Good Friday morning! 

The Jewish Federations of North America is allocating $1 million to a new Ukrainian Resettlement Grant Initiative, which will match the funding individual federations give to local Jewish Family Services agencies in support of refugee resettlement. The Shapiro Foundation and the Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Boston are lead funders for the initiative.

The matching grants are to help local JFS’ hire two staff positions: a Russian- and Ukrainian-speaking caseworker to work with families, and a volunteer coordinator to manage broader assistance to refugees with Jewish and interfaith partners. JFNA expects those roles to support welcome circles – groups of people privately sponsoring resettlement – but is flexible with how communities choose to use the funding.

“It’s based on…the unique goals of that community and the skills and expertise of the local agency,” Darcy Hirsh, managing director of public affairs at JFNA, told eJewishPhilanthropy. The funding “provides flexibility for the local community to support Ukrainians in the way that makes the most sense for them.”

Though colloquially referred to as refugees, most Ukrainians resettling in the U.S. don’t have that status under U.S. law. Refugee applications take years to approve, so to speed up the process of bringing Ukrainians to safety, they are in the U.S. as humanitarian parolees, which allows non-citizens to temporarily live here for “urgent humanitarian reasons.”

The parolee program trades speed for security. Ukrainians – much like Afghans airlifted to the U.S. in August 2021 when the Taliban took over Afghanistan – can only stay in the U.S. for two years; have no pathway to citizenship without congressional approval; and can’t access the established network of federal refugee resettlement aid.

As a result, “the responsibility is really falling on our local communities, nonprofits, [and] private citizens to step up and support [Ukrainians] that are coming,” Hirsh said. In helping Ukrainian parolees, the JFNA is applying lessons from a similar grant program for Afghan resettlement from earlier this year, where matching grants to 15 local federations helped resettle roughly 1,000 Afghans. 

Interfaith partnerships were essential to the resettlement, Hirsh said. Federations were able “to support synagogues, working with churches and mosques and other faith partners, to band together to provide a welcome circle…It’s those same partnerships that we’re leaning on to support Ukrainians as well.”

The grant program is revamping a long-dormant aspect of JFS’ work with private, rather than public, funding. Though historically JFS resettled Jewish refugees, many local agencies stopped resettlement efforts once the wave of Soviet Jewish immigration dwindled in the late 1990s. 

“Part of the issue with resettling those fleeing from the former Soviet Union was that as the numbers went down, the levels of government assistance went down,” Hirsh said. “So those agencies weren’t able to keep the same number of staff because there wasn’t that need. This program is quite different…from the get-go, the agencies are not receiving a lot of government funding, because it is a private sponsorship program.”

SECURITY BOOST

Senate Appropriations proposes $360 million for nonprofit security grants

Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

In another step forward for Jewish groups that have spent years pushing for increased funding for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program, Senate Democrats proposed providing $360 million for the program in their 2023 government funding bills released Thursday, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

Cautious optimism: This is the first time the leadership of the Senate Appropriations Committee has matched the long-standing funding request from Jewish groups and nonprofits for the grant program that provides funding for religious institutions and nonprofits to improve their security. The funding level is far from locked in at this stage — the bill must still pass the Senate Appropriations Committee and both the House and Senate must concur on the funding level in their final negotiated 2023 funding package.

Congressional priority: “Protecting our nonprofit community spaces, like our JCCs, synagogues, mosques, churches and more has unfortunately demanded more help at the federal level as the threats have increased,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said in a statement to JI. “I have continuously secured increases in funding for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program, including $250 million for the program this year… These funds are to help lessen the unease across [New York City] in the places where we worship, pray and learn.”

Help for survivors: Senate Democrats concurred with the House in proposing increasing funding for the Holocaust Survivor Assistance Program, to $10 million, up from $6 million the year prior. There has been a significant behind-the-scenes push for increased funding in both the House and Senate. The program provides support to aging Holocaust survivors and their families, as well as victims of other traumatic events.

Read the full story here.

