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JTA Philanthropy Newsletter: Fighting Conversion Bill, Video Dollars, Weinberg Grant, Hack to Flack InboxX [Image]Reply[Image] [Image][Image]The Fundermentalist to me show details 8:26 am (2 days ago) Images are not displayed.
Display images below - Always display images from newsdesk@jta.org[Image] [Image] [Image] Week of July 16, 2010On the web at fundermentalist.com
THIS WEEK
ROLE REVERSALS IN CONVERSION FIGHT INSIDE THE WEINBERG GRANT FOR HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS IN THE U.S. MORE FROM WEINBERG ON PRIORITIZING AID TO THE POOR
EARLY RETURNS ON FEDERATION CAMPAIGNS HAS YOUR FUND-RAISING VIDEO RAISED MONEY? FROM HACK TO FLACK LOOSE CHANGE GRANTS COMINGS AND GOINGS
MENTAL NOTES
Role reversals in conversion fight: The biggest Jewish news of the week was the surprise move Monday by Israeli lawmaker David Rotem, when he pushed his controversial conversion bill through the Knesset's Law Committee. The bill, which would put conversions to Judaism squarely in the hands of the Orthodox-controlled Chief Rabbinate, now moves to the full Knesset, which must approve it three times in order to make it law.
Pressure is coming from many angles to prod Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Knesset to table the votes until after the government's two-month recess. That would give opponents the time to get Rotem, who crafted the bill, to either withdraw or seriously amend it.
The bill's many critics say the measure would drive a wedge between Jews in Israel and the Diaspora by crushing the movement to create a religiously pluralistic Judaism in the Holy Land. Pundits have been weighing in, taking to the pages of, among others, The New York Times, The Jerusalem Post, The Atlantic Online and Dan Sieradski's Facebook page.
And naturally the Reform, Reconstructionist and Conservative movements have been incredibly vocal on the matter -- this boils down to a fight over their legitimacy in Israel.
But it is the Jewish federation system and the Jewish Agency for Israel that have taken center stage here.
Natan Sharansky, the agency's chairman, has officially led the push, acting as the lead negotiator with political leaders in Israel from his longtime political ally Netanyahu to Rotem. Sharansky has been bidding to drum up official parliamentary opposition to the bill and trying to get Rotem to back off, though the Yisrael Beiteinu lawmaker is under pressure from the Shas Party to push through the bill without changes.
The CEO of the Jewish Federations of North America, Jerry Silverman, has openly lambasted the bill, calling Rotem's move a betrayal.
As it stands now, this all makes sense -- Sharansky and the JFNA both have much to gain if they manage to stop the bill. Doing so would strengthen the position for both with key constituencies at a time when JAFI and JFNA have detractors publicly questioning their viability, legitimacy and need to exist. On the flip side, JAFI and JFNA would have had even more to lose if they had sat out this fight and let the religious streams take the lead, as they would have appeared out of touch with a Diaspora Jewish community that is decidedly pluralistic.
Yet the lens of history shows their pro-pluralist position was not always a given.
For the past decade, the Jewish federation system has indeed been an important supporter of the religious pluralism effort in Israel. But back in 1997, the system was literally cornered into supporting the movement.
Reform and Conservative leaders at the time were fighting two fights. The Knesset was debating another bill on conversion that would have made all conversions in Israel subject to Orthodox approval. In addition, the non-Orthodox movements were fighting desperately for the right to have egalitarian prayer at the plaza in front of the Western Wall following incidents in which Israeli police hassled a number of Reform and Conservative services.
In September of that year, the United Jewish Appeal and local federations agreed to raise up to $20 million to support the then-fledgling projects of the Reform and Conservative movements in Israel. But that was only after intense pressure from the liberal movements, which threatened to start their own fund-raising campaigns -- a move the federation system feared would significantly damage its own annual campaigns, and after several rabbis the previous year had called for a boycott of the federation system for lack of support.
In exchange for the $20 million, the rabbis behind the threats agreed to call for the unity of the Jewish people and to offer public support for the federated campaign, as JTA wrote back in 1997.
Sharansky's turnabout is even more striking.
A brief history:
As the former dissident, who in a sense is the face of the 450,000 Jews who immigrated to Israel from the former Soviet Union over the past 30 years, Sharansky has found himself squarely in the middle of the conversion issue, especially because it is so closely tied to who can become an automatic citizen of Israel via the Law of Return.
During the early part of his political career, he sided with those that supported Orthodox-only conversions -- a move that left many Reform and Conservative Jews feeling betrayed, given their previous efforts to help free him from the Soviet Union.
In 1997, when the "Who is a Jew" debate approached meltdown status, the Jewish Agency and federations unsuccessfully lobbied Sharansky, then a minister in the first Netanyahu government, to oppose the conversion bill in question. He met with a delegation led by the Reform movement's Rabbi Eric Yoffie arguing that Israel and Diaspora relations were tenuous at best, and giving the Orthodox a monopoly would be a dangerous step.
