My modest purchase for a bond with Israel

Smoke-filled hotel and country-club dining rooms with middle-aged men puffing on cigars.

That is my main memory of the countless events I covered during my early career as editor of the weekly Jewish newspaper in my Buffalo hometown. The annual dinners were the social and economic highlights of the city’s Jewish Federation, and of the Israel Bonds office.

Every year I sat in the stuffy rooms, taking notes and photographs, while the well-heeled men – it was usually men – who sustained the Jewish community’s philanthropic endeavors puffed away, standing at their tables to announce that year’s multi-figure donation. As a working reporter, I was in no financial position to add to the evening’s total.

But I admired, and dutifully reported on, the gatherings that brought the contributors to the Greater Buffalo’s Jewish community together, and sustained wider Jewish continuity.

During the years I grew up and later worked as a journalist in Buffalo, those two heavyweight Jewish organizations – the Jewish Federation, and Israel Bonds – dominated the communal skyline. They shared local prominence and prestige, raising money for local (in addition to overseas) Jewish needs, and for Medinat Israel. Both sponsored year-round P.R.- and fund-raising activities, were the subjects of favorable coverage in the general and Jewish media, and were the area’s most-recognized Jewish organizations. In the eyes of most Buffalo Jews, both institutions were equally significant.

After moving to New York City some four decades ago, and covering Jewish affairs as a staff writer on the Jewish Week newspaper, I learned that Israel Bonds assumed a less-prominent – but no-less vital – place in the firmament of the galaxy of Jewish organizations based in the Big Apple. Apparently, unlike in a smaller city like Buffalo, the activities of the single-minded Israel Bonds organization were typically in the shadow of a behemoth umbrella organization that has operated since 1986 as UJA-Federation (a merger of the separate United Jewish Appeal and the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies), which coordinates a panoply of worthy causes and administers a wide range of educational, cultural and social service programs.

Both are wonderful institutions. While I would write a modest chai check regularly to UJA-Federation, I considered an Israel Bonds purchase out of range for my limited tzedakah (or investment) capabilities.

But both were legitimate recipients of a concerned Jew’s funds. Affiliating with, or contributing to, neither organization, was seen as controversial.

How times have changed!

The network of Jewish federations in cities across the United States has come, among the “woke”/progressive elite, to be considered, especially since Israel’s post-October 7 war against Hamas in Gaza, to be sullied as enablers of a nation that purportedly engages in “genocide” in Gaza, and “apartheid” in Israel proper. How much more so the State of Israel Bonds (aka Development Corporation for Israel), whose sole raison d’etre is financial support for the country.

The Israel Bonds organization was launched in 1951 by Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion as a means to boost the struggling economy of the then-three-year-old Jewish state. Since then, through 2025, it has raised more than $54 billion worldwide, financing such building projects, chosen and administered by the government of Israel, as roads, hospitals, debt refinancing and various forms of infrastructure.

While Bonds purchases now constitute a smaller portion of the Israeli budget – slightly more than one percent last year, compared to about 20 percent in Israel’s early years – they still provide funds for needed projects, as well as a tangible sign of Diaspora solidarity with Israel.

Purchases greatly increased during times of crisis, notably after the Arab-Israeli wars of 1967 and 1973.

Outside of rabidly anti-Israel circles, political support for Israel – and for Israel Bonds – remained steadfast, especially among Democrats.

Came October 8; accusations of Israel engaging in illegal and immoral behavior skyrocketed among many voters and intellectuals, infecting many Democratic politicians and candidates. The leftward tilt against Israel tilted further port side.

Bonds purchases spiked dramatically after October 7, and were not noticeably harmed by calls for divestment.

Now, Israel Bonds have become to financial support for Israel what AIPAC has become to political support, what Hillel has become to campus affiliation, what Nefesh B’Nefesh has become to aliyah, what Birthright Israel has become to introducing young Diaspora Jews to the Jewish homeland, and what JNF has become to planting trees and settling the land. All verboten by the BDS crowd.

