HIAS, once known as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, is looking for a new purpose. Founded in New York at the turn of the 20th Century, the organization was created to assist with the resettlement of Jewish immigrants, who needed help getting acclimated to their new homes. The organization thrived through the first half century of its existence, and experienced a revival, which invested it with new purpose in the 1980s and 1990s, when HIAS helped absorb and resettle hundreds of thousands of Jews who fled the Former Soviet Union.
Since then, the Jewish world has experienced unprecedented change: There are virtually no more Jewish refugees. Rather than being held against their will in one place, and expelled from another, virtually every Jew today has freedom of movement, and the vast majority of Jews live in democratic societies. The era of the wandering Jew is over.
This raises the question: Is there still a need for HIAS? We are not so sure.
We do know that there is no need for an agency with the Jewish resettlement mission of the early 1900s. And the current leadership of HIAS knows that, too. So, HIAS is planning to shift its focus from Jewish immigrant aid in North America, to more broad refugee care and resettlement overseas. According to reports from HIAS, the agency is planning to take its resettlement expertise and infrastructure across the ocean, and apply those skills to the many millions of non-Jewish refugees who could benefit from them. Under this new approach, the HIAS name would live on, and it is hoped that the newly focused organization would be supported by Jews and others as a universal cause in favor of world immigrant resettlement.
HIAS has other choices.
There are some highly active and successful organizations, like the Avi Chai foundation, that have a built-in sunset timetable. Among other things, sunset provisions stem from the recognition that missions change, and that organizations lose effectiveness over time. But it takes a certain maturity, and healthy doses of self-confidence and self-awareness for an organization to declare success and move on. Very few organizations are able to do that. Instead, they get caught up in their own stories and start believing their own PR, and view themselves as indispensable societal contributors.
HIAS has had its successes. It served well for close to a century as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. Now its leadership acknowledges that the organization’s original mission is no longer necessary. Rather than search for a new mission in order to justify its continued existence, perhaps it would be better for HIAS to consider an orderly sunset.
This week the on-line “Mosaic Magazine” published its monthly discussion feature for August concerning the rise in European antisemitism with long-term threats to Europe’s rebuilt Jewish communities.
http://mosaicmagazine.com/essay/2013/08/you-only-live-twice/?utm_source=Mosaic+Daily+Email&utm_campaign=8f944887be-Mosaic_2013_8_5&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0b0517b2ab-8f944887be-41162805
A century ago, safe, comfortable German Jews assisted their poor Czarist relatives in their rough resettlement in the West. Three decades later, it was the turn of the same middle class German Jews and other Central and Western European Jews to flee. In the 1940s-50s, it was the clearing of the DP camps. In the early ’80s, our Persian friends. Later in the 1980s, many of us helped fund the saving of our Ethiopian brethren — who would have EVER guessed that one? And soon after that, the miraculous freedom of Soviet Jews.
HIAS is like a suburban fire department that might go for months or years without a major catastrophe. But it must remain funded, equipped, manned, and robustly trained. At present, HIAS remains organized and knowledgeable about U.S. refugee laws and policies and about the local communities’ resources through its assisting the resettlement of mostly non-Jewish political and religious refugees — thank God our people are mostly “OK” in this decade. If it were gone or even no longer funded and its staff not regularly exercised in the resettlement process, then woe is the U.S. Jewish community next time our people need to provide such services for our own.
This article aims to divide Jews as well. And, in doing so, reflects a troublesome precedent. Promoting this kind of insularity is what drives a large segment of Jews — who might otherwise choose to be affiliated or at least more active in their Judaism — away from the flock overall. Speaking from personal experience, the work, mission and very existence of HIAS promotes inclusion. It is direly needed as — and in fact, exemplifies — common ground for Jews of all observance levels to coalesce as a community. And a vibrant one at that.
As for the shear necessity and relevance of HIAS’ work — I encourage the author of this piece to join us this fall for the annual government advocacy mission. Or spend an evening at our HIAS-inspired program tutoring local immigrants in the citizenship and English classes that allow them to become full participants in American democracy (the very goal of previous generations of our own families). Or travel to the refugee camps in Chad, direct service offices in Nairobi — or Quito — or Kiev — or 20+ cities where HIAS changes the course of people’s lives and livelihoods. I can assure you that after any of these experiences you will write a totally different article.
Irrelevant? Sunset? The world would suffer if these words even entered our vocabularies. In search of a mission? Nothing could be more inaccurate.
This article aims to divide Jews as well. And, in doing so, reflects a troublesome precedent. Promoting this kind of insularity is what drives a large segment of Jews — who might otherwise choose to be affiliated or at least more active in their Judaism — away from the flock overall. Speaking from personal experience, the work, mission and very existence of HIAS promotes inclusion. It is direly needed as — and in fact, exemplifies — common ground for Jews of all observance levels to coalesce as a community. And a vibrant one at that.
As for the shear necessity and relevance of HIAS’ work — I encourage the author of this piece to join us this fall for the annual government advocacy mission. Or spend an evening at our HIAS-inspired program tutoring local immigrants in the citizenship and English classes that allow them to become full participants in American democracy (the very goal of previous generations of our own families). Or travel to the refugee camps in Chad, direct service offices in Nairobi — or Quito — or Kiev — or 20+ cities where HIAS changes the course of people’s lives and livelihoods. I can assure you that after any of these experiences you will write a totally different article.
Irrelevant? Sunset? The world would suffer if these words even entered our vocabularies. In search of a mission? Nothing could be more inaccurate.