Fund-Raising: Money is not Enough

Abstract

Many organizations, international, national and local, are engaged in fund-raising. In no instance, however, has fundraising been so crucial a factor as in the history of the Yishuv (pre-1948 Israel) and later of modern Israel. The amounts raised, the high degree of institutionalization of fund-raising, the important social and political functions that fund-raising fulfills, and the vast energies invested in its development underscore the fact that “Jewish” fund-raising has developed an existence of its own. Social and political life in Jewish communities in the Diaspora and in Israel can hardly be imagined without fund-raising, which has been almost the only continuous collective effort linking the components of world Jewry.