"Just as you ask us to understand Israeli reality, you have to understand the reality of U.S. Jewry," Yoffie told Sharansky at the time. "So that we will remain one people, 3 million Reform Jews need to know that the government of Israel understands them, knows them, is aware of their problems and considers them legitimate."
Even then, Sharansky showed signs of understanding the stakes, as he helped forge a compromise by helping to create a committee comprised of Reform, Orthodox and Conservative officials to discuss pluralism in Israel. Yet he still personally supported Orthodox conversion as the status quo and supported the conversion bill.
In 1999, Netanyahu revived the bill under pressure from the Orthodox parties that threatened to destroy his coalition. And Sharansky, his ally,was heckled at a meeting of the World Union for Progressive Zionism -- world leaders of the Reform movement.
The next year, Sharansky further irked Reform leaders when he said that he would not approve so-called "quickie" conversions performed in the Diaspora unless those who had gone through the conversions could prove their connections to the Diaspora Jewish community through which they converted.
But now, as the chairman of the Jewish Agency, who has steered his organization along a path to build Jewish identity by strengthening Israel-Diaspora relations, Sharansky seems to have switched positions, lining up with those who say that Orthodox-only conversion policies are in no one's best interest except the Rabbinate. And now it is Sharansky taking the lead in trying to convince Netanyahu not to go down that road.
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Inside the Weinberg grant for Holocaust survivors in the U.S.: The Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation announced this week that it will establish a $10 million fund for emergency services for Holocaust survivors in North America.
The fund, to be established through a grant to be paid out over the next five years, will be distributed through the Conference of Jewish Material Claims Against Germany -- going toward an already existing Claims Conference program that gives micro grants to individual survivors for a range of emergency services, including medical equipment and medications, dental care, transportation, food and short-term home care.
In making the grant, Weinberg foundation and Claims Conference officials hope to bring attention to a segment of the Jewish poor and of the survivor community that they believe is somewhat forgotten.
Julius Berman, the Claims Conference's chairman, said that U.S. Jewish communities often have higher local priorities. And while the Claims Conference distributes more than $100 million per year to provide social services to elderly survivors, the vast majority of the money goes to help those in Israel, Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.
"You know what is happening in Ukraine? You see the outhouses and that there is no security blanket there?" Julius Berman, the Claims Conference's chairman, told The Fundermentalist. "But here, particularly in Florida and New York, and areas like that, by the time we focus on these other areas, there are very little funds available. So this is to isolate and to target a special area of survivors that in the overall emphasis on Israel and FSU is getting lost in the shuffle."
Ellen Heller, a trustee of the Weinberg foundation, said she believes the oversight of American survivors in need has not been intentional. She says that for many people, it's hard to grasp that there could be serious needs in the United States.
Citing data provided by the Claims Conference and verified anecdotally by dozens of conversations with experts in the area, Heller said that 25 percent to 37 percent of elderly American survivors live below the poverty line.
"There is need throughout the world," said Heller, the immediate past chair of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, which runs 200 Hesed organizations that help an estimated 140,000 survivors in the former Soviet Union. The Heseds receive tens of millions of dollars from the Claims Conference each year.
"Survivors in the country that make up the FSU are in genuine dire need, but it was surprising to us that here in the U.S., with our federation system and government support, that in fact a significant number of Nazi victims were really doing quite poorly here, and there was need," she said.
"We are hoping that by making this grant, it is not only going to meet these needs but also going to draw attention to these needs. A lot of it is a lack of knowledge. We hope the news of this grant brings attention to others who can also assistance."
The money will be distributed through already existing programs run by Jewish federations and Jewish Family Service outposts that provide micro-grants to survivors in need of help.
The Weinberg foundation already has given more than $6 million to help elderly American survivors, according to its chairman, Don Weinberg, and it is hoping that this $10 million will help a subset of the population in the last chapter of their lives.
"A poor elderly person is a poor elderly person, and one could ask why focus on a subset," Weinberg said. "But I think there are some unique attributes to this one. This doesn't mean we wouldn't give to the other poor -- that is what we do -- but these people have really had hell to live through in one time in their lives, and we want to make sure we are covering them."
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More from Weinberg on prioritizing aid to the poor: With just over $2 billion in assets, Weinberg is one of the country's largest foundations. And each year it gives away some $100 million to help the elderly, the poor and to fund education -- about $50 million of which goes to explicitly Jewish causes -- making it the country's largest Jewish-centric foundation.
Yet it is also one of the few Jewish-centric foundations that is explicitly dedicated to helping the poor.
The foundation considered making its gift to help impoverished Holocaust survivors a challenge grant to help spur other Jewish foundations to give, but in the end it figured that would hold up the process of actually getting money to the survivors in need. And the foundation believes that there is an immediate need for a population that quite frankly does not have a lot of time left. That it is a five-year grant says a lot about the amount of time the foundation believes this need will exist.
But the foundation's chairman, Don Weinberg, says there is a broader issue here: that Jewish-centric foundations in general do not seem to place poverty issues at the top of their lists.
