United Jewish Appeal - excerpt from Lee O'Brien, American Jewish Organizations and Israel, 1986;

This page is an extract, reproduced with permission, from Lee O'Brien, American Jewish Organizations and Israel, Washington DC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1986.

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• Year established: 1939
• President: Stanley B. Horowitz
• National Chairman: Alexander Grass
• Executive Vice-Chairman: Irving Bernstein
• 1985 General Chairman of the UJA-Federation Campaign: Ivan Boesky
• Address: 1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104

General Background

Since its inception in 1939, the UJA has been the principal American Jewish fundraising organization in the United States. The UJA is registered with the IRS as ‘a not-for-profit corporation organized to serve as the joint fundraising organization for its two corporate members, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and the United Israel Appeal.’ It is a tax-exempt organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code; contributors can deduct their UJA contributions from their taxable income. The UJA's counterpart for fundraising in other countries is Keren Hayesod.

The source of the UJA's funds is its allotment from the annual UJA-Federation central campaign; since about 80 percent of the UJA's annual revenue is channeled to Israel, support for Jewish life there is obviously paramount on its agenda. The fundraising campaign has been community-based from the outset, with the local federations doing the actual fundraising and the UJA national organization presenting the Israel-related issues. Concessions between the two are hammered out before the campaign starts (‘pre-campaign budgeting’) and again after it is over (‘post-campaign allocating’). M.L. Raphael, in his Understanding American Jewish Philanthropy, asserts that ‘there is perhaps no single area as important in the campaign as that of ranking priorities and allocating funds among these priorities.’

Usually communities adhere to the guidelines supplied by the CJF and UJA; in fact, the major direction comes from the Jewish Agency, which indicates what percentage or dollar amount it anticipates from the United States for that year. Generally, the guidelines give the UJA the greatest share of the regular campaign, along with all the funds collected from special appeals, such as the Israel Emergency Fund instituted after the 1967 war. Of the total community funds raised as part of the regular campaigns since World War II, UJA has received about 60 percent: 47 percent from 1939 to 1944; 72 percent from 1945 to 1948; 55 percent from 1948 to 1966; and 67 percent from 1967 to 1978.

Once its share is determined and allocated, the UJA hands over about 80 percent of that amount to the UIA, which, in turn, moves that money (in the same building) to the JA for allocation to Israel. Of the remaining part of UJA's share, 10 to 12 percent is allocated to the JDC, and about 3 percent to the New York Association for New Americans(NYANA) and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society(HIAS). Of the allocations that it receives from the UJA, the JDC spends about 32 percent in Israel. On the average, therefore, about half of the total funds raised by the UJA Federation central campaign goes to Israel. The other half of the money raised is distributed primarily for the support of Jewish community needs in the United States through community-based projects and major community organizations, which receive a certain annual budget. Some of the money is allocated to support Jewish communities in other parts of the world through the JDC. (See the chart below.)

UJA/FEDERATION COMMUNITY CAMPAIGN FUNDS

United HIAS Service Jewish immigrants in countries other than Israel

American Joint New York United Distribution Committee & Association Israel Organization for New Americans Appeal Rehabilitation Greater New York through Training area International, including Israel

Local Services/CJF United Jewish Appeal Jewish Agency for Israel Immigration and Absorption Services

Who Gives to UJA?

As the UJA's 1981 annual report states: ‘From its inception through December 31, 1980, UJA received $5.1 billion as its share of community campaigns, expended $218 million for its national operations, and distributed $4.9 billion to its beneficiary organizations.’ These are impressive sums; Jews comprise only 3 percent of the total U.S. population, yet the UJA's budget is one-third that of United Way, In 1980, the UJA-Federation central campaign, raised $508 million; the UJA's allotment came to $307 million, or 60 percent, from which $261 million went to the UIA and on to Israel. Since then, the central campaign has continued to raise over one half billion dollars annually, with steady increases each year. The goal for 1983 was a 40 percent increase over the 1982 total of $567 million. Because a large proportion of the money raised is in the form of large gifts, the UJA operates on an overhead of about 4.5 percent.

