Broad-Based Philanthropy

The JTA reports that Eli and Edythe Broad of Los Angeles recently pledged to give away 75% of their estimated $5.7 billion total wealth, either during or after their lifetimes. Sadly, their heirs will have to get by with an inheritance of merely $1.4 billion. (I jest, of course. Kol hakavod to the Broad family for this remarkable and noble act of philanthropy.)

No word on how much, if any, of this beneficence might be given to Jewish causes. It doesn't look enormously promising for explicitly Jewish causes, to judge from (only a cursory glance at) The Broad Foundation's website. The Foundation's mission is "to advance entrepreneurship for the public good in education, science and the arts." (These are wonderful causes, and all Jews should applaud this quintessentially Jewish spirit of tzedakah that demonstrates care for all people.) The Broads do support Jewish causes, albeit in smaller amounts; according to this 2003 article from the LA Jewish Journal, they gave a total of $350 million in 2002, of which $2 million (just over half of 1%) went to Jewish causes.

The Broads' giving pattern seems to be typical of the general trend in Jewish philanthropy. As the JTA article notes, a 2003 study of Jewish "mega-gifts" by Gary A. Tobin, Jeffrey R. Solomon and Alexander C. Karp noted that while "American Jews are generous well beyond their community numbers," contributing 22% of American mega-gifts, "Jewish organizations received a minute proportion of Jewish mega-dollars." Most such gifts go to "education, health, and arts/culture." The Broads, then, are broadly representative.

Jewish organizations do not wish (heaven forbid) to stifle this kind of universalistic spirit of giving; many Jewish communal leaders do, however, tend to wish that such Jewish mega-donors would spend a little more than half of a percentage point of their giving budgets in helping their fellow members of the tribe, or even to help the non-Jewish needy under publicly Jewish auspices.

But then, one mustn't make predications or assumptions. It remains to be seen what projects the Broads' generous pledge will fund. Whatever causes they turn out to be, the Broads' philanthropic spirit should be honored and emulated.

Changing the Tone of Israel Advocacy?

I think two of the many fascinating pieces we linked in our recent June newsletter deserve more focused attention: "Israel in the Age of Eminem - A Creative Brief for Israel Messaging" by Frank Luntz, and "Needed: Real Zionist Education, Not Hasbara" by Gil Troy.

Let's begin with the former. You've heard of Frank Luntz, right? He's a Republican pollster and marketing guru, specializing in the use of language. (Luntz is credited with popularizing the term "death tax" to describe/attack the estate tax, for example. His 2006 book is called Words That Work: It's Not What You Say, It's What People Hear.) Whether you love or loathe Luntz's politics, it is difficult to argue that the man doesn't know marketing. In 2003, The Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies engaged Luntz to conduct focus groups and interviews with young Jews in an effort to identify practices to cultivate, and those to avoid, when marketing Israel to young American Jews.

The result is a thorough, detailed and well-crafted report. As an under-30 American Jew, with many friends in the same demographic (both "affiliated" and "unaffiliated"), I think Luntz makes fantastic points:

The young Jews we listened to relate strongly to their identity but not in the same way as their parents and grandparents. For this audience, culture has replaced tradition and spirituality has replaced religion... Older Jews who grew up with the establishment of the state of Israel and the Six Day War witnessed a remarkable record of achievement. The reality of young Jews is informed by Rabin’s assassination and the second intifada. The impact of this is immediately evident in their use of the word “they” rather than “us” when they talk about Israel. The Jewish state is tangible and emotional for most Jewish organizations but is an abstraction for many younger Jews...

Younger Jews want to make their own decisions about support for Israel. Although most of our respondents support Israel, they reserve the right to question the Israeli position. They do not respond to advertising they view as expressions of “group think.” There are no simple truths for these young Jews. They view themselves as free thinkers, and making their own decisions and choosing their own paths are very important. Ads featuring long lists of Israel’s supporters, or black and white analysis of the situation wash over this audience. There is real power in conversation. They value the chance to listen, learn, and speak in a non-judgmental environment. They hunger for more opportunities to think and question.

