L.A. Jews Investing in Future : Israel: The local Jewish Federation is spending millions on renewal projects, including some in Arab neighborhoods.

In gritty south Tel Aviv, between the run-down, predominantly Arab neighborhood of Ajami and the poor, mainly Jewish neighborhood of central Jaffa, sits a strip of landscaped walkways, wooden benches and greenery called Park Los Angeles.

The park, a kind of promise for the future, was built this year by the Jewish Federation Council of Los Angeles as the first visible step in an ambitious renewal program under the aegis of “Project Renewal,” an international program that links Diaspora Jewish communities with needy Israeli localities.

The Los Angeles Jewish Federation, an umbrella for a wide range of Jewish organizations, also operates a redevelopment program in Jerusalem and another in the northern Israeli development town of Bet Shean.

In Ajami-Jaffa, $10 million from the Los Angeles Federation will be funneled over the next decade into renovation, social welfare and education programs. The Israeli and Tel Aviv city governments will contribute an additional $20 million.

The aims of the renewal program here are twofold: to solve the neighborhood’s social problems--drug use, dysfunctional families, unemployment, child abuse, crime and an alarming school dropout rate, as well as a deteriorated physical infrastructure--and increase contact between Jews and Arabs.

This is the first project sponsored by Jews abroad to target so ethnically mixed an Israeli neighborhood. Indeed, occasional objections to it have been voiced in the Los Angeles Jewish community, on the grounds that Jewish money should go only to helping Jews.

But Marty Karp, the Los Angeles Federation’s representative in Israel, dismisses such complaints as lacking in ideals and pragmatism.

“Inter-communal peace begins with strengthening the bonds between Arabs and Jews,” he said in a recent interview. “And anyway, you can’t run a drug prevention program only on one side of the street, even if you want to.”

Objections to the project also have been raised by some Arabs in Ajami who fear a gentrification that could push them out of their own neighborhood.

In addition, neighborhood renewal projects in general are getting less attention and money from the Israeli government these days as the nation’s social priorities shift toward the need to provide help for thousands of Soviet Jews now immigrating.

Despite these difficulties, the Ajami-Jaffa renewal project is thriving, and the Los Angeles Federation and the neighborhood remain committed to it.

Ibrahim Abu Shindi, 30, the Arab director of social programs in Ajami, calls the Los Angeles Jewish community brave for its commitment there.

“Now the Arabs here will be able to get the same services that Jews do,” he said. “And,” he added hopefully, echoing Karp, “the changed ideas of each other that will develop from living and working together can, as a byproduct, influence the political situation.”

The programs in Ajami-Jaffa that receive support from Los Angeles Jewry are very diverse. They include:

* A summer Head Start-style program to prepare neighborhood children for first grade.

* A premarital counseling class for Arab high school girls.

* Renovation of the first child- development center in the area to serve both Arabs and Jews, and refurbishing of an Arab cultural center in Ajami.

* Programs for gifted students, adult vocational training, and adult literacy.

* A prenatal and pediatric clinic that now serves 500 Jewish and Arab families.

* Five after-school “home environment centers” where Arab and Jewish schoolchildren from dysfunctional families get meals, showers, tutoring, activities and a homelike environment.

For the elderly, Los Angeles Federation money helps to support a club that serves 500 elderly people in Jaffa. At the club, the members, mostly women who live alone, greeted visitors recently with a rousing rendition of the Hebrew folk song “Havenu Shalom Aleichem” (“We Bring Peace to You”), clapping and accompanying themselves on tambourines.

“We take them away from their sadness here,” said Director Esther Levi.

But, there remains much work to do in Ajami-Jaffa.

“This neighborhood has been neglected for 40 years,” lamented social worker Shindi, whose family has lived in the district for five generations. “So it will take five, 10, even 20 years to succeed here. But it is like a desert without water. If you add water, things grow quickly.”