In Weinberg's words: "Let me try to frame it. And this is descriptive, and I am not judging it. I am on the board of the Jewish Funders Network [which counts as its members those who give $25,000 or more per year to Jewish causes] and have participated in [Gary Rosenblatt's annual pow-wow] 'The Conversation.' I know that when the JFN has taken polls of its membership, asking what are your primary focuses, very few funders identify poverty or direct services to alleviate poverty as an area of focus. You see predominantly at the JFN and in my two experiences with The Conversation that most of the interest appears to be on Jewish identity, continuity, peoplehood and things like that -- and very little on Jewish poverty or poverty in general.
"There is a broader problem among Jewish funders and funders generally. I really think from my experience -- and this is not to say that there is indifference to Jewish poverty, I wouldn't say that -- but when our people are putting [forth] their focus and money, it is not on poverty issues. Those other issues are important, too, but it would be nice if they would add poverty as well."
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Early returns on federation campaigns: The Jewish federation system is starting to get a picture of how this year's fund raising compares to last year, and the early returns are a somewhat positive mixed bag.
A number of the country's largest federations that end their fiscal years June 30 have started to make their numbers public. Here are some of the highlights and lowlights from a few significant federations:
The country's largest Jewish federation exceeded its initial fund-raising goals for fiscal year 2010. The UJA-Federation of New York raised $136.1 million through its annual campaign, beating its projection of $134 million, the federation announced last week. The federation also raised $39.3 million in planned giving and endowments, and $5.3 million in capital gifts and special initiatives, raising a total of $180.7 million for the 2010 fiscal year. The Associated: Jewish Federation of Baltimore will raise more than $43.9 million, a 2.4 percent increase from the previous year, according to The Baltimore Jewish Times. That includes gifts from 1,415 new donors. But allocations will include a $703,000 drop in funding for Israel and overseas programs because Associated officials are focusing on local services. The Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia only saw a 2 percent decline in overall giving last year, but it has had to make significant cuts to a number of its long-standing affiliates because the unrestricted money from donors has shrunk significantly,The Philadelphia Jewish Exponent reported. The federation raised $27.8 million during its fiscal year 2009, and actually saw a $1 million increase in total revenue due to increases from its endowment, the government and other charities, including the United Way. But it had to make major cuts because the money that comes from unrestricted donations from the local Jewish community dropped by 14 percent, or $1.8 million. The $16.2 million brought in through unrestricted funds will be divided among 70 organizations, with several seeing cuts and others completely left out. Social service programs, social responsibility programs and overseas programs took the biggest hit. Fundermentalist's take: According to the federations' umbrella group, the Jewish Federations of North American, the total numbers are fairly positive. The federations that have reported say they took in $660 million this past year, about $10 million more in total than the previous year at this time, and the average gift is up by about 3.4 percent.
Those are certainly positive numbers, especially given that last year, the average gift was down by 4.3 percent.
On the other hand ...
In 2009, the federations raised $808 million through their campaigns (this does not include money for capital projects, endowments and special campaigns, which annually total more than $1 billion). But that was down from $918 million the previous year, before the recession really took hold. And even though the average gift has grown in 2010, the growth has not erased the 4.3 percent decrease from 2008-09.
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Has your fund-raising video raised money? The Chronicle of Philanthropy's Prospecting blog is running a series called "Fund-Raising Videos that Work."
The Chronicle is asking nonprofits to send in their fund-raising videos along with some of the backstories of how they came to be, the strategies behind the videos, how much each organization spent on the videos, and how much the videos raised.
It will run posts on the more interesting submissions.
Two of the recent pieces featured have come from Jewish nonprofits -- the Jewish Family and Children's Services of Phoenix and Youth Renewal Fund, a program to provide supplemental education to disadvantaged Israeli children.
Check out The Fundermentalist blog, where we are reposting with permission the two posts, but if you would like to submit your organization's video to The Chronicle for consideration, send an e-mail to its Web editor, Peter Panepento (peter.panepento@philanthropy.com).
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From hack to flack: Some in the media have taken pretty serious jabs at the Jewish Agency for Israel over the agency's decision to refocus its mission from one historically bent on settling the State of Israel and recruiting new immigrants to one aimed at building global Jewish identity. Now it is up to a former Jerusalem Post reporter, Haviv Rettig, to defend against such attacks.
Haaretz has been among the more serious critics of the agency. Shortly after the organization approved its new mission plan late last month, Anshel Pfeffer, the staff writer who covers the agency for the paper, went for the jugular in a piece titled "Jewish Agency's new plan for the Diaspora proves its irrelevance."
"There were two significant messages of change in the Agency's goals: that it is effectively getting out of the aliyah business and it wouldn't continue funneling huge funds into educational programs in Israel," Pfeffer wrote. "But these changes were obfuscated by weasel words and hackneyed explanations."
Ouch.
The paper followed up its coverage of the agency with a story about the organization's decision to hire Rettig to serve as the agency's spokesman with U.S. and European media. Prior to being hired, Rettig covered the agency for the Post -- Haaretz's primary rival in the anglo-Israeli press.
Haaretz passed on taking any further potshots at the agency or Rettig, but the story certainly elicited a response. Several people e-mailed me asking what I made of the deal and whether I thought there was any conflict of interest.
