Jewish Agency Clears the Way for Sharansky

Jacob Berkman
Jewish Telegraphic Agency

NEW YORK

Natan Sharansky

His nomination for the four-year term by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had sparked controversy as the Jewish Agency works to assert its independence from political influence.

Sharansky, a former prisoner of Zion back in the former Soviet Union, most recently served as chairman of the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem.

He was sentenced to 13 years imprisonment and hard labor in a Soviet prison in 1977 after he applied for an exit visa to Israel. After years of international pressure spearheaded by his wife, Avital, and the American Jewish community, including a massive rally in Washington, D.C., Sharansky was released in 1986 and went directly to Israel.

Sharansky founded the immigrant political party Yisrael B'Aliya in 1996 to accelerate the absorption of the massive numbers of Russian immigrants into Israeli society. Between 1996 and 2005, he served as a minister in successive governments.

The agency's board of governors elected Sharansky as chairman on June 25 at its annual meeting in Jerusalem.

In recent months, agency officials jockeying to assert the right to choose their own professional leader had expressed dismay that Netanyahu would impose a chairman on the agency.

But backers of Netanyahu and Sharansky in the Israeli government threatened that if the agency resisted appointing Sharansky as chairman, it could lose millions of dollars in government funding.

The agency, which receives $140 million to $180 million annually from the North American Jewish federation system, has an exclusive relationship with the Israeli government in some areas, such as immigrant absorption. Reform in the Works
For the past two years, agency leaders have been pushing to reform the organization through a series of sweeping changes directed at erecting some barriers between the main governing body and the World Zionist Organization -- a body in which Israeli politicians traditionally have wielded heavy influence, and which also makes up half of the agency's board of governors. The WZO has been a primary target of critics alleging cronyism.

Philanthropists have cited such problems as reasons for ending their support of the agency, and the allegations have provided an impetus for recent reform efforts at the agency.

"I believe the agency has radically transformed itself," said Steve Hoffman, an associate member of the agency's board of governors and president of the Jewish Federation of Cleveland.

"It is much more effective, financially responsible and a less political organization than it has ever been," he said, adding that some of the reforms were being addressed at the meetings in Jerusalem.

Prior to Sharansky's election, Richard Pearlstone, the agency's top lay leader, sent a letter to Netanyahu saying that Sharansky was a viable candidate, and the resistance toward him was a reflection only of the agency's campaign to govern itself, not any substantive objection toward Sharansky.