The journey of Steven Lowy

‘In times of crisis,” says Steven Lowy, “Jews get together, and they do what they have to do.” If anyone is qualified to make that comment, it is Lowy, who has just completed an eventful and challenging term as chairman of the World Board of Trustees of Keren Hayesod-United Israel Appeal.

During his tenure, Lowy, together with Sam Grundwerg, the world chairman of Keren Hayesod, helped steer the organization through a series of worldwide crises, including the COVID pandemic, the Russia-Ukraine war, and Operation Swords of Iron in Israel.

Sitting with this writer on a Thursday morning in Tel Aviv, Lowy – whose four-year term as chairman that began in 2019 was extended because of COVID to five and a half years – discusses how Keren Hayesod managed to overcome the difficulties of those years, and how these experiences point to the continued relevance of the organization, some 104 years since its creation in 1920.

Lowy, who lives in Sydney, Australia, and is currently in Israel for the Keren Hayesod Leadership Conference, will remain on the organization’s executive board and was honored by President Isaac Herzog at a ceremony in Jerusalem on Wednesday. Bruce Leboff, a Toronto native, will succeed Lowy in his position.

“Keren Hayesod is the largest non-US fundraising vehicle for Israel, and it has three major objectives. The first one is aliyah and absorption. The second one is connecting Diaspora Jews to Israel and vice versa. And the third is providing social services for the disadvantaged in Israel, particularly in the periphery of the country and in the underprivileged parts of the country,” he explains.

Recalling the pandemic and the organization’s objectives, he asks rhetorically, “How do you do all of this during COVID?” In March 2020, Keren Hayesod, together with the Jewish Agency, the Jewish Federations of North America, and the World Zionist Organization, held a series of emergency meetings on Zoom, examining their budgets and their plans for the coming year. Early on, when the disease broke out in northern Italy, the four organizations jointly provided emergency funding to the Jewish community there, using their resources on the ground in the country.

Keren Hayesod was forced to cut its budget by 20% but continued providing support to communities around the world affected by the pandemic, raising funds for communities outside of Israel, which was not even within the organization’s original purview. Lowy could not visit most of the world’s Jewish communities during that period due to lockdowns in his native Australia.

Despite the pandemic, Lowy says with a sense of deep admiration that 22,000 Jews made aliyah during the COVID year of 2020 through the assistance of Keren Hayesod and other organizations.

Russia-Ukraine war

Lowy turns his attention to the next tumultuous event that took place during his term as chairman – the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

In April of that year, the Keren Hayesod leadership, together with the leadership of the WZO and the Jewish Agency, flew to Poland. They then toured a mobile hospital established by the State of Israel and staffed by Israeli volunteers in Ukraine, in a school where Jews had been killed during the Holocaust. Former aliyah and integration minister Pnina Tamano-Shata accompanied the group. “It was an unbelievably proud experience,” he says, “to see Israeli flags and Israeli doctors providing medical services to Ukrainians.”

The group then returned to Poland, where they witnessed the assistance that the Jewish Agency and its partner organizations (Keren Hayesod is a 20% shareholder in the agency) provided to Jewish families who were making aliyah in the shadow of the war. “One of the most unbelievable experiences was seeing the hotel [where the refugees were staying].

“It was like a little shopping center, meaning the hotel rooms were filled with goods. One was filled with toys. Another room was full of shoes, and a third was filled with clothes. These were all donated because these people were coming with either nothing or very little in preparation for aliyah.

“Organizations like Keren Hayesod and the Jewish Agency are more than 100 years old,” Lowy says. “Do you wonder if these organizations are still relevant? I can tell you that if this system was not in place, there is no way that we could have got Jews out of harm’s way [from Ukraine] and into Israel so quickly.” In 2022, he points out, aliyah to Israel increased to 76,000, with many of the olim coming due to the conflict in Eastern Europe.

“I’m very focused on maintaining relevancy wherever I am,” he continues. “As I think about the two major tragedies we’re living through – both the tragedy of the war in Ukraine and the unprecedented tragedy of Oct. 7 – the fact that you have organizations like the Jewish Agency and Keren Hayesod working together with the Americans at the Jewish Federations of North America and WZO, the fact that these pillars of Israel exist and work and have foundations in place to act swiftly, I think, says it all.”