I had heard that the hiring was in the works a week or so before it became official, when Rettig was in the final stages of the agency's tender process.
After a couple of playful private e-mails with Rettig, who I have known as a colleague and competitor for the past several years, I got him on the record about what it means to jump from covering the agency to flacking for the agency -- and what it was like to cover the group during the past couple of weeks as he vied for what was a highly sought-after job, especially during the agency's board of governors meetings last week.
"It has been a funny few weeks going through the tender process," he said.
"The news reportage was difficult, and the way to do it was to minimize it, to just keep it honest and minimal," he said.
If he had not been a candidate for the job, Rettig said he would have wanted his coverage to be the lead story in the paper, including an analysis that acknowledged the risks of the new plan -- but saying it could save the agency.
"Instead," he said, "there were three relatively small stories."
Rettig said he took the job because he is on board with the new course that chairman Natan Sharansky has set for the agency and the plan and to help Israeli and Diaspora Jews better see eye-to-eye.
"This might sound a little arrogant, but there is an issue I am an expert in, and it is a genuine issue in that there is the growing gap between the Jews in Israel and the Jews in the Diaspora," he said. "These are two different kinds of Jews and Jewish societies. That is something I have expertise in, and that is fundamental to Natan Sharansky's project."
According to Rettig, he begged off the Jewish Agency beat when he became a serious candidate for the job, but the Post's editor in chief, David Horovitz, kept him in place.
"David Horovitz thought that I could be fair, and that he could make sure the coverage itself was fair," Rettig said. "And the coverage was very, very much in quotes. Even in the news, there was no analysis. The vast majority is almost entirely quotes. That was all intentional. The concept was to be very, very careful. He said he trusts my honesty, my basic honesty, and it was all overseen by the staff."
Indeed, the JPost's coverage of the agency during the past month has been vanilla. But I would have been happy with deeper coverage -- as someone who has covered much of the same territory as Rettig for the past four years, albeit from the other side of the ocean, I trust his reporting and respect his opinions (even if I did not always agree with his analysis). I wouldn't say the same for all those who cover the Jewish organizational world -- some of what you read is just flat wrong.
Once the hiring was made official earlier this month, Horovitz did take Rettig off the Jewish Agency beat, so he will spend his last few days at the Post working on non-agency stories.
Rettig said he is looking forward to a job in which he is not merely relaying to the world the party line of a potentially revamped Jewish Agency, but also hopefully getting to help shape the new agency -- a process of reform for which he has pushed from afar for years in the pages of the Post.
"I have come to really believe the Jewish people really need some things done, so it is tremendously gratifying to step in to do it," he said.
"This is the aircraft carrier, the huge prototypical education system of the Jewish future. Everything can fail. There have been strategic plans before that have failed, and leaders with big ideas. On the other hand, it could succeed.
"Once upon a time, there were a few big Jewish machers who put together a group that built a state," he added, referencing the early days of the Jewish Agency. "It takes a lot to turn an aircraft carrier around. But if you do, then you have an aircraft carrier on your side."
Good luck, Haviv.
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LOOSE CHANGE
Quick hits from the Jewish media:
The Jewish Week takes a look inside the Jim Joseph Foundation. The Jewish Theological Seminary will undergo a second round of layoffs, according to The Forward. The Forward frames the Schusterman-Diament debate: Good tent vs. big tent. The Los Angeles Jewish federation will eliminate its overseas and Israel department, according to the L.A. Jewish Journal. The Washington Jewish Week looks at the Washington federation's search for a new CEO. [Image] Back to top
GRANTS
The Jim Joseph Foundation announced a three-year, $5.2 million grant to the DeLeT teacher education program at Brandeis University and Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Los Angeles. The grant extends a donor relationship between the foundation and DeLeT that began two years ago. As of this summer, the program will have prepared more than 130 Jewish day school teachers, working in 40 schools across the United States. Louis and Dorothy Fox of Baltimore have left $500,000 to the Jewish Federations of North America to establish an endowment fund to be used for continuing the education of professionals engaged in programs and endeavors sponsored and promoted by the JFNA. The money was originally to be left to the JFNA's predecessor, the Council of Jewish Federations.Seventeen Chabad-Lubavitch programs have won $20,000 each after finishing among the top 200 charities in the Chase Community Giving competition. Fourteen of them are branches of Chabad's the Friendship Circle, which pairs teenage volunteers with children with special needs. [Image] Back to top
COMINGS AND GOINGS
Marc Silberberg of New York was recently elected chairman of the board of HIAS, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, at a meeting held at Ellis Island. Silberberg, a senior partner in the international law firm of Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, specializes in the taxation of mergers, acquisitions, and restructurings and serves on the Executive Committee of the Tax Section of the New York State Bar Association. He also currently serves on the board of directors of the September 11th Families Association, which operates the Tribute WTC Visitor Center at the World Trade Center site. Marilyn Sneiderman has been appointed the executive director of AVODAH: The Jewish Service Corps. Sneiderman, who replaces Rabbi David Rosenn, who served as AVODAH's founding director for 13 years, will begin her duties July 26. Prior to coming to AVODAH she was the deputy director of the B'nai Brith Youth Organization. [Image] Back to top
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Display images below - Always display images from newsdesk@jta.org[Image] [Image] [Image] Week of July 16, 2010On the web at fundermentalist.com
THIS WEEK
ROLE REVERSALS IN CONVERSION FIGHT INSIDE THE WEINBERG GRANT FOR HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS IN THE U.S. MORE FROM WEINBERG ON PRIORITIZING AID TO THE POOR
EARLY RETURNS ON FEDERATION CAMPAIGNS HAS YOUR FUND-RAISING VIDEO RAISED MONEY? FROM HACK TO FLACK LOOSE CHANGE GRANTS COMINGS AND GOINGS
MENTAL NOTES
Role reversals in conversion fight: The biggest Jewish news of the week was the surprise move Monday by Israeli lawmaker David Rotem, when he pushed his controversial conversion bill through the Knesset's Law Committee. The bill, which would put conversions to Judaism squarely in the hands of the Orthodox-controlled Chief Rabbinate, now moves to the full Knesset, which must approve it three times in order to make it law.
