Argentina: A Success Story in Collective Responsibility

Dear Colleagues:

Ten years ago, the Jewish world was consumed with Argentina, watching with dismay as its once-vibrant Jewish community struggled under the weight of economic collapse. It was Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon who called on federations to respond in 2001. And respond we did. We pledged to make it possible for every Argentinean Jew who wanted to make aliyah to do so, to provide basic needs for the thousands who had lost jobs, and to support the Jewish community. Slowly but steadily, things got better. A community in crisis pulled through — and they never forgot who stood with them.

This week, I returned to Buenos Aires on a trip that provided vivid lessons in both global responsibility and interconnectedness. I had the opportunity to travel to Argentina because for the first time in decades, the Board of Governors of the Jewish Agency for Israel, chaired by Jim Tisch, met outside of Israel. Looking forward, the Jewish Agency is hoping that one of its three meetings each year will take place in diverse locations to enable board members to both experience the impact of the Jewish Agency throughout the world and to interact with Jewish leaders and communities that we don’t often encounter.

Back in 2001, when the Argentinean economy collapsed, emergency campaigns raised the funds to enable the Jewish Agency and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) to support aliyah, the Jewish educational system, and new centers for service that provided food, medicine, counseling, and scholarships. In New York, we took note and learned, and in 2008 some of these lessons inspired us to draw resources and agencies together in unique ways to create Connect to Care.

UJA-Federation of New York also took the lead a decade ago in creating BAMA, a central agency that provided essential support for challenged schools, youth groups, camps, and teachers. BAMA has evolved into a valued resource. In some ways, it served as the inspiration for our leadership to reinvent New York’s central education agency and create the Jewish Education Project, which was recently named by the prestigious Slingshot ’11–’12 as one of the 50 most innovative Jewish nonprofits in North America. It was also the sponsor of the fascinating Jewish futures conference at last week’s General Assembly.

Israel’s deputy prime minister, Dan Meridor, and Argentina’s foreign minister, Hector Timerman, both spoke eloquently at the opening dinner this week. However, for me, it was one of Buenos Aires’s leading Jewish philanthropists, Eduardo Elsztain, who said it most movingly: “We were broke 10 years ago, and the Jewish Agency and the Jewish people came through. While we can still improve, we are in much better shape.” He went on to say that the Argentinean Jewish community is now positioned to help others. In the former Soviet Union. In Ethiopia. Wherever there are Jews and Jewish communities in need.

We speak often about a Jewish people who share a mutual responsibility for one another. Returning to Buenos Aires with the Jewish Agency 10 years after my first visit during the crisis, we see yet again what those words really mean. It means taking responsibility for Jewish communities throughout the world — the men and women we don’t know, we don’t see, but who need us just the same. And learning from these experiences to strengthen our own communities. I only wish each of you were with me to take this all in and witness for yourselves the power and impact of Jewish collective responsibility.

Shabbat shalom.

John