PARSHA PHIL: MATOT

Trust, transparency and good intentions

Getty Images

“Every relationship is built upon trust. Between people. Between citizens and their leaders. Between communities and their institutions. Trust is what allows us to cooperate and collaborate. Yet it withers under the stress of our proclivity toward assuming malintent. Our texts provide an illustrative example,” writes Rabbi David Singer, in this week’s Parsha Phil column for eJewishPhilanthropy. 

A selfish request?: “The leaders of Gad and Reuben approach Moses with a striking request: ‘The land that the Lord has conquered for the community of Israel is cattle country, and your servants have cattle. It would be a favor to us… if this land were given to your servants as a holding; do not move us across the Jordan’ (Num. 32:4-5). Having spent 40 years preparing to enter the Promised Land, the tribes of Reuben and Gad are quite happy to stay put in Moab, where the land would benefit their livestock. Moses chastises the tribes for their request, and midrash reflects on this episode by maligning the two groups, castigating them as selfish and more concerned with their material wealth than the well-being of their fellow Israelites. The rabbis conclude, ‘they loved their possessions more than [human] souls’ (Bamidbar Rabbah 22). Ouch.”

Judgment without consideration: “Now, it is entirely fair to criticize Reuben and Gad’s desire to remain outside of the Land. Their decision seems to come in complete contrast to the essence of the Jewish People’s destiny and the work that the Israelites had endeavored since leaving Egypt. It suggests that they care more about their livelihood than the essence of the lives they would build. The optics are terrible. But the rush to conclusions about why Reuben and Gad were so interested in this option are problematic, as well. Without investigating Reuben and Gad’s motivations directly, judgments are unfair, premature and unwise.”

Read the full piece here.

CABIN FERVOR

The beauty of camp

Courtesy of Camp Hess Kramer

“Every opening day of camp, I cry. The moment the campers step off the buses and into camp is somewhat of a holy moment for me, and I find myself moved to tears,” writes Jen Shankman, director of Wilshire Boulevard Temple Camps, in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy.

Building relationships: “The beauty of camp is that, from year to year, it is different and beautiful in its own way. Why? Because each year, the members of our community change. And each member of our community contributes in a deep and meaningful way, just by being their authentic selves. My greatest honor today was watching our kids begin to build relationships with one another with open hearts and helping hands (and so much laughter). As they unpacked their suitcases, they worked together to set up their cabin environments.  As they ran around at evening programs, they participated in activities that would help their cabin build a foundation.”

Being intentional: “The mission of Wilshire Boulevard Temple Camps is to develop and deepen personal Jewish identities, to create sacred spaces and to enable all who come to experience community, growth, friendship and joy, and further their understanding of their place and purpose in the world. We further this mission by following our values: Fun, empathy, courage, community, pride, role modeling and curiosity. These core values hang in our teatron where we pray each night. There they hang to remind us to be intentional in our work, and to remind our campers of what defines and guides us as a camp.”

Read the full piece here.

Worthy Reads

Prophets of Profit: Billionaire philanthropists like Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are  approaching philanthropy with the lens of a 52-year-old theory from Milton Friedman that “argues that the primary social responsibility of any business is to make a profit,” Tima Bansal writes in Forbes. “These wealthy men are using their business investments to meet their personal goals, and they use their personal philanthropy to repair the business issues that their companies, in part, create. They, and their companies, are generating enormous wealth and wielding enormous power over every facet of human life. If they only act within the rules of the game set by government, and government is unable or unwilling to set rules that protect society, then they are generating wealth at the cost of society. If these billionaires do sincerely believe in society, it’s time for them to recognize the incredible impact that they have, not just in their personal philanthropy, but through the corporations they run. They can no longer hide behind Friedman’s antiquated doctrine. Mr. Buffett can lead the way in his remaining years by truly acting in a way that makes the world better for the 99%.” [Forbes]

Pic of the Day

Courtesy of World ORT

A group of students from ORT’s Jewish school in Chernivtsi, Ukraine, used the school’s 3D printers to design and produce tourniquets for victims in the  war with Russia. Their improvised bandages have already been used by civilians suffering from heavy bleeding.