Self-organizing is a Jewish habit since before Christ was born. But it’s not just Jews: see here to see some of what non-Jewish Americans are organizing to donate in the way of money, carefully considered goods in kind, and equally carefully targetted boots on the ground.
[IsraelTimes] Jewish organizations donate millions in emergency funds to support Israelis affected by war.Ignoring inside baseball concerns about fundraising for domestic projects, here are the key facts:
Moving Traditions is a small Jewish organization with an unusual name and a mission that can be hard to describe on one foot. Working through synagogues, Hebrew schools and its own programs and curricula, it helps Jewish kids navigate their teen years in healthy, safe, appropriate and socially conscious ways.When the Hamas
...a regional Iranian catspaw,...attacks in Israel on October 7 threw the Jewish world into crisis, Moving Traditions created curricula to help teachers and teens talk about the conflict. And its CEO, Shuli Karkowsky, ordered up a "worst-case scenario" plan in case some of her reliable funders decided to hold back on their support and direct more money to Israel.
As they have during previous crises in Israel, American Jews are pouring dollars into Israel to support people displaced by the war, to bolster nonprofits whose employees are headed to the front and, in a newish twist, to defend both Israel in the court of public opinion and Jews abroad who are seeing an uptick in antisemitism.
War erupted after Hamas’s October 7 massacre, which saw some 3,000 gunnies burst across the border into Israel from the Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with an iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about
oppressionand
disproportionate response...
Strip, killing some 1,200 people and seizing some 230 hostages. The vast majority of those killed as button men seized border communities were civilians — including babies, children and the elderly.
Jewish Federations of North America has raised $638 million among its network of local Jewish community chests. UJA-Federation, the largest of these, has so far allocated more than $38 million for work on the ground in Israel. Israel Bonds said it sold more than $200 million worth of bonds in the week following the Hamas attacks.
That’s $838 million just in this paragraph. Organizations like Magen David Adom that accept donations directly wouldn’t be included in these numbers.
Past crises have shaped Jewish priorities for generations. In response to the Six-Day War in 1967, American Jews donated more than $100 million — close to $1 billion in today’s dollars — in a little over two weeks. Six years later, when the Yom Kippur War punctured Israel’s aura of invulnerability, American Jews contributed $700 million in emergency aid, or $6.4 billion in today’s money. Both wars also cemented Israel as a central component of American Jewish identity, politics and philanthropy.At the time, however, Israel was still viewed as a developing country, the historian Lila Corwin Berman points out. "For quite a while, Israel has been economically a fairly well-to-do nation and hasn’t needed American Jewish dollars in the same sort of fundamental way," said Corwin Berman, the chair of American Jewish History at Temple University.
Related from the New York Times on October 30th (paywalled): Israel’s Emergency Medical Service to Receive $88 Million in Gift Led by Michael Bloomberg: The former New York City mayor and billionaire philanthropist said he would match $44 million in donations from nearly 34,000 people.