Pressure is coming from many angles to prod Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Knesset to table the votes until after the government's two-month recess. That would give opponents the time to get Rotem, who crafted the bill, to either withdraw or seriously amend it.
The bill's many critics say the measure would drive a wedge between Jews in Israel and the Diaspora by crushing the movement to create a religiously pluralistic Judaism in the Holy Land. Pundits have been weighing in, taking to the pages of, among others, The New York Times, The Jerusalem Post, The Atlantic Online and Dan Sieradski's Facebook page.
And naturally the Reform, Reconstructionist and Conservative movements have been incredibly vocal on the matter -- this boils down to a fight over their legitimacy in Israel.
But it is the Jewish federation system and the Jewish Agency for Israel that have taken center stage here.
Natan Sharansky, the agency's chairman, has officially led the push, acting as the lead negotiator with political leaders in Israel from his longtime political ally Netanyahu to Rotem. Sharansky has been bidding to drum up official parliamentary opposition to the bill and trying to get Rotem to back off, though the Yisrael Beiteinu lawmaker is under pressure from the Shas Party to push through the bill without changes.
The CEO of the Jewish Federations of North America, Jerry Silverman, has openly lambasted the bill, calling Rotem's move a betrayal.
As it stands now, this all makes sense -- Sharansky and the JFNA both have much to gain if they manage to stop the bill. Doing so would strengthen the position for both with key constituencies at a time when JAFI and JFNA have detractors publicly questioning their viability, legitimacy and need to exist. On the flip side, JAFI and JFNA would have had even more to lose if they had sat out this fight and let the religious streams take the lead, as they would have appeared out of touch with a Diaspora Jewish community that is decidedly pluralistic.
Yet the lens of history shows their pro-pluralist position was not always a given.
For the past decade, the Jewish federation system has indeed been an important supporter of the religious pluralism effort in Israel. But back in 1997, the system was literally cornered into supporting the movement.
Reform and Conservative leaders at the time were fighting two fights. The Knesset was debating another bill on conversion that would have made all conversions in Israel subject to Orthodox approval. In addition, the non-Orthodox movements were fighting desperately for the right to have egalitarian prayer at the plaza in front of the Western Wall following incidents in which Israeli police hassled a number of Reform and Conservative services.
In September of that year, the United Jewish Appeal and local federations agreed to raise up to $20 million to support the then-fledgling projects of the Reform and Conservative movements in Israel. But that was only after intense pressure from the liberal movements, which threatened to start their own fund-raising campaigns -- a move the federation system feared would significantly damage its own annual campaigns, and after several rabbis the previous year had called for a boycott of the federation system for lack of support.
In exchange for the $20 million, the rabbis behind the threats agreed to call for the unity of the Jewish people and to offer public support for the federated campaign, as JTA wrote back in 1997.
Sharansky's turnabout is even more striking.
A brief history:
As the former dissident, who in a sense is the face of the 450,000 Jews who immigrated to Israel from the former Soviet Union over the past 30 years, Sharansky has found himself squarely in the middle of the conversion issue, especially because it is so closely tied to who can become an automatic citizen of Israel via the Law of Return.
During the early part of his political career, he sided with those that supported Orthodox-only conversions -- a move that left many Reform and Conservative Jews feeling betrayed, given their previous efforts to help free him from the Soviet Union.
In 1997, when the "Who is a Jew" debate approached meltdown status, the Jewish Agency and federations unsuccessfully lobbied Sharansky, then a minister in the first Netanyahu government, to oppose the conversion bill in question. He met with a delegation led by the Reform movement's Rabbi Eric Yoffie arguing that Israel and Diaspora relations were tenuous at best, and giving the Orthodox a monopoly would be a dangerous step.
"Just as you ask us to understand Israeli reality, you have to understand the reality of U.S. Jewry," Yoffie told Sharansky at the time. "So that we will remain one people, 3 million Reform Jews need to know that the government of Israel understands them, knows them, is aware of their problems and considers them legitimate."
