Over the last more than twenty years, our Temple Micah Israel Fund has donated to a wide range of causes and organizations. These include support for the Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism, institutions devoted to shared society among Jews, Muslims, and Christians in Israel, and organizations that seek to mitigate the harmful effects of the settler movement, among others. There are many worthy organizations doing such work in Israel. Over the years, we have focused our support on several with whom we have developed meaningful relationships. These groups have enriched our Micah trips to Israel by meeting with us and we have hosted them when their representatives have come to the United States.
As the Gaza War has progressed, we have received inquiries about Micah contributing to efforts that help those suffering in Gaza from the impact of the war. Who among us is not anguished by what we are witnessing as Israel wages this war that was begun in the monstrous Hamas assault of October 7? In order to learn about the possibilities and advisability of sending money to the various Gaza relief funds, we made inquiries to our trusted partners in Israel whose work we support and whose experience and judgement we rely on. They too feel anguish and, we felt their responses to be both wise and humane. They thought that, at this point, there was no reliable way to make sure that any funds contributed would be used in the ways we would hope. Specifically, and tragically, they could not direct us to a charity that they felt confident would not result in our donation ending up in the hands of Hamas.
They did, however, offer a suggestion that we have acted upon. They pointed out that as the war goes on, the Palestinian community on the West Bank is being increasingly harassed by the settlers. These communities could use all of the help that they could get. To that end, we have made contributions from our Israel Fund to the following organizations, all organization we have worked with before and whose work is centered on helping West Bank Palestinians:
Rabbis for Human Rights Israel
We also made a very recent contribution to:
T’ruah Rabbis for Human Rights North America (specifically for their work to support the rights of Palestinians and Israelis)