Several small Jewish communities in Wisconsin belong to the Network of Independent Communities, a nationwide organization that helps them in efforts to support Israel and meet local needs.
The network operates under the aegis of the Jewish Federations of North America. This umbrella organization includes the 157 official Jewish federations nationwide — including the Milwaukee Jewish Federation and the Jewish Federation of Madison — and the approximately 360 small Jewish communities that comprise the NIC.
Each member community in the NIC numbers less than 2,000 Jews. Each is served by a regional director, whose assists it in achieving its goals.
“We’re very supportive of each independent community, and recognize that each is unique in its own way,” said Martin Greenberg, executive director of the NIC, in a telephone interview March 22. Important to recognize, however, is that “together, [these communities] are a powerful force for good,” he said.
Individual Jewish communities this small cannot afford the infrastructure and staff that characterize official Jewish federations around the country, Greenberg said. Therefore, these small communities have developed their own institutions — which they often call “federations.”
In 1993, Russell Robinson, then associate vice president for fundraising at the United Jewish Appeal, led the effort to create a network of these communities.
“He saw that there would be strength in numbers, if an infrastructure could be put together to help these communities” achieve their goals, Greenberg said.
This assessment has proved correct. Greenberg said that since 2004, the estimated 200,000 Jews in small communities nationwide have raised approximately $63 million for Jews overseas.
Based in Middleton
“I find that the smaller the community, the more intense is the feeling of personal responsibility for caring for other Jews and for the State of Israel,” said Rachel O. Alexander in a telephone interview March 7.
Alexander is the regional director since this past August of the NIC for the Midwest. She is based in Middleton in the Madison area.
She grew up in Providence, R.I., where she attended a Solomon Schecter Day School. She majored in Jewish studies and psychology at Brown University, during which time she spent a junior-year semester at The Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She has earned a master’s degree in public administration from Columbia University and studied for a year at a Conservative Movement yeshiva in Jerusalem.
Alexander worked for Jewish federations, another Solomon Schecter school, and Hillel International, before coming to Madison and the NIC.
Since she took her position, Alexander has visited or developed relationships with Jewish communities of Appleton, Beloit, Green Bay, Kenosha, La Crosse, Manitowoc, Oshkosh, Racine, and Wausau.
She said she is always struck by how Jews in these smaller communities stick together and share a sense of responsibility for each other. “This comes right from the Torah,” she said.
Manitowoc helps Ethiopians
“Our commitment to Israel started when Israel was born,” said Bess Schwartz, 85, in a telephone interview March 21, speaking as a member of the Manitowoc Jewish community for 65 years.
Schwartz said that providing charity to the needy (tzedekah in Hebrew) had been an important goal of the Manitowoc Jewish community since the founding of its only synagogue, Anshe Poale Zedek, in 1900.
“One of the first things the founders did was to form a tzedekah group, because helping the needy was so important to them,” she said. “Of course it’s harder now, because we were originally 100 families, and now we’re only 40 units — that’s both singles and families.”
Alexander said the Jewish community of Manitowoc is passionate about improving the life circumstances of Ethiopian-Israeli students who need additional educational support to help them make the transition from the rural/agricultural culture of Ethiopia to high-tech Israel.
Schwartz said this interest began with a visit three years ago after a visit from, and presentation by, the then NIC Midwest regional director, Sam Horowitz, accompanied by Jim Lodge, NIC executive director at the time.
“This intrigued me,” Schwartz continued, “and on the spot Jim put me on the phone with the project director in Israel [who was running the Ethiopian National Project Scholastic Assistance Program in Lod].”
Schwartz and her husband pledged two years of support for each of two eighth-grade students. The Manitowoc Jewish community pledged equal support for an additional two eighth-grade students.
The total contribution of $4,000 has provided these students supplementary educational support in which study plans are developed, attention is paid to personal development, and experiences in extra-curricular activities are provided.
The Ethiopian National Project is a unique partnership of the Ethiopian community itself with organizations that include JFNA, the Jewish Agency for Israel, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, Keren Hayesod, and Israel’s government.
The NIC also supports Ethiopian Jewry in Israel through the PACT (Parents and Children Together) early childhood development program in Lod; and the Community Garden in Lod, a project of the Network Women’s Philanthropy Initiative, that helps the immigrants grow produce native to Ethiopia and Israel.
More for overseas
Each community in the network decides for itself how the funds it raises are to be allocated, Greenberg said.
As an example, Alexander noted that the allocation committee for the Kenosha and Racine communities have designated 65 percent of their funds for programs in Israel that are largely administered by JDC and JAFI.
The remaining 35 percent, she said, is contributed locally, to programs and institutions such as MAZON (a Jewish response to hunger), the Milwaukee Jewish Home, Birthright Israel (providing free 10-day educational trips to Israel to young Jewish adults), and the Wisconsin Jewish Conference (a public policy watchdog on issues of importance to the state’s Jewish communities). Some funding is also allocated to support scholarships for summer camp.
In Manitowoc, Schwartz said, the funds not allocated to Israel “allow us to make small contributions to ADL (Anti-Defamation League), the Jewish Braille Society, Jewish camps (Interlaken and Ramah) in Wisconsin, the Milwaukee Jewish Day School and Hillel Academy (in Milwaukee).”
Asked why Manitowoc would be contributing to the far larger Jewish community of Milwaukee, Schwartz said, “Educating our children is our future.”
Greenberg said that compared with the larger Jewish communities, NIC communities tend to send a higher percentage of the funds they raise to Israel. The reason for this, he said, appears to be that the smaller communities do not have as much Jewish infrastructure to support.
In addition to the programs that support Ethiopian-Israelis, the NIC provides funding for “Amigour,” a program that provides housing for immigrants and senior citizens throughout Israel; “Atidim,” an educational program in science and technology for economically disadvantaged youth in Israel; “Lunch ‘n Learn,” a program that provides hot meals and additional hours of tutoring to disadvantaged children in Dimona, Israel; and “Hesed,” a welfare center in Tbilisi, Georgia (part of the former Soviet Union), to support elderly and frail Jews who still live there.
In addition to help with fundraising for these projects, the network provides member communities with assistance in engaging younger donors, as well as with planned giving and legacy gifts, Alexander said.
“One issue I have encountered is that the donors tend to be the older members of the community — people in their 70s and 80s who feel strongly that we must do whatever we can to support Israel,” she said.
“The younger ones, those in the 20s and 30s, tend to be less involved. Their affiliation rates are lower; they are less likely to have been to Israel; and they see Israel as wealthy and strong.” Consequently, fundraising among the younger group is more of a challenge, said Alexander.
Alexander also said that member communities in the network receive access to speakers through the JFNA Speakers’ Bureau in New York; leadership development through formal training, and assistance with transitions of officeholders into new positions; and assistance in joining missions to Israel.
Current issues of concern to the NIC are reported on in Network News, a JFNA publication available online at www.JewishFederations.org/Network.
Lynne Kleinman, Ph.D., is a retired teacher and journalist. She is currently working with a group developing "Jewish Neighbors in Wisconsin: A Web-based Curriculum," a project of the Wisconsin Society for Jewish Learning, Inc.
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