About 44 percent of total campaign funds comes from contributions of between $10,000 and $500,000. In the 1973 UJA-Federation campaign, four families in New York each contributed $5 million. Eighteen percent of UJA donors contribute 80 percent of the total funds. In 1979, there were 649 donors in the $50,000 to $100,000 category, and in 1980, over 700; the 1981 UJA annual report announced the decision to ‘upgrade’ these donations by a minimum of 25 percent. In the same time period, more than 800 people made contributions of $100,000 and over. Observers estimate that about 50 percent of American Jews donate to the UJA, although the range differs from one Jewish community to the next. Wolf Blitzer, the Washington correspondent of the Jerusalem Post, recently wrote that

‘Only around 10 percent of 500,000 Jews in the Los Angeles area give to the local federation. . .. In the smaller communities, the percentages increase.... In the approximately 12,000 member Jewish community of Columbus, Ohio, ... some 60 or 70 percent give to the local federation.... In the tiny Jewish communities scattered around southern Illinois, the local federation reaches out to around 90 percent of the Jews.‘

In 1983, UJA received more than $1,000 through one New York taxi driver, Leo Edelstein, who has driven a cab for twenty-five of his sixty-eight years. He told this story

The other day, a man asked how much for an hour's ride. "Twenty dollars," I said. After two and a half hours, the man prepared to pay. "It's $50," I said, "but how would you like to write a check to UJA for a little more?" The man wrote a $100 check and he wasn't even Jewish, he was Irish. The passenger said he was in a high tax bracket. How do I know? Who cares? UJA got $100. That I know.

Role: The Politics of Fundraising

The UJA's primary and explicit function is fundraising; The American Jewish Year book describes the UJA as an organization that ‘channels funds for overseas humanitarian aid, supporting immigration and settlement in Israel, rehabilitation and relief in 30 nations, and refugee assistance in [the] U.S. through the Joint Distribution Committee, United Israel Appeal, United HIAS Service, and New York Association for New Americans.’

According to the Wall Street Journal, UJA's Israelbound funds are ‘providing a major portion of that country's special welfare budget.’ However, the methods, results, and impact of UJA's fundraising have always been closely intertwined with political developments in Israel and among American Jews.

The peak of UJA's fundraising activities was reached during the 1974 Yom Kippur War Campaign, which raised $660 million. More than half the donations in that year came from contributions of $10,000 and over. By 1979, the UJA-Federation campaign had experienced a decline of 27 percent in the amount raised; UJA officials explain this trend in terms of the changing demography of the Jewish population in the United States, rather than as a result of popular misgivings toward the UJA. In any case, it is evident that Israel's involvement in wars, regardless of the outcome of the conflict, affects to a large degree the level of money raised.

In 1948, for example, when the newly-established Israel was at war with Arab countries, an unprecedented $200 million was raised; however, the 1951-1955 central campaigns averaged only $115 million a year, and the percentage allocated to domestic community needs increased. This decline may be attributed to two main factors: first, once Israel was actually established and the 1948 war threat had passed, American Jews turned more to their own communal needs; and second, most European Jews had already been resettled in Israel, and the priority of the Israeli government was funding aliyah from Arab countries. As Abraham J. Karp noted in his history of the UJA

‘The needs of the Jews in Moslem lands were not as dramatic as those of the postwar refugees in Europe. Their need to emigrate did not seem quite so urgent. American Jewry, almost wholly of European origin, could identify more with the plight of European Jews.’

The galvanizing effects of the 1967 and 1977 wars were also clearly reflected by the fundraising figures. The 1967-1978 central campaigns raised more than $4.7 billion, of which the UJA's allocation was about $3.2 billion, approximately 67 percent of the tota1.

In addition to raising funds, UJA's promotional campaigns perform an important public relations function that touches hundreds of Jewish communities throughout the United States. These events are well publicized in strictly humanitarian terms of meeting social needs within Israel. ‘The yearly UJA-Federation Appeal’, as one observer put it, ‘is perceived by its American Jewish donors as a way to contribute money to Israel. In fact, UJA promotes itself as an Israel-related organization.’ Through the annual fundraising process, the VJA fosters a positive climate for specific Israeli needs, and also strengthens the emotional bonds between Israel and American Jews. The UJA's most well known slogan-‘We Are One’-expresses the ideological basis of pro-Israelism and urges Jews to reaffirm their solidarity by the act of giving. In an instruction booklet for solicitors, the UJA put it this way

When you ask for a gift you're talking about the most important needs affecting our Jewish people in Israel, at home and in other lands. At the same time you are giving your prospect the opportunity to express his Jewish identification in a way that counts ... Do make your listener feel that giving is not charity but self taxation- paying his or her fair share to assure Jewish survival and continuity and to preserve the quality of Jewish life everywhere.

