http://www.jpost.com/com/Archive/13.Nov.1997/News/Article-7.html
The Jerusalem Post
Thursday, November 13, 1997 13 Heshvan 5758
Evangelical Christians Supply Major Source of UJA Donations
By ARYEH DEAN COHEN
JERUSALEM (November 13) -- An Evangelical Christian
group has emerged as one of the leading contributors to
the United Jewish Appeal in recent years, and its
leader claims it has become the single largest donor to
the UJA in 1997.
According to Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, director of the
International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, a
Chicago-based organization, his group will turn over
some $5 million in contributions to the UJA this year,
almost totally from Evangelical Christians.
UJA officials confirmed that the group is currently the
largest donor in Chicago, that it raised $2.5 million
last year, then "promised to double it" this year. UJA
officials could not say whether they were the largest
donor overall.
Despite the contributions, however, Eckstein said that
Jewish Agency Chairman Avraham Burg and other senior
agency officials had refused to meet with him. He said
they are happy to take the contributions, but uneasy
about being associated with the Evangelicals.
Burg refused to comment on that accusation yesterday,
but a senior agency source said that "since taking
office, he has told people that he planned only to deal
with matters of the Jewish people, because it was their
agency, and he did not plan to deal with groups whose
fundamentalist agenda contradicts his world view."
Eckstein, an ordained Orthodox rabbi, said his group
had initially raised money to bring Jews from the
former Soviet Union to Israel, and is now involved in a
project in conjunction with the Joint Distribution
Committee to help feed and care for elderly Jews who
choose to remain in the FSU.
In one case, one donor paid for an entire charter
flight of 170 immigrants from Tashkent.
Eckstein, who appeals to donors via a series of
television and radio programs, said the group also
tries to alter stereotypes held by Jews regarding
Evangelical Christians.
He said many Evangelicals make donations in keeping
with the Christian tradition of tithing, based on
Genesis 12, verse 3, where God tells Abraham: "And I
will bless those who bless you."
One woman donated over $1,000 she had saved for a new
car, saying she thought it was more important to use it
to bring Jews to Israel. A postal clerk traveled from
Atlanta to Chicago to personally deliver a wad of $100
bills he had saved from his monthly paycheck.