Principal Ali Goughti, 28, of the Arab elementary school, which receives Project Renewal funds for programming and equipment, cited a corroborating statistic: Three years ago, he said, there were only four neighborhood students in Israeli universities; now there are 120.

Part of what is being cultivated here is the empowerment of the local residents, whose elected committees determine program priorities and budgeting. A new project is what Los Angeles Federation representative Karp calls a “School for Activists,” which teaches residents how to organize meetings, work with government agencies, create budgets and even publish a neighborhood newspaper.

A similar network of social, educational and renovation projects characterized the Los Angeles Jewish community’s first Project Renewal program in Musrara, a slum neighborhood in Jerusalem.

In Musrara, too, an elected community board determined priorities and budgets. “Without that, renewal won’t work,” Karp said. “People have to feel it’s theirs.”

Through its committees, Karp said, the Musrara neighborhood, almost all of whose residents are Jews from Middle Eastern countries, named among its first priorities a refurbished mikvah, the ritual bath used by traditional Jewish women. This was somewhat surprising to the Los Angeles Federation leaders, but Karp said they recognized the mikvah as essential to this particular neighborhood and funded its renovation.

The $3 million spent in Musrara by the Los Angeles Federation also helped create a community center, a soccer field, a child-care center, a club for the elderly, a well-baby clinic, a dental clinic, a gym, and an Orthodox experimental school that attracts children from all over the city.

As in Tel Aviv, housing reconstruction was underwritten primarily by Israeli sources. But on the initiative of the Los Angeles planners, local contractors were trained to do much of the plumbing, electricity and construction. Some of them remain in business, buttressing the neighborhood’s economic stability.

Los Angeles has completed its renewal work in Musrara. The neighborhood, Karp said, was “renovated but not gentrified. It has retained its original character--except now it is safe.”

Only the Musrara drug program, designed by Los Angeles expert Dr. Stephen Bailey and funded jointly with the city of Jerusalem, still receives federation funds. In a unique approach to drug treatment, the program, where appropriate, sends recovering addicts for six-month stays with adoptive families on kibbutzim, Israeli collective farms.

The third community adopted by the Los Angeles Federation is Bet Shean, a hot, dusty and economically troubled northern town far from Israel’s population centers. There, a cooperative effort between local government and the federation has led to the establishment of new clinics and child-care centers, enriched school programs, a community center, a library and a center for the elderly.

But this town of 15,000, where the corpse of Israelite King Saul was hung on display by the Philistines 3,000 years ago, also has an extraordinary underground natural resource: an ancient Roman city, including streets, baths, plazas and public buildings, which is being excavated and reconstructed. Its large amphitheater, rebuilt to hold 2,200 spectators, has already been the site of concerts by Israeli and foreign performers.

City officials expect the rebuilt ruins and theatrical events to make Bet Shean a tourist attraction. Even though the town offers little in the way of hotels and restaurants, it still managed to draw 200,000 tourists over the past year. Local officials are hoping the archeological site will usher in a cultural and economic boom that will help Bet Shean shed what one resident calls its “loser self-image.”

Over the last six years, the Los Angeles Federation has funneled $5 million into the Bet Shean renewal effort.

To date, the Los Angeles Federation has provided $11 million for Project Renewal programs since its inception a decade ago. Separately, of course, the federation raises far larger sums (about $60 million this year) for general aid to Israel, which help pay for social and immigrant-absorption programs.

What sets Project Renewal apart is that the Los Angeles Jewish community has an active voice in determining what programs are mounted and how they are implemented.

“We have a unique approach to issues in Jewish life,” federation Executive Vice President Wayne Feinstein said. “For example, we had the imagination and the liberal spirit to do something about the situation of Israeli Arabs when Jewish communities in other cities shied away.

“I think there is something in the Los Angeles world view that likes to grab onto a problem and then attempt a bold social experiment to solve it.”

David Margolis is a Los Angeles free-lance writer who traveled recently in Israel.