Thousands of evangelical Christian donors now have a powerful seat at the table of the Jewish Agency for Israel, the vanguard of the Zionist movement.
The Jewish Agency announced last month it has forged a “strategic partnership” with the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, an organization that depends primarily on conservative Christian donors to raise tens of millions of dollars per year to help Israel and impoverished Jews in the diaspora.
Under the new deal, the fellowship will supply the Jewish Agency with $15 million annually for the next three years, with most of the money going for immigration and absorption programs.
In exchange, the fellowship’s founder and president, Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, will get a seat on the Jewish Agency’s executive committee, which until now has been restricted to leaders of the World Zionist Organization, the United Jewish Communities of North America and its affiliated network of local Jewish charitable federations, and Keren Hayesod, the organization that raises money for the Jewish Agency from Jewish communities outside the United States.
The fellowship has been sending money to the Jewish Agency for about a decade, and Eckstein served on the agency’s board of governors for seven years and has had observer status on the executive board for the past two. But now, as a voting member of the executive board, he holds a top leadership position.
Eckstein’s new position can be seen as part of a major ongoing historical shift for the Jewish Agency, an organization historically owned and run by Jews throughout the world. Starting in the early 1920s, it served as the internationally recognized representative of the Jewish people and the de facto Jewish government in pre-state Israel. After 1948 it became the jointly owned arm of Israel and diaspora Jews in promoting immigration to the Jewish state.
With the new arrangement, control and ownership of the organization is being shared to an unprecedented degree with representatives of non-Jews.
“The Jewish Agency is essentially saying that pro-Israel Christians are joining with the Jewish community worldwide in helping aliyah and in strengthening the security and welfare of the state of Israel. That has never happened before,” Eckstein said.
The Jewish community has been split over whether it should embrace support from evangelical Christians — the fear being that some might be motivated by the belief that Jesus will return once Jews move back to the Holy Land.
Fellowship spokesman Michael Stoltz described the relationship with UJC and the federations as “cordial.” But Eckstein said that at times he has felt somewhat ostracized by the Jewish community, particularly by the federation system and the UJC.
Still, Eckstein said, there has been a thaw in the relationship between the fellowship and the general Jewish community since the start of the second intifada in Israel. Getting onto the Jewish Agency executive board, he said, is a final sign of validation.
Eckstein and agency officials denied reports that the deal quickly would lead to Christians filling some of the agency’s key lay positions, though Eckstein said he might choose to tap some of his members for Jewish Agency positions in three years, when the fellowship reevaluates its relationship with the agency.
Agency officials rejected the notion that evangelicals would try to influence policy in an inappropriate way.
“This is a long relationship and has been a very positive one,” said Carole Solomon, the chairwoman of the Jewish Agency in North America. “We have never for one moment felt pressured to do anything that would run counter to our values or any of the Jewish people.”