In the UJA's 1983 promotional literature, potential donors were urged to ‘share the vision, give to life,’ by supporting programs for children from single parent families, for senior citizens in American Jewish communities, for ‘purchase of specialized farm equipment for one family on a new border moshav’ in Israel, for a Jewish day school in North Africa or a Jewish home for the aged in Eastern Europe. Beyond the image of comprehensive concern for the Jews of the world, contributing to the UJA specifically serves to reinforce psychological support for the state of Israel as a haven for the homeless in a hostile world.

In the view of Irving Bernstein, the UJA's executive vice-chairman, ‘in many American communities the UJA has become a surrogate synagogue. For the secular and assimilated Jews of America, the UJA Campaign provides the sole link between the Jews and the spirituality and centrality of Israel.’ How this link is interpreted, however, is determined by events in Israel, the region, and internationally. In the fall of 1976, responding to the 1975 UN resolution on Zionism and racism, the UJA organized an event called ‘This Year in Jerusalem,’ during which a flotilla of jets ‘carrying three thousand Jewish men and women from hundreds of communities of all sizes in all fifty states’ flew to Israel. More than any other activity, observed one sympathetic writer, this event ‘underlined the power of Israel in the life of American Jewish communities, exposed the emotional heart of their essentially Israel-oriented campaigns and highlighted the UJA's role as a catalyst in providing the means for effective community expression of oneness with Israel's people.’

In 1978, the UJA launched Project Renewal -a sweeping rehabilitation program for Israel's impoverished Jewish immigrant neighborhoods. The program has achieved a departmental status in the JA, and the UJA has established a National Project Renewal Committee for it. Through the UJA, U.S. donors have pledged more than $100 million to Project Renewal since it was inaugurated. When Robert Loup visited Israel upon his election as UJA's national chairman following the Camp David Accords, he denied that peace with Egypt constituted a potential problem for UJA's fundraising efforts. Citing Project Renewal in particular, he emphasized that ‘United States Jewry has got to understand that our partnership, through the UJA, is not based on war or peace-but on a desire to enhance the quality of Jewish life, both in Israel and the U.S.’ Thus, Project Renewal is becoming increasingly focal in UJA campaigning. It represents, he said, ‘the opportunity for our generation, for those who were not able to contribute towards Israel's birth, to be part of Israel's rebirth.’

The UJA, Loup maintained, is interested in ‘raising Jews through education as much as in raising money.’ Or, as longtime UJA leader Irving Bernstein once put it, ‘At one time we used the campaign to raise money. Now we use the campaign to raise Jews.’

Structure

Based on its bylaws (as amended in 1980), the UJA corporation is composed of the two members on whose behalf it raises funds, and the UIA. The UJA is governed by a forty-three member board of trustees, twelve of whom are selected by the JDC, twelve by the UIA, seven by the CJF, seven by the national campaign officers, the president of the board, the national chair, and the last three living past presidents of the UJA. In addition to a standing executive committee, management policy and operations committee, and transactions committee, the board is empowered to create any number of additional committees it deems necessary; in the past these have included committees for budget and finance, audit, assets realization, legacies, and CJF/UJA liaison.

The entire UJA bureaucracy, with its numerous divisions and committees, is structured around the fundraising process. The most power rests with the officers of the national campaign, headed by the national chair, the executive vice-chair (who is ‘the principal professional manager of the Annual Campaign’), and a number of associate and assistant executive vice-chairs, as deemed necessary.

The UJA's fundraising effectiveness is derived from its ability to mobilize hundreds of local Jewish communities in coordination with the local federations. Regional operations come under the direction of one vice-chair. On the local level, 200 front-line professional staff members administer eight regions, including 210 federated and 455 non-federated communities throughout the United States.

To enhance its ability to raise funds from specialized sectors of the Jewish population, the UJA has created six organizational components: the Women's Division, the Young Leadership Cabinet, the Young Women's Leadership Cabinet, the Rabbinic Cabinet, the Faculty Cabinet, and the University Programs Department. For each major division, headed by a chairperson and a director, there is a nationally distributed newsletter that serves to connect the members and keep them abreast of relevant developments in the United States and Israel.