Even then, Sharansky showed signs of understanding the stakes, as he helped forge a compromise by helping to create a committee comprised of Reform, Orthodox and Conservative officials to discuss pluralism in Israel. Yet he still personally supported Orthodox conversion as the status quo and supported the conversion bill.
In 1999, Netanyahu revived the bill under pressure from the Orthodox parties that threatened to destroy his coalition. And Sharansky, his ally,was heckled at a meeting of the World Union for Progressive Zionism -- world leaders of the Reform movement.
The next year, Sharansky further irked Reform leaders when he said that he would not approve so-called "quickie" conversions performed in the Diaspora unless those who had gone through the conversions could prove their connections to the Diaspora Jewish community through which they converted.
But now, as the chairman of the Jewish Agency, who has steered his organization along a path to build Jewish identity by strengthening Israel-Diaspora relations, Sharansky seems to have switched positions, lining up with those who say that Orthodox-only conversion policies are in no one's best interest except the Rabbinate. And now it is Sharansky taking the lead in trying to convince Netanyahu not to go down that road.
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Inside the Weinberg grant for Holocaust survivors in the U.S.: The Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation announced this week that it will establish a $10 million fund for emergency services for Holocaust survivors in North America.
The fund, to be established through a grant to be paid out over the next five years, will be distributed through the Conference of Jewish Material Claims Against Germany -- going toward an already existing Claims Conference program that gives micro grants to individual survivors for a range of emergency services, including medical equipment and medications, dental care, transportation, food and short-term home care.
In making the grant, Weinberg foundation and Claims Conference officials hope to bring attention to a segment of the Jewish poor and of the survivor community that they believe is somewhat forgotten.
Julius Berman, the Claims Conference's chairman, said that U.S. Jewish communities often have higher local priorities. And while the Claims Conference distributes more than $100 million per year to provide social services to elderly survivors, the vast majority of the money goes to help those in Israel, Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.
"You know what is happening in Ukraine? You see the outhouses and that there is no security blanket there?" Julius Berman, the Claims Conference's chairman, told The Fundermentalist. "But here, particularly in Florida and New York, and areas like that, by the time we focus on these other areas, there are very little funds available. So this is to isolate and to target a special area of survivors that in the overall emphasis on Israel and FSU is getting lost in the shuffle."
Ellen Heller, a trustee of the Weinberg foundation, said she believes the oversight of American survivors in need has not been intentional. She says that for many people, it's hard to grasp that there could be serious needs in the United States.
Citing data provided by the Claims Conference and verified anecdotally by dozens of conversations with experts in the area, Heller said that 25 percent to 37 percent of elderly American survivors live below the poverty line.
"There is need throughout the world," said Heller, the immediate past chair of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, which runs 200 Hesed organizations that help an estimated 140,000 survivors in the former Soviet Union. The Heseds receive tens of millions of dollars from the Claims Conference each year.
"Survivors in the country that make up the FSU are in genuine dire need, but it was surprising to us that here in the U.S., with our federation system and government support, that in fact a significant number of Nazi victims were really doing quite poorly here, and there was need," she said.
"We are hoping that by making this grant, it is not only going to meet these needs but also going to draw attention to these needs. A lot of it is a lack of knowledge. We hope the news of this grant brings attention to others who can also assistance."
The money will be distributed through already existing programs run by Jewish federations and Jewish Family Service outposts that provide micro-grants to survivors in need of help.
The Weinberg foundation already has given more than $6 million to help elderly American survivors, according to its chairman, Don Weinberg, and it is hoping that this $10 million will help a subset of the population in the last chapter of their lives.
"A poor elderly person is a poor elderly person, and one could ask why focus on a subset," Weinberg said. "But I think there are some unique attributes to this one. This doesn't mean we wouldn't give to the other poor -- that is what we do -- but these people have really had hell to live through in one time in their lives, and we want to make sure we are covering them."
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More from Weinberg on prioritizing aid to the poor: With just over $2 billion in assets, Weinberg is one of the country's largest foundations. And each year it gives away some $100 million to help the elderly, the poor and to fund education -- about $50 million of which goes to explicitly Jewish causes -- making it the country's largest Jewish-centric foundation.
Yet it is also one of the few Jewish-centric foundations that is explicitly dedicated to helping the poor.
The foundation considered making its gift to help impoverished Holocaust survivors a challenge grant to help spur other Jewish foundations to give, but in the end it figured that would hold up the process of actually getting money to the survivors in need. And the foundation believes that there is an immediate need for a population that quite frankly does not have a lot of time left. That it is a five-year grant says a lot about the amount of time the foundation believes this need will exist.
But the foundation's chairman, Don Weinberg, says there is a broader issue here: that Jewish-centric foundations in general do not seem to place poverty issues at the top of their lists.