Young Jews tend to view themselves as Americans first and Jewish second...

Secular Jews choose a non-religious path deliberately... They will reject any message or messenger that comes across as overtly religious. At the same time, it is imperative not to mistake young Jews’ rejection of traditional models of Jewish life for a lack of interest in Judaism. They are interested in exploring their Jewish identity, but on their terms.

Young Jews desperately want peace... [P]eace is a high priority, much more so than security. They recoil at images and words of conflict and respond positively to any plea for peace.

Luntz summarizes the take-away lessons for marketing Israel to youth:

Less is more. Make your point quickly or it won’t be made at all.

Capture their attention. This audience is inundated by marketing. Competition is intense. Relying on old messages such as “Israel is a good nation” or “all Jews should support Israel” will not be heard or remembered.

Talk peace.

Facts are more important than slogans. This audience wants a historical road map that brings them to their own conclusion – not a supposition forced upon them.

Relate both Jewish and Israel messaging to America.

Overtly religious appeals will fail.

Use visuals more than dense copy or worse, donor lists...

Ask for their participation. Give them a chance to do something but don’t demand it.

Some of this (e.g. use visuals) is just simple marketing common sense. But other points -- especially "talk peace" and "facts are more important than slogans" -- appear blindingly obvious to my under-30 eyes, and yet seem completely at odds with much of the pro-Israel messaging I see.

Another reaction I have to this report is to wonder whether the target demographic for these advertisements might not be poorly defined. The young (unaffiliated) American Jews I know tend to see themselves as thoroughly integrated with the general society around them, and don't like to think that being Jewish separates them from their Gentile peers.

I think any ad campaign that seems to target Jews in particular is bound to trigger an alarm bell for many of my Jewish friends. There is a story which I have heard many times (though I can't seem to find any verification for it at present, so it may be apocryphal) that the great Rabbi Yisroel Salanter favored translating the Talmud into German, reasoning that assimilated German Jews wanted to study whatever respectable German scholars studied, and that therefore the most effective way to promote Talmud study for Jews might be to make it accessible to Gentile scholars! I think a similar reasoning might be needed for American pro-Israel groups: don't market Israel to young Jews, market Israel to young people in general. I think that will most effectively reach the young Jews who most need reaching.

While Luntz focuses on the medium of printed or otherwise visual marketing materials, Gil Troy focuses on person-to-person and organizational interactions with young Jews. Writing under the auspices of CAJE, the Coalition for Advancement of Jewish Education, Troy argues that the traditional model of hasbara (which might be translated as explanation, interpretation, or even propaganda) has failed. Troy's reasoning as to why it has failed parallels Luntz's conclusions in many ways:

That functionalist and all-too-often propagandistic approach is actually part of the problem. We need true education and real ownership by our students of the facts and ideas, not a “line” we peddle to them to pass on to others...

Most Jewish students enter college with a superficial and brittle understanding of Israel and Zionism. This brittleness has negative consequences both left and right. For most, their happy-dappy, hava nagilah, blue-and-white stereotype of Israel is so fragile that it shatters at the first hit from a questioning roommate, let alone a hostile professor. For others, the same fragile construct leads to a smothering “Israel, right or wrong, love it or leave it” approach that stifles dissent and helps perpetuate the popular campus stereotype of Israel advocates and Jews as remarkably close-minded on the complex challenges facing Israel.

These “brittle” students, by the way, are usually the Israel “experts” on campus. An overwhelming majority of Jewish students enter college without even that superficial support of Israel, with their feelings for Israel first diluted by the ambivalent and distant approach of their parents to Zionism, then beaten down by media reports about Israeli “oppression.”...