Now, Israel Bonds are an attractive target for many people on the Left who, citing support for the Palestinian cause, condemn investment in the Bonds as anathema.  What was once sacrosanct has become, for some re-election uncertain politicians, a third rail – which many political leaders and candidates treat cautiously, for fear of offending, respectively, either Israel’s unabashed supporters or resolute opponents.

Now, in our nation’s growing intolerant, ahistorical, simplistic political climate, buying or owning an Israel Bond is viewed as a moral crime … and as litmus test fodder against politicians whose offices purchase Israel Bonds, or whose votes support the purchase thereof, or whose signatures on bills legalize a government’s purchase of the Bonds.

This became apparent in New York State the other day.

I had the sound on the TV turned down, while I was reading a book. A commercial for Drew Warshaw – a veteran executive in New York City’s nonprofit world who has served as chief of staff of The Port Authority of New York & New Jersey, and as CEO of Enterprise Community Partners (which creates and preserves affordable homes), now campaigning in the state’s June 23 Democratic Party primary election for the position of comptroller (the state’s chief fiscal officer) – came on. I noticed the words “Purchased Israel Bonds” on the screen; I figured that Warshaw was boasting that in one of his jobs he had bought some Bonds.

Wrong! Warshaw was criticizing Thomas DiNapoli, the long-term Democratic incumbent, for purchasing Israel Bonds during his tenure in office. For Warshaw, DiNapoli’s act was obviously a political sin.

In a recent essay in the Forward, headlined “I’m a Jewish candidate for New York comptroller. Our state must divest from Israel bonds,” Warshaw wrote that the state’s “tax-funded pension fund … helps finance Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s wars.

“As humans, with God-given freedom and the responsibility that comes with it,” he wrote, “we face the reality that the merciless policies of Netanyahu’s government represent a moral catastrophe, and New York state cannot continue to finance them.”

Warshaw’s essay was the latest sign of a growing, unapologetic, blatantly – at best, consistently antagonistic – anti-Israel animus in parts of the Democratic Party. Sadly, among leftist Jews (such as Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, and Illinois representative Jan Schakosky) who use their Jewish identity and interpretation of “Jewish values” as cudgels with which to badger Israel, and to vote against appropriations – including, sometimes, for defensive arms – to Israel. Although the job that Warshaw seeks has a primarily state-wide focus, using Israel as a convenient target has become a national shibboleth, to establish one’s liberal anti-“colonialism” leanings.

While previous New York City comptroller Brad Lander, a self-described progressive Zionist, announced that he would stop the “politically motivated” reinvestment of city pension funds in Israel Bonds, and current mayor Zohran Mamdani, his political bedfellow, has made clear his opposition to such Zionist investments, Lander’s successor, Mark Levine, has called Israel Bonds a sound investment for city pension funds. “This is not political,” he said. “It shouldn’t be political. Israel Bonds have never missed a payment in 70 years,” since the city first purchased Bonds.

During my time as a working journalist in New York City, while I highly enjoyed my job, I never made a large salary. Not enough to allow me to think I could consider investing in an Israel Bond.

My job ended when the paper stopped printing – a victim of Covid – six years ago, and I’ve subsisted, on Social Security payments, as a (usually unpaid or low-paid) freelance writer.

Sadly, my mother died a year ago, at 104. She (and Dad, who died in 2005) never had a lot of money. But Mom invested and saved wisely, but cautiously, mostly in utilities. Not in an Israel Bond, though she contributed, on a limited scale, to many Jewish charities.

I have inherited a few shekels from her, not enough to affect my modest lifestyle. But enough to let me make my first investment, within my budget limitations, since we lost Mom. While I greatly respect how she handled her funds, I’m going in another direction.

A few days after watching the offensive TV commercial, I bought a State of Israel Bond. A small one, with a five-year return of more than five percent – which is competitive for an investment – rate of return. I made the purchase from my home, printing out the relevant financial documents from my computer.

The Bonds purchase is a way to contribute to the security, and economic stability, of Israel. And to show my contempt for politicians like Drew Warshaw.

Mom, who was an outspoken lover of Israel (though she never managed to visit the country) and encouraged me and my siblings to make our own decisions, would be proud.

I’m delighted that I was able to buy an Israel Bond.

And I didn’t have to do it in a smoke-filled room.