UJA's National Women's Division, established in 1946, is the oldest of the major organizational components, and at present, about 200,000 women in 335 communities are said to participate actively. The Women's Division issues a News Update for campaign chairs, speakers, and national board members, and also provides fundraising suggestions and instructions for their implementation. A divisional speakers' bureau sends women to some two hundred major annual events throughout the United States. Funds collected are allocated for such Israel-based projects as the absorption of Jewish immigrants, the building of nursery schools and libraries, the expansion of vocational training programs, and the improvement of housing.

The Young Leadership Cabinet, established in 1977, is ‘committed to the creative survival of Jews, Judaism and Israel through dialogues with leading scholars and writers, and through peer exchanges at retreats, conferences, missions to Israel and special programs.’ Annual leadership conferences in March of each year bring Jewish teenagers together for what is described as Jewish consciousness-building and a ‘return to the days of the old.’ A recent profile of the 1980 UJA Young Leadership Cabinet described ‘a cadre of well-educated, upwardly mobile, communally active young Jewish men who ... share an intense commitment to Jewish survival, security and well-being and who identify strongly with the Jewish people and its religious and cultural traditions.’

The Rabbinic Cabinet was established in 1972 ‘to promote rabbinic leadership support for local and national UJA campaigns through education and personal commitment; to make use of rabbinic resources on behalf of UJA and Israel.’ The Faculty Cabinet, established in 1975, serves a parallel function for the campus, while UJA's other campus division, the University Programs Department, established in 1970, is intended ‘to crystallize Jewish commitment on the campus through an educational fundraising campaign involving various programs, leadership training, and opportunities for participation in community functions.’

In addition to these basic structural components, the UJA maintains a separate public information section that includes a speakers' bureau, a public relations department, a creative and educational programs department, and a research department.

Fundraising Programs

The UJA apparatus includes numerous programs and committees that sponsor national fundraising events and overseas missions, devise programs to target particular donation categories, provide solicitor training, and organize special or emergency appeals. While these programs are generally ongoing, they are not all employed in each annual campaign.

Since the 1981 campaign, increased executive attention has been given to the Major Gifts Program (donations of $10,000 and over). Three national committees have been set up, targeting contributions of $100,000 and over, $50,000 to $100,000, and $10,000 to $50,000. The $10,000 to $50,000 committee sponsors "missions" to Washington, where its contributors meet with high government officials. In 1980, 165 participants in this one-day ‘mission’ met with Vice President George Bush and attended a reception with thirty-five senators. For its part, the $100,000-minimum committee (called the hineni committee, from the Hebrew ‘here I am’) attracts new donations through even more elaborate events, such as the 1981 ‘Prime Minister's Mission’-a guided tour to Israel that featured a meeting with the prime minister-and the International Leadership Meeting, reserved for contributors of $250,000 or more. The Major Gifts Program gets further support from Operation Breakthrough, a program that includes solicitor training in individual communities and leadership training sessions, long-range community consultation projects, training missions conducted in cooperation with the Overseas Programs Department, and direct solicitation.

Contributions of $10,000 and under fall into UJA's Intermediate and Small Gifts Program, which is subdivided into three categories-$l,OOO to $10,000, under $1,000, and a New Gifts Program. Operation Upgrade solicits donors of $1,000 to $10,000 through close community work. Intensive training seminars, involving the top leadership, are aimed at new solicitors as well as experienced ones. Individuals contributing $1,000 and less are targeted through the Department of Special Appeals, which uses mass campaign programs such as the National Super Sunday, the National Walk-A-Thon, and direct mail solicitation. The Department of Special Appeals also offers training in appointment making and telephone techniques.

The New Gifts Program was established in 1980 as a pragmatic response to critical issues affecting campaigns in the '80s, including the potential for growth in campaigns among non-givers, shifts in the distribution of the American Jewish population towards Sunbelt communities, and significant changes in the social, marital, professional and religious characteristics of American Jews in the 25-40 age group.

Among the tools this program has developed to identify and solicit new contributors are the Standard Jewish Demographic Kit, designed to help communities in campaign planning, and the ‘Jewish Families on the Move’ demonstration project, intended to provide a national system to track down the 500,000 Jewish households that change residence each year.

In 1981, some 5,500 people from 340 Jewish communities in all 50 states participated in UJA-sponsored missions to Israel. The emotional impact of such missions greatly increases contributions and activism. After a previously uninvolved New York businessman, Don Gould, attended a six-day Men's Mini-Mission to Israel in 1968, his contributions to UJA went up 1,000 percent, and by 1973 he was chairman of UJA's National Young Leadership Conference. Similarly, a Washington, D.C. investment banker who went on a one-week ‘discovery mission’ to Israel in 1980 increased his annual donation from one thousand to twenty-one thousand dollars a year. He has also been instrumental in soliciting twenty-five additional donations a year, ranging from five hundred to twenty-five thousand dollars.