By having a broad, deep, intense identification with Israel, students can learn how to be “pro-Israel” without agreeing with every Israeli move, just as we are U.S. patriots without approving every mistake or misstep. By having a rich, balanced understanding of the relationship between Israel and the Jewish people, we can disprove the ever-more-popular slur that Zionism is colonialism and assert our rights as an “indigenous people,” people with a 4000-year-old link to a land that is consecrated by our history, by our theology, and by our identity. By studying Israel in context and with balance, our students will emerge with a robust Jewish and Zionist identity, one that can tolerate dissent and ambiguities, one that can sustain assault and doubt, one that can be dynamic and open rather than static and defensive.

If I had to summarize the insights these two authors present with only one sentence, it would be this: it is not enough to be right.

It is certainly necessary to be right (i.e. it is not okay to be wrong), but it is not sufficient to be right. Speaking from personal experience (and, as in this entire post, not as a representative of BJPA), I have often felt deeply uncomfortable with the tone of pro-Israel advocacy groups, even when I agreed with the positions they were advancing.

I had this feeling during the 2006 war against Hezbollah terrorism, during Operation Cast Lead against Hamas rocket attacks, and again now during the flotilla backlash. In all these cases I have agreed with the Israeli military actions in question, and have found most of the world's criticisms of these operations to be either misguided or unfair, and in some cases, virulently hateful. But in all these cases, I have also felt that the Jewish community has responded to the unreasonable rhetoric with unreasonable rhetoric of its own.

You can be right without taking on an alarmist tone, verging on the hysterical. You can be right without painting anyone who disagrees as either an antisemitic villain or as a fool being duped by antisemitic villains. You can be right without invoking Hitler every ten seconds. Persuasion is a form of seduction. It requires seeking out those who don't agree with you yet, and meeting them where they are, so that you can then lead them to where you want them to be.

Project names like "Campus Watch," "Fuel for Truth," and "Stand With Us," as well as idioms like "winning the PR battle", tend to cast the discussion in terms of a war -- a war in which those who disagree presumably need to be watched on campus, or need their lies to be countered by fueling the truth, or to be stood against. That isn't going to win very many people over from the other side. Where is the seduction?

Maybe there should be a sort of reverse J Street. J Street wants to change the definition of "pro-Israel" to mean favoring a liberal view of the situation, including heavy doses of criticism of Israel. A reverse J Street would change the definition of "peace activism" to mean favoring the country actually pursuing peace (i.e. Israel).

The reverse J Street would not be nominally pro-Israel at all -- it would be genuinely focused on building peace, but with the philosophy that security is an integral part of peace, and that peace and pacifism are not actually compatible. (Pacifism being another name for refusing to stand up to thugs who threaten peace.) Such an organization would seek, for the sake of Palestinians and Israelis alike, to build support for policies that weaken Hamas and Iran, the major players standing in the way of peace. It would not wave the Israeli flag, nor seek to promote Jewish nationalism, nor would it see Jews as its only, or even its primary, target audience. It would rather show favor to Israel because of Israel's genuine standing as the party in the Middle East which most wants and most seeks actual peace.

That's quite enough of my personal opinions. What do you think? Are Frank Luntz and Gil Troy right about how to reach young Jews? Am I right that we need to change the tone of our advocacy and build a "reverse J Street?"

NYC Event: Love, Hate, and the Jewish State

We're proud to be one of the many cosponsors of this great New Israel Fund and Makom's event, Love, Hate and the Jewish State 3.0: What's Jewish about a Jewish State?

If you're in NYC, register and join us for what should be a great conversation!

Love, Hate and the Jewish State 3.0: What's Jewish about a Jewish State?

Thursday, June 24 at 7:00 pm
The JCC in Manhattan
334 Amsterdam Ave at 76th Street
Cost $10

Do your social justice values impact the way that you relate to Israel as the Jewish state?

Social justice and Israel are often polarizing and separate conversations. Israel’s Jewish character affects government policy, life-cycle events, state symbols, and everyday life for both Jews and non-Jews.

