He was an expert on urban redevelopment and neighborhood revitalization whose community-building concepts served as the basis for local and national government programs in both the United States and Israel.

As co-chairman of the Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland's Partnership 2000 program, Naparstek applied his community-building concepts in Beit She'an, a city in northern Israel.

[6] In 1999, Naparstek orchestrated an unprecedented meeting between the mayor of Beit She'an and the Palestinian governor of Jenin at his home in Cleveland Heights to discuss joint economic development and community-building plans.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak incorporated the Beit She'an community-building model into a $300 million program for eleven other development towns throughout Israel.

[5] As an outgrowth of his work in Beit She'an, Naparstek was appointed senior vice president of United Jewish Communities in 2001 with oversight of the organization's Israel and Overseas Pillar.

In 2005, The Mandel Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Case Western Reserve University established the Arthur J. Naparstek Philanthropic Fund based on gifts totaling nearly $1.6 million.

[9] Naparstek's impact on his community, his country and the State of Israel was summed up in a eulogy delivered by his friend and colleague, James O. Gibson of the Rockefeller Foundation: To say that Art was a social worker would be to grossly oversimplify who he has and what he did.

That would also be true of thinking of him solely as an urban policy scholar; or as a politically astute university professor; an entrepreneurial academic administrator; a nationally renowned antipoverty warrior; a shrewd Washington DC real estate speculator; a canny foundation executive; a highly effective rainmaker for the Urban Institute; one of the most astoundingly talented networkers who ever strode the earth — and that's before you mention champion of Israeli community-building, super Dad, doting husband, and friend extraordinaire.