Mayor with local ties named to head Jewish Agency

by Robert Wiener
NJJN Staff Writer

An Israeli mayor who helped forge close links between his city and the United Jewish Communities of MetroWest New Jersey is the leading candidate for the head of the Jewish Agency for Israel.

Zeev Bielski, the mayor of the MetroWest sister city of Ra’anana, was nominated May 16 by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to become chair of JAFI.

If ratified by the Zionist General Council on June 21 and by JAFI’s assembly five days later, Bielski will become the body’s 13th chair in a chain that includes Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion.

Local leaders are confident that Bielski’s leadership of the quasi-governmental JAFI, which serves as the Israeli partner in the country’s relationship with American philanthropists, will reflect positively on a network of partnerships between local agencies and the Jewish state.

“Our relationship will be heightened,” said Max Kleinman, executive vice president of UJC MetroWest. “It won’t only be relations between the city of Ra’anana and MetroWest, but everything we do with the Jewish Agency, which includes Partnership 2000, [and] the extended school program we have in Ofakim-Merchavim.

“And he is going to be of major benefit to our UJA campaign,” added Kleinman, “because the campaign’s major beneficiaries overseas are the Jewish Agency and the Joint Distribution Committee.”

Bielski, who has been Ra’anana’s chief executive since 1988, is credited with providing his city with a balanced budget and encouraging an influx of affluent émigrés from South Africa and North America. He is considered to have close ties to Diaspora Jewry. Bielski would succeed Sallai Meridor.

As mayor, Bielski helped forge a relationship that centered on MetroWest’s sponsorship of 12 different programs in Ra’anana focusing on religious pluralism.

“He has the two major skills to my mind for the job: he knows Diaspora Jewry and he has good management skills,” said Amir Shacham, who heads UJC MetroWest’s Israel office in Jerusalem.

The two men have known each other since 1995, when Shacham began working for MetroWest. They have shared a close working relationship ever since.

“I met with him to learn how he sees this community. He has been in MetroWest many times. He knows a lot of our leadership and although there were times we had conflicts with him the partnership between these two communities is stable and will go forward,” said Shacham, on a visit to MetroWest’s Aidekman Family Campus in Whippany a week after Bielski’s appointment.

To Shacham, Bielski’s resume suggests the mayor has the proper credentials to lead an agency where professional executives’ efforts are sometimes hamstrung by political bickering.

“He has the potential and the skills to really lead this organization and put it in a better place,” said Shacham. “Although as mayor he was a good politician, he was also a good manager.”

A common agenda

Volunteer leaders in MetroWest also praised Sharon’s choice of Bielski.

“That nomination is about as good a thing that can happen to the Jewish people as anything in the last number of years,” said Stephen Greenberg, who worked with Bielski when Greenberg was vice president of UJC MetroWest’s executive committee.

Greenberg, who was interviewed by the Jewish Telegraph Agency, met Bielski more than 20 years ago at a conference that brought Israeli and Diaspora Jewish leaders together to map a common agenda. Bielski has made a point of staying in touch with his Diaspora friends, Greenberg said.

“I know it sounds trite, but if there’s a person who is really not just uniquely qualified, but is probably the perfect individual to bridge the gap between Israel and the Diaspora, it’s Zeev Bielski,” he said.

Greenberg cited Bielski’s “spectacular personality that endears him to people” and his understanding of the Diaspora Jewish mind-set.

He also pointed to Bielski’s sense of innovation: A formula he helped create to have local residents ease new Russian immigrants’ transition in Ra’anana became a model program in Israel.

Murray Laulicht, a West Orange resident and past president of UJC MetroWest, also welcomed Bielski’s nomination.

“I first met him on a mission to Ra’anana in 1990 when I was chair of the Community Relations Committee,” he told NJJN. “We brought along several New Jersey elected officials and he got along with them very well. Although he joked about not wanting to be a politician, he was a very good mayor of Ra’anana.”

Added Laulicht: “Zeev’s understanding of Diaspora Jews will help make JAFI a very effective organization.”

Shacham said “one of the clever things” Bielski did as mayor was to help establish the MetroWest High School in Ra’anana, a secular institution that emphasizes Jewish values and culture and religious pluralism.

“Bielski is basically a very pluralistic person and knows the importance of different streams and the liberal approach to Judaism,” Shacham said. “This is the agenda of the American Jewish Diaspora and it is very important that JAFI will be able to work with us in promoting it. We do hope that the model of cooperation between our two communities will become a national or international model.”

Hedva Fensterheim, vice chairperson of the Meitarim, another pluralistic school supported by UJC MetroWest, said Bielski’s partnership with the New Jersey community fostered an environment of tolerance in Ra’anana.

“Bielski did a phenomenal job in this city, and I assume that as head of the Jewish Agency, he will succeed at bringing the Diaspora to Israel the same way he succeeded in Ra’anana,” Fensterheim said. “Because of his relationship with MetroWest, the issue of pluralism is tremendously emphasized here.”

Kleinman said the federation will hold a celebratory dinner in Bielski’s honor the next time the new JAFI head visits New Jersey.

Robert Wiener can be reached at rwiener@njjewishnews.com.

NJJN Israel correspondent Gil Hoffman and the Jewish Telegraphic Agency contributed to this story.