Peoplehood and Philanthropy

The Jewish organizational world was hard hit by the current financial crisis and by the Madoff affair. As the adage from Pirkei Avot states, "If there is no flour there can be no Torah". Jonathan Sarna, in the Spring 2009 issue of the Steinhardt Foundation's Contact Magazine, which is devoted to this subject, reviews the fiscal policies of Jewish-American organizations over the centuries. He finds lessons to be learned from the Great Depression, as a result of that crisis American Jewry turned inward and became desensitized to threats upon World Jewry; Jewish education was neglected by many due to its high cost. On the positive side American Jewry stood united in face of the economic crisis.

Jacob Berkman, of The Fundermentalist blog, reviews power struggles in the Jewish Agency regarding Sharansky's candidacy and demands by heads of Federations that the Agency disengage itself from the Israeli political system. Mega philanthropist Michael Steinhardt wrote a piece in the Jerusalem Post favoring Sharansky's candidacy. Leonid Nevzlin, another Mega philanthropist, in a piece that he wrote in Haaretz, called for major reforms in the Agency's structure that would do away with functional divisions and turn it into an organization that initiates and facilitates other organizations activities.

Felicia Herman and Shawn Landres, writing in Contact Magazine, point to a recent development in Jewish-American organizational life: the entry of small upstart organizations that base themselves on the web and attract many young people into the arena. They call upon more established organizations to save these upstarts that are flailing due to the current crisis. Haviv Rettig in the Jerusalem Post describes one such organization which is succeeding despite the current crisis: JGooders, which facilitates a new kind of web-based Jewish philanthropy, in which small donors are the big players.

The last two articles deal with the inevitable Bernie Madoff. J.J. Goldberg warns against easily dismissing Madoff as a bad apple that in no way reflects upon the Jewish community at large. "If we take pride in our noble prize winners", writes Goldberg, "we should also consider how Madoff reflects upon us". Goldberg claims that we are all too often willing to ignore the misdeeds of pious Jews who are bad landlords or who commit other social injustices, so long as they contribute to Jewish causes. While Goldberg is concerned with the lessons that the Jewish People should learn, Eshman is concerned about the lessons that the Gentiles shouldn't learn. He does not think that the Madoff affair will give rise to anti-Semitism, since many of the victims were Jews who were engaged in philanthropic giving to non-Jews.