In Weinberg's words: "Let me try to frame it. And this is descriptive, and I am not judging it. I am on the board of the Jewish Funders Network [which counts as its members those who give $25,000 or more per year to Jewish causes] and have participated in [Gary Rosenblatt's annual pow-wow] 'The Conversation.' I know that when the JFN has taken polls of its membership, asking what are your primary focuses, very few funders identify poverty or direct services to alleviate poverty as an area of focus. You see predominantly at the JFN and in my two experiences with The Conversation that most of the interest appears to be on Jewish identity, continuity, peoplehood and things like that -- and very little on Jewish poverty or poverty in general.
"There is a broader problem among Jewish funders and funders generally. I really think from my experience -- and this is not to say that there is indifference to Jewish poverty, I wouldn't say that -- but when our people are putting [forth] their focus and money, it is not on poverty issues. Those other issues are important, too, but it would be nice if they would add poverty as well."
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Early returns on federation campaigns: The Jewish federation system is starting to get a picture of how this year's fund raising compares to last year, and the early returns are a somewhat positive mixed bag.
A number of the country's largest federations that end their fiscal years June 30 have started to make their numbers public. Here are some of the highlights and lowlights from a few significant federations:
The country's largest Jewish federation exceeded its initial fund-raising goals for fiscal year 2010. The UJA-Federation of New York raised $136.1 million through its annual campaign, beating its projection of $134 million, the federation announced last week. The federation also raised $39.3 million in planned giving and endowments, and $5.3 million in capital gifts and special initiatives, raising a total of $180.7 million for the 2010 fiscal year. The Associated: Jewish Federation of Baltimore will raise more than $43.9 million, a 2.4 percent increase from the previous year, according to The Baltimore Jewish Times. That includes gifts from 1,415 new donors. But allocations will include a $703,000 drop in funding for Israel and overseas programs because Associated officials are focusing on local services. The Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia only saw a 2 percent decline in overall giving last year, but it has had to make significant cuts to a number of its long-standing affiliates because the unrestricted money from donors has shrunk significantly,The Philadelphia Jewish Exponent reported. The federation raised $27.8 million during its fiscal year 2009, and actually saw a $1 million increase in total revenue due to increases from its endowment, the government and other charities, including the United Way. But it had to make major cuts because the money that comes from unrestricted donations from the local Jewish community dropped by 14 percent, or $1.8 million. The $16.2 million brought in through unrestricted funds will be divided among 70 organizations, with several seeing cuts and others completely left out. Social service programs, social responsibility programs and overseas programs took the biggest hit. Fundermentalist's take: According to the federations' umbrella group, the Jewish Federations of North American, the total numbers are fairly positive. The federations that have reported say they took in $660 million this past year, about $10 million more in total than the previous year at this time, and the average gift is up by about 3.4 percent.
Those are certainly positive numbers, especially given that last year, the average gift was down by 4.3 percent.
On the other hand ...
In 2009, the federations raised $808 million through their campaigns (this does not include money for capital projects, endowments and special campaigns, which annually total more than $1 billion). But that was down from $918 million the previous year, before the recession really took hold. And even though the average gift has grown in 2010, the growth has not erased the 4.3 percent decrease from 2008-09.
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Has your fund-raising video raised money? The Chronicle of Philanthropy's Prospecting blog is running a series called "Fund-Raising Videos that Work."
The Chronicle is asking nonprofits to send in their fund-raising videos along with some of the backstories of how they came to be, the strategies behind the videos, how much each organization spent on the videos, and how much the videos raised.
It will run posts on the more interesting submissions.
Two of the recent pieces featured have come from Jewish nonprofits -- the Jewish Family and Children's Services of Phoenix and Youth Renewal Fund, a program to provide supplemental education to disadvantaged Israeli children.
Check out The Fundermentalist blog, where we are reposting with permission the two posts, but if you would like to submit your organization's video to The Chronicle for consideration, send an e-mail to its Web editor, Peter Panepento (peter.panepento@philanthropy.com).
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From hack to flack: Some in the media have taken pretty serious jabs at the Jewish Agency for Israel over the agency's decision to refocus its mission from one historically bent on settling the State of Israel and recruiting new immigrants to one aimed at building global Jewish identity. Now it is up to a former Jerusalem Post reporter, Haviv Rettig, to defend against such attacks.
Haaretz has been among the more serious critics of the agency. Shortly after the organization approved its new mission plan late last month, Anshel Pfeffer, the staff writer who covers the agency for the paper, went for the jugular in a piece titled "Jewish Agency's new plan for the Diaspora proves its irrelevance."
"There were two significant messages of change in the Agency's goals: that it is effectively getting out of the aliyah business and it wouldn't continue funneling huge funds into educational programs in Israel," Pfeffer wrote. "But these changes were obfuscated by weasel words and hackneyed explanations."
Ouch.
The paper followed up its coverage of the agency with a story about the organization's decision to hire Rettig to serve as the agency's spokesman with U.S. and European media. Prior to being hired, Rettig covered the agency for the Post -- Haaretz's primary rival in the anglo-Israeli press.
Haaretz passed on taking any further potshots at the agency or Rettig, but the story certainly elicited a response. Several people e-mailed me asking what I made of the deal and whether I thought there was any conflict of interest.
I had heard that the hiring was in the works a week or so before it became official, when Rettig was in the final stages of the agency's tender process.