Join us for the third in a series of highly interactive, non-persuasive, open discussions with a diverse group of people in their 20s and 30s.  The program will be followed by a reception.

Hosted by Joel Chasnoff, Comedian and Author of The 188th Crybaby Brigade: A Skinny Jewish Kid from Chicago Fights Hezbollah

Being Chosen, Being Distinct

Jewish distinction has been in the news this past week. In a NY Times Op-Ed column, Jewish novelist Michal Chabon (of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay and The Yiddish Policemen's Union) reacts to the Gaza flotilla affair with a lament that Jews appear to be no smarter than any other people, chosenness notwithstanding. This reaction opens an exploration of the concept of Jewish distinction:

This is, of course, the foundational ambiguity of Judaism and Jewish identity: the idea of chosenness, of exceptionalism, of the treasure that is a curse, the blessing that is a burden, of the setting apart that may presage redemption or extermination. To be chosen has been, all too often in our history, to be culled... Now, with the memory of the Mavi Marmara fresh in our minds, is the time for Jews to confront, at long last, the eternal truth of our stupidity as a people, which I will stack, blunder for blunder, against that of any other nation now or at any time living on this planet of folly, in this world of Chelm.

Leaving aside questions of Jewish superiority, a Newsweek article from June 3rd reports that

the Jews of the Diaspora share a set of telltale genetic markers, supporting the traditional belief that Jews scattered around the world have a common ancestry. But various Diaspora populations have their own distinct genetic signatures, shedding light on their origins and history. In addition to the age-old question of whether Jews are simply people who share a religion or are a distinct population, the scientific verdict is settling on the latter.

The question of Chosenness has long been a sore point for antisemites, a point of affection for philosemites, and, naturally, a point of discomfort for many Jews.

Perhaps most famously, the founder of Reconstructionist Judaism, Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, rejected the notion of chosenness. As George B. Driesen noted in The Reconstructionist in 1995, Kaplan "believed that the notion of a chosen people conflicts with a non-supernatural conception of divinity." Driesen quotes Kaplan directly as writing that "it is deemed inadvisable, to say the least, to keep alive ideas of racial or national superiority, inasmuch as they are known to exercise a divisive influence, generating suspicion and hatred." Driesen goes on to trace the development of liturgical innovations in the non-Orthodox movements which sought to erase ideas of Jewish chosenness. (For more on the theme of Jewish chosenness as manifested in liturgy, read Gordon M. Freeman's analysis of the prayer Aleinu as a political statement.)

Arnold M. Eisen, now Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, argued in 1990 that the idea of chosenness has been critical to the formation of American Jewish identity, allowing 20th Century American Jews "to make their way, yet remain distinct." This idea, he writes, has "provoked... an outpouring of interpretation, while others (exile, messiah, revelation) were virtually ignored".

What do you think? Is the idea of the Jewish people as the Chosen people an eternal truth, or an outdated concept? Does it imply superiority? Does it imply inferiority? Is it compatible with the notion of human equality? Let's hear some opinions in the comments section.

My own personal view (as always, not reflecting any official position of the BJPA) is that Jewish chosenness need not be seen as implying superiority of any kind. One can just as easily conceive of it as a special responsibility given to the Jews, a responsibility to foster ethical monotheism in the world, but with the knowledge that other peoples, cultures and individuals may also be chosen for other different and important tasks. Indeed, one might say that each person on earth is chosen for a unique and vital purpose. But enough homiletics; what say you?

Strong-Arming the Denominations

A new education grant that is forcing inter-denominational collaboration for teacher training on the MA level raises some interesting questions.

Tablet magazine reported on a recent Jim Joseph Foundation grant that requires the Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform universities whose Education MA programs it supports to fund collaborative joint-teacher training endeavors. Meaning that for at least some portion of their education, future Orthodox-trained, Conservative-trained, and Reform-trained educators will themselves have studied and trained together.