The first UJA Winter President's Mission raised almost $3.3 million for the 1982 campaign. One hundred thirty-three participants from thirty-six communities throughout the United States spent five days in Israel and increased their total contributions at the end of the event by 33 percent over 1981. Their program included an opening dinner where they met with ‘46 new immigrants from threatened Jewish communities throughout the world and heard moving stories of their lives and experiences.’ They visited ‘settlements in the Negev, where Sinai farming families are being relocated by the Jewish Agency,’ and received ‘a special background briefing in Ariel, a settlement on the West Bank,’ by defense minister Ariel Sharon. They also toured Project Renewal neighborhoods and visited homes of ‘prominent Israelis,’ such as Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kollek and members of the Knesset. The mission culminated in a visit with the president of Israe1.

Process: The Annual Campaign

The UJA-Federation fundraising process has become fairly established, with tested techniques and a fixed annual schedule. The main components are: missions of selected contributors to Israel and Washington, Super Sunday telethons, regional major gifts meetings, kick-off ‘pace-setter’luncheons and banquets, and specific divisional activities.

The private phase of the campaign starts with closed-door consultations between representatives of the Jewish community in the United States and JA officials. During these meetings, the JA presents its needs for the following calendar year, and concessions and compromises are worked out between the local needs of the Jewish community and the Israel-based needs of the JA. Once an acceptable formula is reached, a tentative plan for raising the necessary funds is developed by the national chair and the executive vice-chair. These officers are in charge of the important Long Range Planning Committee, the main function of which is to develop an annual profile of existing and potential contributors; in this task they are assisted by the advisory National Leadership Campaign Policy Board and the marketing research firm of Yankelovich, Skelly, and White. Once the profile is prepared, usually by July, executive-level briefings are conducted in the company of key community leaders, in order to explore the ways in which the UJA can be most effective in the overall operation of the annual campaign. The plan is then presented to the National Leadership Conference.

In the first half of the year, fundraising drives open in all eight national regions. Many Israeli officials and top personalities crisscross the country on behalf of the UJA while lining up meetings with key U.S. congressional, executive, and foreign policy decision-makers. The full year of luncheons, banquets, telephoning, direct mail, missions, and face-to-face solicitation culminates in a closed-door pledge banquet in December.

The UJA accelerates its fundraising during the religious holidays. These periods mark a renewal of communal contacts, which become opportunities for the reaffirmation of Jewish identity via participation in the efforts of the UJA. The holidays also create a time for positive news, which indirectly aids the work of the UJA as well. During the 1981 Passover season, for example, President Reagan issued a message and later proclaimed the week of May 10 as Jewish Heritage Week. The public, mass-appeal phase of the national campaign opens later, in January or February, with the Super Sunday volunteer telethon.

Indifferent Jewish communities across the United States, thousands of volunteers staff the phones at UJA-Federation offices and solicit pledges from prospective donors. In greater New York and Manhattan, 2230 volunteers calling on one Sunday in February 1982 secured pledges of over $2 million. In eastern Long Island, during the same period, 250 volunteers obtained pledges totaling $271,000. In the Washington, D.C. area, in late January 1983, 1500 volunteers called 50,000 of the city's 180,000 Jews; by 9:00 p.m. they had reached their goal of $1.7 million. Super Sunday '82 raised a total of $25,260,091 through volunteer telethons involving 26,114 volunteers in 102 communities. The 1981 Super Sunday had raised $19.1 million.

Gearing up for and carrying out the annual campaign involve the active participation of the entire UJA-CJF network. Volunteers in local federations are encouraged to study Dun and Bradstreet, deed transfers, and corporate proxies in order to identify and estimate the net worth of wealthy Jews in their communities. These contacts are then encouraged to ‘discuss what they know about the finances of neighbors, friends and colleagues. A physician who gives might be expected to help assess the finances of other physicians.’