After a couple of playful private e-mails with Rettig, who I have known as a colleague and competitor for the past several years, I got him on the record about what it means to jump from covering the agency to flacking for the agency -- and what it was like to cover the group during the past couple of weeks as he vied for what was a highly sought-after job, especially during the agency's board of governors meetings last week.
"It has been a funny few weeks going through the tender process," he said.
"The news reportage was difficult, and the way to do it was to minimize it, to just keep it honest and minimal," he said.
If he had not been a candidate for the job, Rettig said he would have wanted his coverage to be the lead story in the paper, including an analysis that acknowledged the risks of the new plan -- but saying it could save the agency.
"Instead," he said, "there were three relatively small stories."
Rettig said he took the job because he is on board with the new course that chairman Natan Sharansky has set for the agency and the plan and to help Israeli and Diaspora Jews better see eye-to-eye.
"This might sound a little arrogant, but there is an issue I am an expert in, and it is a genuine issue in that there is the growing gap between the Jews in Israel and the Jews in the Diaspora," he said. "These are two different kinds of Jews and Jewish societies. That is something I have expertise in, and that is fundamental to Natan Sharansky's project."
According to Rettig, he begged off the Jewish Agency beat when he became a serious candidate for the job, but the Post's editor in chief, David Horovitz, kept him in place.
"David Horovitz thought that I could be fair, and that he could make sure the coverage itself was fair," Rettig said. "And the coverage was very, very much in quotes. Even in the news, there was no analysis. The vast majority is almost entirely quotes. That was all intentional. The concept was to be very, very careful. He said he trusts my honesty, my basic honesty, and it was all overseen by the staff."
Indeed, the JPost's coverage of the agency during the past month has been vanilla. But I would have been happy with deeper coverage -- as someone who has covered much of the same territory as Rettig for the past four years, albeit from the other side of the ocean, I trust his reporting and respect his opinions (even if I did not always agree with his analysis). I wouldn't say the same for all those who cover the Jewish organizational world -- some of what you read is just flat wrong.
Once the hiring was made official earlier this month, Horovitz did take Rettig off the Jewish Agency beat, so he will spend his last few days at the Post working on non-agency stories.
Rettig said he is looking forward to a job in which he is not merely relaying to the world the party line of a potentially revamped Jewish Agency, but also hopefully getting to help shape the new agency -- a process of reform for which he has pushed from afar for years in the pages of the Post.
"I have come to really believe the Jewish people really need some things done, so it is tremendously gratifying to step in to do it," he said.
"This is the aircraft carrier, the huge prototypical education system of the Jewish future. Everything can fail. There have been strategic plans before that have failed, and leaders with big ideas. On the other hand, it could succeed.
"Once upon a time, there were a few big Jewish machers who put together a group that built a state," he added, referencing the early days of the Jewish Agency. "It takes a lot to turn an aircraft carrier around. But if you do, then you have an aircraft carrier on your side."
Good luck, Haviv.
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LOOSE CHANGE
Quick hits from the Jewish media:
The Jewish Week takes a look inside the Jim Joseph Foundation. The Jewish Theological Seminary will undergo a second round of layoffs, according to The Forward. The Forward frames the Schusterman-Diament debate: Good tent vs. big tent. The Los Angeles Jewish federation will eliminate its overseas and Israel department, according to the L.A. Jewish Journal. The Washington Jewish Week looks at the Washington federation's search for a new CEO. [Image] Back to top
GRANTS
The Jim Joseph Foundation announced a three-year, $5.2 million grant to the DeLeT teacher education program at Brandeis University and Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Los Angeles. The grant extends a donor relationship between the foundation and DeLeT that began two years ago. As of this summer, the program will have prepared more than 130 Jewish day school teachers, working in 40 schools across the United States. Louis and Dorothy Fox of Baltimore have left $500,000 to the Jewish Federations of North America to establish an endowment fund to be used for continuing the education of professionals engaged in programs and endeavors sponsored and promoted by the JFNA. The money was originally to be left to the JFNA's predecessor, the Council of Jewish Federations.Seventeen Chabad-Lubavitch programs have won $20,000 each after finishing among the top 200 charities in the Chase Community Giving competition. Fourteen of them are branches of Chabad's the Friendship Circle, which pairs teenage volunteers with children with special needs. [Image] Back to top
COMINGS AND GOINGS
Marc Silberberg of New York was recently elected chairman of the board of HIAS, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, at a meeting held at Ellis Island. Silberberg, a senior partner in the international law firm of Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, specializes in the taxation of mergers, acquisitions, and restructurings and serves on the Executive Committee of the Tax Section of the New York State Bar Association. He also currently serves on the board of directors of the September 11th Families Association, which operates the Tribute WTC Visitor Center at the World Trade Center site. Marilyn Sneiderman has been appointed the executive director of AVODAH: The Jewish Service Corps. Sneiderman, who replaces Rabbi David Rosenn, who served as AVODAH's founding director for 13 years, will begin her duties July 26. Prior to coming to AVODAH she was the deputy director of the B'nai Brith Youth Organization. [Image] Back to top
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