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The Shekel Before the Storm GA Magazine / Sallah Shabati no more By Bradley Burston Tags: Jewish world, Israel news, GA Full coverage of the 2008 GA conference There are sound reasons that certain scenes in particular films root themselves in the mind. For a generation and more in the Diaspora, one scene in a 1964 Israeli feature held special resonance. In the first Israeli film to be nominated for an Oscar in the best foreign language film category, actor Haim Topol, playing immigrant Sallah Shabati, is planting trees in a Jewish National Fund forest when the American donor for whom the forest is named arrives to have his picture taken. The moment the donor is gone, the sign marking the forest is taken down and replaced with one bearing another name, ready to greet - and dupe - the next visiting donor who has been led to believe that a forest in the Holy Land has been named for him. Advertisement There is gentle but unmistakable hostility in the humor. Part of it is directed toward the system of fundraising and the bureaucrats who fostered it and were fostered by it. Another part is directed at the donors, whose willingness to believe in a good cause, coupled with no small component of vanity, has blinded them to ruse and reality. The scene, in fact, may have played a part in what has amounted to a revolution in the Israel-Diaspora relationship, particularly where the act of giving is concerned. In that faraway pre-1967 era, American lovers of Israel could be confident - if not correct - in assuming that the country's crises were so imperative in their clarity, the hearts of Israelis so selfless in their patriotism, that donations would as a matter of course and incorruptibility directly address irreproachable needs. As the JNF scene suggests, there was something inherently unhealthy in that relationship. To a great extent, it reflected a change that came over world Jewry beginning in World War II and continuing through the 1960s - a transformation of which North African immigrant Sallah Shabati was himself a symbolic part. Centuries-old anchor communities of Judaism in Eastern Europe and the Arab world were giving way to a new Jewish world, one in which Israel and the United States would play the crucial roles. Israeli author Haim Be'er, speaking in Berkeley in the late 1980s, alluded to the sea change in an address to an audience largely made up of American Jews of Eastern European descent. "We are children of the same parents," he said, "but we are not parents of the same children." The parents were rooted in the Old World, the children natives of the new. The two communities had lost a common language. Neither knew how the other really lived. There was another change as well. It was painful in many ways, but in most respects markedly positive. Following the 1967 Six-Day War - and to some extent, because of the war - American Jewry began to take on greater involvement in the questions of how and where their donated dollars were being spent. The spirit of Follow the Money arose in tandem with aliyah, and with increasingly vocal, if often privately voiced, criticism of Israeli government policy, from American Jewish doves as well as hawks. The slush-fund opacity of the Sallah Shabati era would give way to a rebellion in giving, in which donors increasingly targeted their charitable funds to specific projects, communities and needs. As in any rebellion, the new wind carried to an extreme would have unforeseen and unfortunate repercussions. Perhaps the ultimate example of targeted giving came in the form of the cash-stuffed envelopes in which Long Island businessman Morris Talansky donated funds directly to Ehud Olmert. For all of Talansky's long experience with Israelis, the bogus JNF sign was still visible in the background of the affair, the straw that would break the Olmert premiership. "I believed that Ehud Olmert could be the one, the one with the way to bring people together," Talansky recalled, when asked why he had given Olmert his support. It was only after the cash transfers came to light that Talansky appears to have learned and lamented the uses to which the dollars had been put. "I only know that he loved expensive cigars," a perplexed Talansky told a Jerusalem court. "I know he loved pens, watches. I found it strange." After 45 years, how much has the culture of giving really changed? Certainly, profound shifts in the relationship between American Jews and their Israeli cousins, and within the two communities themselves, have markedly affected giving - not always positively. The two communities have gotten to know each other much better, with tens of thousands of American Jewish immigrants and their families living in Israel and hundreds of thousands of Israelis resident in the States. But a decided gulf in understanding remains. Part of the disconnect stems from the continued willingness of both donors and Israeli fundraisers to play parts which, despite striking external differences, are fundamentally little changed from Sallah Shabati's tree farm. Though briefed in detail on security, diplomatic and socioeconomic issues affecting Israelis, American donors are likely to get less reliable data on where, exactly, their contributions are going. However, what time and politesse have not done - spur transparency, minimal overhead costs and a strongly directed effort to address the needs for which the funds were donated - the global financial crisis may. Even if the coming drop in contributions is less dramatic than expected, donors will have greater leverage in demanding a say not only in how the money is allocated, but in seeing to it that fundraisers keep their word. It may be neither easy nor pleasant. But it will be, at long last, healthy for both sides. Full coverage of the 2008 GA conference Bookmark to del.icio.us   The King is dead Archeologists find new evidence for King Herod's tomb site. Al-Hasbara Israel launches Arabic YouTube channel to bypass Arab media.

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