Personal solicitation is one of the major techniques used in UJA fundraising. The communal fundraising network is further reinforced through a publication called the Book of Life, containing the names and addresses of individual contributors and the amounts donated. The book is circulated among members of the Jewish community. A fundraising technique known as ‘card calling’ involves a roll call of guests at major meetings and banquets. Starting with the names of the biggest givers, the amount of each pledge is read aloud and the donor stands for recognition. Future pledges are secured by another method known as a ‘declaration of intent,’ whereby prospective donors promise certain gifts during their lifetimes or in their wills.

UJA contributors are urged to contact non-contributors. As one UJA official put it, ‘It's not enough to give your money; we like to see people helping others to give.’ There is a big reliance on psychic rewards and community pressure. Large donors receive awards at UJA dinners, are named to chair committees, and are lionized in Jewish newspapers. Those who decline to contribute can face pressure and ostracism. In Pittsburgh's heavily Jewish Westmoreland Country Club, according to the Wall Street Journal, ‘If a non-giver wants to join, someone will mention, in a nice way of course, that behaving responsibly means remembering Jewish philanthropies.... An influential lawyer active in several charities favors tougher methods, including ostracism if friendly persuasion doesn't work.’

Most training of volunteer solicitors is done on the job. In addition, they see films about Israel and about successful UJA programs in other Jewish communities, and they are taught how to educate prospective donors about the financial needs of the Jewish community and Israel. They are encouraged to use emotion-packed topics in their appeal, such as the Holocaust, terrorist attacks, and anti-Semitism. ‘I call this educational process,’ said Aryeh Nesher, UJA's head of training, ‘Jewish spiritual circumcision.’Telethon-callers work from a prepared script. Those in the New York UJA-Federation headquarters can watch a teleprompter with the message, ‘You reunited families Every gift is a gift of love More because more people need us Every gift is a gift of life You re-settle Israeli families ... You help the deaf to hear.’

The 1983 Campaign

The UJA's response to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon was to redouble its campaign efforts. Events were geared to demonstrating American Jewry's moral support to Israel in the face of international criticism and to providing financial aid. The 1983 campaign was inaugurated in September 1982 with what National Chairman Loup called ‘Liftoff '83’-a three-day meeting in New York for 150 major contributors who had each pledged a minimum of $100,000. The roster of speakers at the meeting included Secretary of State George Shultz, former Israeli foreign minister Abba Eban, and Moshe Arens, then Israeli ambassador to the United States. Accompanied by actress Molly Picon and former New York mayor Abe Beame, the group visited Ellis Island-the first landing point for millions of Jewish immigrants to the United States. Evening entertainment included a dinner performance by Oscar-winning composer Marvin M. Hamlisch and visits to the homes of prominent New Yorkers.

The three-day kick-off led into a ‘National Fly-In’; between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, three teams of leading Israeli personalities and politicians, together with UJA leaders, canvassed cities all over the United States in an intensive fundraising effort, with the Israelis speaking about Israeli achievements and needs and the Americans soliciting. This stage of the campaign was not directed at the grassroots, but at wealthy Jews who, in the estimation of the UJA, could contribute more than they had in the past. Contributors in outlying areas might be flown to the larger cities to meet with important personalities.

The main event of the campaign was the October 1982 Campaign Leadership Mission to Israel, organized during the National Fly-In for contributors of $10,000 or more. Approximately one thousand UJA supporters from all over the country participated; in a public demonstration of solidarity, the group marched through Jerusalem to the Western Wall, singing and dancing and carrying banners with the UJA slogan, ‘We Are One.’ At the West Bank settlement of Elkanna, defense minister Ariel Sharon, in a widely covered speech, called on U.S. Jews for support. At the final gathering, which was attended by Menachem Begin, it was announced that the mission had generated a total of $24 million in pledges.

Targeting big givers for the 1983 campaign continued with specialized events; contributors of $250,000 and over were flown to Geneva to meet with delegations from various countries; contributors of $50,000 or more were treated to exclusive meetings in Washington with representatives of the White House, the Pentagon, the Congress, and high-ranking Israeli diplomats.

The ‘pace-setter’ banquets also started during this time and continued into the early part of 1983. In November 1982, the banquet launching the South Shore, Long Island 1983 drive brought over four hundred guests to hear former secretary of state Alexander Haig. Haig spoke of the ‘non-confrontational stance’ between the United States and Israel in Lebanon, against the PLO, and in favor of the ‘vital importance of maintaining the spirit of Camp David.’ The South Shore Jewish leaders pledged nearly $4 million to the UJA-Federation 1983 Campaign-a 20 percent increase over the year before.