The danger for the liberal Universities is that as their ideology seems to move closer and collaboration increases, the distinction between them and need for distinct organizational structures and identities weakens. For Yeshiva University, the threat seems to be more of brand dilution and credibility within the larger, more splintered orthodox world. According to Tablet's characterization, Richard Joel,head of Yeshiva University, "took pains to minimize its significance in an interview."

Economically difficult times do and always have lead to compromises (and hopefully innovation). The current wave of research, articles like, The Unfolding Economic Crisis: Its Devastating Implications for American Jewry and Doing More With Less: Can Jewish and Other Nonprofits Turn Crisis Into Opportunity? (2009) echoes over and over again: Jewish Communal Service and the New Economy , Managing Jewish Communal Agencies in Difficult Times: Cutting and Coping (1992), A Jewish Communal Response to the Current Economic Crisis (1983).


The Foundation seems to be using its economic leverage to (attempt to) bring Jews, or at least Jewish educational institutions, closer together. Personally I think that's a good thing, but it is another example of the power of money to set the agenda for Jewish organizational life.  I do think it's ironic that after what seems like so much angst and ink spent on the impact of the 'new trend' of independent minyanim on the established denominations, apparently anti-establishment pressure can come from arguably the most established place of all - wealth.

The more things change...

Meanwhile, rockets circle overhead, statesmen scale the summit, dark-skinned Africans and Asians are awakening in revolt against the imposition of restrictive control by foreign domination and white Southern demagogues are rising in massive resistance against the imposition of human decency by the Constitution of the United States, the strontium 90 falls all around all around, Jews in Israel are confidently building a state in the teeth of Arab and Soviet hostility, Jews in Europe are courageously rebuilding Jewish life despite decimation and dispersion, and we Jews here in the United States are gropingly seeking to maintain a meaningful Jewish life in the face of apathy, ignorance, and many signposts but few roads.

-Walter Lurie, President, National Conference of Jewish Communal Service

This is a quote from the opening remarks of the 1959 meeting of the National Conference of Jewish Communal Service. It wouldn't take much editing to keep it relevant today. (Attention Jewish communal speech writers: we have resources!)

white Southern demagogues are rising in massive resistance against the imposition of human decency by the Constitution of the United States

The tea party? Hopefully the first part of this quote will become less true and the second part, more true, the future composition of this Supreme Court permitting.

Relationship-endings and Jewish communities

American Jewish marriages end in divorce at a similar rate as American marriages in general. In her article, Rekindling Tradition as Life Partnerships End, Kathleen Jenkins uses dozens of qualitative interviews with Jewish divorce(e)s and clergy to explore how divorce affects Jewish practices, attachments, and needs.

All the participants talked about how negatively divorce impacted their home practice, shabbat and holiday celebrations. Many turned or returned to synagogue congregational life as a source of meaningful Jewish engagement. Singing, communal prayer, and various rituals that communities have developed, like a mikvah visit associated with the completion of the divorce or the recitation of kaddish for the death of the relationship, could be sources of comfort and meaning.

On the other hand, respondents also often described experiences of silence, frustration, and shame: synagogue dues not accessible to a suddenly poorer unit; activities centered around families; fear of gossip and/or anxiety around divorce making discussions of divorce feel taboo, etc.

The author points out that the transitional period after a divorce is a time of rich spiritual potential, one that Jewish communities and clergy should not overlook in terms of outreach and building communal connections. Her recommendations include ideas like explicitly including divorce in references to areas of pastoral care and not shying away from mentioning divorce in sermons; establishing and offering ritual practices associated with divorce; and diversifying synagogue activities beyond the normative family model.

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BJPA.org has reached 5,000 documents!

Somewhere between "Confrontation in a Jewish Center Between a Resolution on Equal Opportunities and Practical Reality" (1965) and "How To: Create Your Own Denomination" (2010), we hit a new milestone - 5,000 documents online! Come and explore!