the United Jewish Appeal in the United States, at a time when donors are bypassing traditional organization campaigns.
Burg chairs the Jewish Agency, UJA’s chief Israel recipient, and toured here to take the agency’s case directly to American Jews.
Sporting a classic dark suit and white shirt and escorted by the UJA honorary national chairman, Marvin Lender, Burg looks like he’d be at home on Wall Street, save for the purple-knitted kippah and Israeli accent.
The UJA, in concert with local federations, runs an annual fund-raising campaign of about $725 million. Federations decide how much to keep for local programs and give the rest to the UJA, mostly for Israel and overseas programs.
The Jewish Agency, best known for its preparation, transportation and resettlement of immigrants, is the primary recipient in Israel of this campaign money via the United Israel Appeal, the agency’s U.S. representative. The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee gets the bulk of the rest.
Burg’s trip reflects an unusual public display of unity by the UJA, local federations, the Jewish Agency and the UIA. It also shows a heightened awareness that a more creative strategy is needed for a cause that historically was an easy sell but has, recently, been beset by competition and flagging interest.
“I think this is the first time in many, many years that we have a road show like this,” Burg said in an interview at the UJA’s national office.
Richard Wexler, UJA national chairman, said Burg’s visit reflects a recognition that “what we have to do is raise money in every way we can, that the message of need is compelling and when a compelling person delivers it, people respond.”
Indeed, the 1997 campaign shows great promise overall, said Wexler, with double-digit increases in this season’s UJA big-gift campaign events.
He ascribed the trend to several factors, including stepped-up face-to-face solicitations of major donors; the application to the regular campaign of donations that in recent years went into Operation Exodus, the special drive for rescue and resettlement; and missions in the former Soviet Union and Israel.
Yet Burg’s trip comes in the midst of serious cuts in budget and personnel at the Jewish Agency, and comes after relatively flat annual campaigns here in recent years.
He concedes the re-trenchment has been painful. But he says he is promoting the collective Jewish humanitarian en-terprise represented by the establishment’s central campaign.
“God forbid if we should sanctify organizations,” he said. “The picture is bigger than the Jewish Agency or the federation or the UJA. The picture at the end of the day is the set of relationships” between the Jewish people and those groups’ commitments.
Burg faces an uphill battle. Federations say they are hard-pressed to maintain current levels of overseas allocations — down overall from 51 percent of the gross campaign 12 years ago to about 40 percent today — when their needs at home are so great.
Burg is careful not to sound competitive. But he insists that Israel remains a critical calling card for the campaign.
“Any community that will say `local needs only’ will [soon] find itself with such problems: It won’t be able to raise money for even the most immediate and basic local needs,” he said.
Cardin, UIA chair, said there is a “large sum of money going to Israel by donors in federated communities [who] are bypassing the system” in favor of specific projects and institutions.
The trend must be countered by sendng the message of the “centrality of the campaign as a community-building instrument,” she said.
This is clearly where Burg steps in. He does not contest that the campaign’s contribution to Israel, on its face, is relatively small, about $240 million, which goes to both the Jewish Agency and the JDC.
But he is blunt about the high stakes for Jewish peoplehood.
“People in Israel and here say we don’t need each other any more,” he said.
“But there is no possibility of any Jewish community” living alone, he added. “An isolated Jewish community is doomed to fail.”