|
|
November 12, 1999/3 Kislev 5760, Vol. 52, No.11
UJC to unveil game plan in Atlanta
Julia Goldman
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Mandy Patinkin ends his Yiddish version of "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" with an exhortation: "Play
Ball!" By the time the popular performer takes the stage on the last night of the United Jewish Communities'
General Assembly next week, the 3,200 delegates and 2,000 volunteers expected to gather in Atlanta for the event
should know the game plan for the new organization that aims to represent the domestic and international agendas
of some 200 Jewish communities in North America.
This year's G.A., as the general assembly is commonly known, will be the first official event for the United
Jewish Communities, which is being formed by the merger of the United Jewish Appeal, the Council of
Jewish Federations and the United Israel Appeal. The four-day event will also be the first test of the motivating
principle behind the merger: making local Jewish federations responsible for North America's most broad-based
Jewish fund-raising and social service organization.
Last year the UJC raised more than $760 million in its annual campaign, funds that were allocated to
local, national and overseas needs.
The G.A., which will officially begin Nov. 17, marks the first meetings of the committees and boards that
will govern the UJC, which was founded at a meeting of federation lay and professional leaders this spring after
six years of discussions and development.
"We will begin the decision-making process at the G.A.," said UJC President Stephen Solender, "But of
equal importance, we're going to begin the education process at the G.A."
During the next three to nine months, he said, the UJC will have to adopt its first budget,
approve recommendations regarding overseas disbursements and take up initial recommendations from the four
"pillar" committees charged with formulating the programmatic mission of the organization.
"Our objective is to prepare the federations so that over the next period of months they can make some
very important decisions that are going to define the immediate future of the UJC," said Solender, who took office
in October after six months as acting president.
Part of that preparation will come out of high-level briefings by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak;
Rabbi Michael Melchior, Israel's minister for Diaspora affairs; Dennis Ross, the U.S. government's special Middle
East coordinator; George Schultz, the former U.S. Secretary of State; Alice Shalvi, one of the foremost Israeli
feminists; and a host of Jewish thinkers, teachers and writers.
Vice President Al Gore, who had been invited to address the opening plenum, will not be attending
the convention, according to UJC officials. But G.A. participants, including approximately 300 Israelis, are
also expected to learn from each other in round table discussions and in open forums focused on the four
areas designated as pillars: Jewish renaissance and renewal, Israel and overseas concerns, human services and
social policy, and financial resource development.
Staff facilitators will communicate feedback from the discussions to the governing bodies that are charged
with running the new entity: the executive committee, the board of trustees, the delegate assembly and the four
pillar committees.
Since April, Solender said, the UJC, acting under an interim governance structure, has been
soliciting recommendations from federations for seats on the 550-plus-member delegate assembly and the pillar
committees. The thousands of federation responses were reviewed by the UJC's top lay leaders Charles
Bronfman, chairman of the board, and Joel Tauber, chairman of the executive committee and a nominating
committee, which made the appointments. The final appointments are meant to reflect the federations' actual
constituencies, with an eye to creating a balance in terms of gender, age, geography and federation size.
"We've been conscious all along that these people are the owners of this entity," Solender said.
The board of trustees will meet for the first time in Atlanta, and at least nine resolutions on issues
ranging from Middle East peace to U.S. health policy and Social Security will go before the full delegate
assembly. Solender said that the legal incorporation that will finalize the merger is expected to be approved by the
morning of Nov. 17, when the board of trustees meets.
In fact, the entire organization is still under development. Along with Solender, two other
professional executives, Louise Stoll and David Altshuler, were appointed last month, but they will not take office until
after the G.A.
Since the UJA and CJF first formed a working partnership in the spring of 1998, officials have said
repeatedly that the future of the organization could not be determined until the governing bodies and officers were in
place. Now, as Solender indicated, the UJC will have to start in on its work of setting a fund-raising and
programmatic agenda for North American Jewish communities.
Appointments to the pillar committees are expected to be announced at the G.A., but UJC officials do not
plan for the members to hold a formal meetings during the G.A.
"They're going to begin to pick up on the issues" identified this summer in reports by special task forces in
the four pillar areas, said Robert Hyman, the UJC's vice president for organizational development, who oversaw
the creation of the governing bodies. "That's work in progress."
It's expected that the executive committee "will actively manage the UJC on a month-to-month basis," said
Stephen Hoffman, the executive vice president of the Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland, who heads
the committee that drafted plans for the UJC's governance structure. "In terms
of lay leadership input that's new."
The committee's structure, Hoffman said,"reflects the notion of federation ownership" and will keep
the UJC's decision-making in a large arena.
"If anything, we've moved it into a situation in which people should be taking responsibility for the
outcome of these decisions, because they're participating" in shaping them, he said.
|
