Eric Fingerhut, president and CEO of Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA), visited and spoke to the Kansas City Jewish community last week.
Fingerhut was the keynote speaker at Jewish Federation of Greater Kansas City's annual meeting, held on Nov. 30 at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art at Johnson County Community College.
Since the outbreak of the war, Fingerhut has led JFNA in directing and distributing funds and donations to Israelis in need. He was also instrumental in organizing the Nov. 14 March for Israel at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., and was coincidentally in Israel on Oct. 7. He has traveled back to Israel multiple times since the war began.
Israel and the Jewish community’s response was the main focus of Fingerhut’s speech. He likened the Oct. 7 attack on Israel to a five-alarm fire, and the 145 Federations across North America and their respective communities to fire departments working to rebuild and fix the damage after the fire.
"When there's a five-alarm fire in a community, the article in the newspaper the next day usually talks about the costs of the damages, hundreds of thousands of dollars, or millions of dollars of damages were done... This is how much it will take to repair and rebuild,” he said. “But they rarely talk about the cost to the fire department to put out the fire, or to the public infrastructure, to plan and to rebuild what was destroyed. We are in worse than a five-alarm fire right now.”
Four days after the attack, JFNA set a goal for the Jewish Federation system to raise $500 million for its Israel emergency campaign. In less than two months, the 145 Jewish Federations have collectively raised $668 million (including $3.2 million from the Kansas City community). Fingerhut said more than $211 million of the emergency campaign funds have already been dispersed, helping to support 65 municipalities in Israel and 388 different non-governmental organizations.
Those funds have helped fund everything from helping families in Israel pay rent and buy food and clothing to providing support to the Victims of Terror Fund, which is administered by JFNA's partner agency, the Jewish Agency for Israel.
According to Fingerhut, the number of families helped each year by the Victims of Terror Funds has averaged 200-250. Since Oct. 7, 6,000 families have received help from the fund.
Locally, 10% of the money raised for Israel by the Kansas City Jewish community has been allocated to Federation’s partner communities of Ramle and the Gezer region. So far, this money has helped buy smart watches that vibrate when bomb sirens go off to alert hearing-impaired people and to build a bomb shelter for a kindergarten class.
“The fire department is every single one of you,” Fingerhut told the audience. "We were there on Oct. 7 because the fire department was ready for the fire. You don't wait until the house is on fire. To build the fire department, you build the fire department to be ready for the fire. We were ready, because we were there."
Fingerhut closed his speech by saying that there is more work to be done.
“We personally stand as Jews on the precipice of one of the greatest projects of our time…,” he said. “Just as those whose… shoulders on which we stand, [who] built the State of Israel, we will rebuild the State of Israel.”