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World Jewish News
Landver: Jewish Agency going bankrupt
24.06.2009
Minister of Immigrant Absorption Sofa Landver on Wednesday accused the Jewish Agency of "losing its way" and "going bankrupt" over its cutbacks in the former Soviet Union.
"The reduction in the spread of Aliya envoys, mainly in the former Soviet Union, could damage the legitimacy of making Aliya, the Zionist activities of the emissaries and the impartation of Jewish values and Israel's heritage in
the process of preparing for Aliya," Landver told the Jewish Agency's Board of Governors Wednesday morning.
According to the Absorption Ministry, the number of Aliya envoys has fallen from 52 to just 19 in recent years.
But the agency disputed this claim. "There were 52
emissaries ten years ago when there were tens of thousands of olim each year. The idea that we should have 52 now is ludicrous. Furthermore, we've replaced envoys [from Israel] with local coordinators, expanded internet resources on aliya and begun to use video-conferencing instead of traveling speakers," said an agency spokesman.
Asked if the latest cut from 19 envoys to 17 in the pas year, driven by a 10% cut in agency funds due to the global economic crisis, justified the accusation that the agency has "lost its way," Landver's advisor Alexei Lorentsson explained there was more to the issue than the financial
cutbacks.
"The agency is closing absorption centers without notice, abandoning our joint work in the [ministry's] Student Authority, and bringing in planes full of olim" - 5,000 over the summer - "without coordinating with the ministry," he said.
Furthermore, the cutbacks in the FSU were harming Aliya from the "best reservoir of olim," he said.
"Of the last 5,000 olim to come in the first few months of 2009, half were from the FSU. It's important to bring French and American olim, and others, but the largest strategic reservoir is the FSU. If Aliya ends from there, what's left?"
A senior agency official said the organization was "furious" at Landver's speech, calling it "populism at its finest."
"Of all the troubles facing the Jewish Agency - where we're going, what our purpose is, how we bring five million American Jews closer to Israel - Landver believes the FSU cutbacks are the great 'bankruptcy' of the agency?
She is being incredibly shallow and showing that her ministry is completely obsessed with the FSU, as we feared it would be."
An agency spokesman said the organization "welcomed Landver's call to increase funding to agency programs that have been cut." But he rejected the accusation that the agency had "lost its way."
"There's a financial reality that is forcing us to become efficient. When we had a huge workforce [in the FSU], everyone said we were bloated. Now that we've scaled back to a more efficient, Internet-based operation, they say we're cutting back on Zionism and hurting Israel," said Alex Selsky, spokesman to the Russian-language press.
"The agency is going through a process to make it more efficient. Everybody knows that. The donations are dropping. Everybody knows that. But we're developing other tools to replace the emissaries, like the [online] Global Center, which allows any Jew in the world, even in Kamchatka, to begin an Aliya process, to send documents and interact with the agency."
Immigration Absorption Minister Sofa Landver on Wednesday lashed out at the Jewish Agency cutbacks, saying that the organization had lost control and claiming that it was going bankrupt.
Speaking to members of the Jewish Agency's board of governors, Landver said the agency had "carried out unilateral measures whose only purpose was cheap popularity."
"Recently, it has occurred to us in the Immigration Absorption Ministry that the Jewish Agency is violating signed agreements with the state of Israel, is blurring boundaries, and is coarsely breaching and crushing understandings and arrangements that were made dozens of years ago," said the minister.
She accused the Jewish Agency of "emptying the system of preparing new immigrants of its contents," citing the drastic drop in the number of emissaries in the former Soviet Union.
"Who will now give Hebrew lessons? Who will teach about the Jewish people's history?" she asked rhetorically. "How will we reach our immigration potential?"
"I'm warning you, the situation is taking us down a slippery slope," continued Landver. "The Jewish Agency has lost its way and is going bankrupt."
By HAVIV RETTIG GUR
Источник: JPost.com
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