Operation Swords of Iron

Next, Lowy discusses the most recent challenge – the war in Israel, which began with the Hamas attack on Oct. 7.Lowy was in New York that day, and by noon New York time a global Zoom conference was arranged between the leadership of Keren Hayesod, the Jewish Agency, the WZO, and the Jewish Federations of North America. He terms it a type of “war cabinet.”

“We had the most current information coming from the government to the leadership, and we would immediately disseminate that to the Diaspora,” he recalls. Since the beginning of the war, Keren Hayesod has raised $170 million for Israel to help in its emergency campaign, an unheard-of amount of money during such a short period.

The four organizations worked effectively together and were able to bypass bureaucratic restrictions in getting the necessary funds to people who needed help, including victims of the Oct. 7 attack, hospitals in Israel’s South and North, as well as municipalities in the Gaza border area and in northern Israel. “We went to all of the municipalities and gave them all money immediately, no questions asked, so they had funds to distribute to the neediest within their organizations,” he recounts.

At that critical point, says Lowy, governance had to go out the window. “However,” he notes, “you need to use the right structures and processes to get the money to the right place. And that’s where we started. You can’t do that if you don’t have organizations working every day with the capabilities to execute these programs.”

After dealing with providing for Israel’s immediate needs, says Lowy, Keren Hayesod is now focused on assisting and partnering with other organizations to help rebuild the country, both physically and emotionally.Lowy discusses how the Jewish world has changed since 2019, when he first entered the post. “The Jewish world was very different,” he recalls. “Israel was invincible. We know now that was very wrong. Diaspora Jewry had started to become more focused on their own communities and less focused on Israel.”

He also mentions that the contentious issue of judicial reform was causing fissures not only within Israel but also in Diaspora communities. While worrying signs of disunity seem to be emerging in Israel today, he says the Diaspora has responded to the war with a tremendous outpouring of unity and a rebirth of Zionism.

“It’s shown in the numbers of Keren Hayesod, where last year was a record year,” he says, and even anecdotally, in Sydney, the synagogues are more full than they used to be.”

This past October, Lowy spoke at a Jewish event in Australia commemorating one year since Oct. 7. More than 12,000 Jews in Sydney, out of a population of 45,000 Jews, were in attendance, which he says was unprecedented.

Lowy reflects on the organization’s achievements during his tenure. Since 2019, Keren Hayesod has raised $1.1 billion for Israel. From that amount, $285m. was given to the Jewish Agency, with the balance going to other organizations and causes that are national priorities. The organization’s endowment has increased from $127m. to $171m., and almost a quarter of a million people have made aliyah since 2019 with the support of Keren Hayesod.

But, he says, there is more to success than numbers. “Numbers tell a story,” he points out, “but it’s not the human side of the story. The human side of the story is found in the beneficiaries we help. When you go to Poland and see how the Jewish Agency and Keren Hayesod facilitated the saving of Jewish families and the logistics to get them to Israel, it’s just the most moving thing.”

Another illustration of the human side of the story for Lowy is the numerous visits – seven in all – that he has made to Israel during this past year. Lowy and a Keren Hayesod delegation attended the funeral of Ofir Libstein, head of the Sha’ar Hanegev Regional Council, who was murdered by Hamas terrorists on the morning of Oct. 7, and paid condolence calls to many families.

“I’m not sure who came out the stronger. The people we went to could not believe we traveled all this way to let them know we cared about them. They couldn’t believe that we did that, and I was shocked about that. We came to pay respects, and they actually gained strength from us paying them the respect.”

As our interview comes to a close, Lowy pays tribute to the professional team of Keren Hayesod and the Jewish Agency with which he has worked over the years, especially Sam Grundwerg, the world chairman of Keren Hayesod, and CEO and Director-General Edna Weinstock-Gabay. “We have 60 campaigns working in 45 countries in 19 time zones, in nine different languages,” he says with pride.

Despite the difficulties of chairing Keren Hayesod during difficult times, Lowy has no regrets. “Life is a journey, and what you gain along that journey. I would do it again in a heartbeat because, as difficult as it was, I have grown so much as a human being.

“Moreover, I have such a much better understanding of Israel, the history of the Jewish people, and its complexities, which makes me a much richer person by having gone through this.”

This article was written in cooperation with Keren Hayesod.