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Jewish Journal

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July 27, 2007

Dumbing Down Judaism

Leave a Comment / David Suissa /

You can’t talk about Jewish philanthropy without talking about Jewish priorities. For many years now, a huge priority for the American Jewish community has been to fight assimilation — what is elegantly called “Jewish continuity.” It’s a priority that is rarely challenged. How do you argue against Jewish continuity?

Well, the other day, I had lunch at Shilo’s with a Talmud professor who’s not overly worked up about Jewish continuity. In fact, my lunch guest, Rabbi Aryeh Cohen of the Shtibl Minyan, wouldn’t mind if the Jewish world lost its obsession with Jewish continuity and started worrying about something he considers more important.

What kind of Judaism the Jewish world wishes to “continue.”

In this view, Judaism itself has been diminished by our obsession with “survival” and “continuity.” By coddling and pandering to keep Jews from leaving the faith, we have trivialized our faith and turned it into fluff. Look around and you’ll see how Judaism has slowly evolved into a consumer brand of sweetness and convenience — into Judaism lite.

Not crazy about doing Shabbat? Come Friday night for a fabulous musical and social experience. No tickets for High Holy Day services? Just show up at any Chabad and they’ll treat you like royalty. Never been to the Holy Land? If you’re young, no problem — it’s your birthright and you can go for free.

If you find synagogue services too boring or complicated, we have an array of “spiritual” services where all you have to do is read English and hold hands and chant in unison. If you’re single and you want to meet someone but your time is precious and limited, come have a latte and “speed” through a string of possible Jewish mates.

You know nothing about your Judaism? Don’t feel bad, you’re not alone. There are hundreds of introductory classes for you to choose from. There’s Judaism for the “Clueless but Curious,” “Kabbalah for Dummies,” even a user-friendly “High Holiday Survival Guide.”

If you’re more into culture and attitude, there are magazines and Web sites that will show you how to be Jewish and cool. You don’t believe in God? Don’t worry, there’s a whole movement for you with the word “human” in it. Just remember: our No. 1 concern is that you stay Jewish, even if you know nothing about your Judaism.

It’s almost as if American Judaism, in its desperate struggle to keep Jews from vanishing into the gentile mainstream, has become a marketing carnival. And Jewish philanthropy — driven by a Holocaust-level fear of losing Jews — has helped fund this carnival.

At our lunch, Rabbi Cohen lamented the price we have paid to reach this point: the dumbing down of Judaism. In twisting ourselves into pretzels to reach out to vanishing Jews, we’re marketing Judaism as a faith that can comfort, entertain and even elevate you — but will rarely challenge you or make too many demands, intellectual or otherwise.

We are nurturing a generation of Jewish noshers who only want to lick the icing off the Jewish cake. Even the budding spiritual revival we hear so much about is based more on the need for personal empowerment and self-fulfillment than it is on deep knowledge of the Jewish tradition.

Our marketing of Judaism has created consumers, not thinkers.

My neighbors and friends who live a few doors from me, Rabbi Joel Rembaum and his wife, Fredi, told me on a recent Shabbat afternoon that the Jewish world needs to do more inreach, and less outreach. What they and Rabbi Cohen were saying is that we need to create a new generation of educated Jews from kindergarten up, rather than expend so much of our resources on throwing lifeboats to unaffiliated and disconnected grown-ups.

For me, that’s probably going too far, because I’ve seen how outreach has brought so many young adults to reconnect with their Judaism. As I see it, any connection is better than no connection. Still, there is one mantra that I hear everywhere I go — whether we’re talking about outreach or inreach.

This is the mantra: Thousands of Jewish families cannot afford to send their children to Jewish day schools, and it is outrageous that the Jewish community cannot raise the money to subsidize these children.

It’s so obvious that it’s almost embarrassing: Is there a better antidote to the dumbing down of Judaism, and the eventual assimilation of Jews, than having Jewish kids get a Jewish education? Maybe the reason Jewish continuity efforts have been so unsuccessful (half of our adults still marry outside the faith) is that it’s hard to stay connected to something you don’t know much about.

For the large number of Jews who stay committed to their Judaism after getting a Jewish education, you can bet that when they grow up they’ll demand more from their spiritual leaders than “Judaism for Dummies.” If they have studied Talmud and other texts, they will be more likely to introduce knowledgeable debates into their congregations and communities, and, generally, add more depth and vibrancy to the Jewish conversation.

When we lament the lack of great Jewish thinkers in our generation — who are the Heschels, Soloveichiks and Bubers of our day? — we are also lamenting what Judaism has lost through their absence. I don’t know about you, but I’d pay anything to hear what someone like Heschel would have to say about the great Jewish issues of our day. The knowledge that one can only get from a Jewish education is the first step to creating great Jewish thinkers, rather than simply clever ones.

But as we know, “Jewish education” is not as sexy a fundraising hook as “we’re losing Jews!” “the world hates us!” and “we can never forget!” Never mind that Jewish education holds the secret to a stronger Jewish continuity: It strengthens Jews by strengthening Judaism, and it strengthens Judaism by strengthening Jews.

The real dumbing down of Judaism today is that the Jewish philanthropic world hasn’t figured that out yet.

David Suissa, an advertising executive, is founder of OLAM magazine and Meals4Israel.com. He can be reached at dsuissa@olam.org.

Dumbing Down Judaism Read More »

Rambam’s Bunnies

Leave a Comment / Rob Eshman /

Just after I returned from vacation, I found myself at the Playboy Mansion.

I know — that sounds redundant.

But I have a perfectly good explanation for going there, so good my wife almost believed it. I went to Playboy for the articles.

The Jewish Journal’s annual Giving issue — which you’re reading — was in the works. The mansion was hosting the 35th annual Merchant of Tennis-Monty Hall Cedars Sinai Medical Center Tennis Tournament. What better opportunity to do just a bit more field research before committing to an editorial topic?

And this is what I learned, bottom line: Maimonides was a bad reporter.

Moses ben Maimon, aka Moses Maimondes, aka Rambam, was a 12th century physician, rabbi, philosopher and scholar — a pre-Renaissance Renaissance man.

Among his most enduring ideas is his “Eight Degrees of Charity,” which to this day serves as the uber-text for all discussions on Jewish philanthropy. (Along with the “Eight Degrees of Charity,” Maimonides also gave us the “13 Principles of Faith” — like Moses and Mr. Blackwell, the man clearly understood the power of lists.)

Here’s the list in abbreviated form:

8. One gives donations grudgingly.

7. One gives less than he should, but does so cheerfully.

6. One gives directly to the poor upon being asked.

5. One gives directly to the poor without being asked.

4. The recipient is aware of the donor’s identity, but the donor does not know the identity of the recipient.

3. The donor is aware of the recipient’s identity, but the recipient is unaware of the source.

2. The donor and recipient are unknown to each other.

1. The highest form of charity is to help sustain a person before they become impoverished, by offering a substantial gift in a dignified manner, by extending a suitable loan or by helping them find employment or establish themselves in business so as to make it unnecessary for them to become dependent on others.

What’s remarkable about this list is how idealized it is. After all, the Rambam is telling us what ought to be. What is, in the world of Jewish philanthropy, is the mirror opposite.

Most Jews are mired somewhere between No. 7 and No. 8. We don’t give, or we don’t give enough.

Our tradition requires us to tithe 10 percent to people in need. Rabbis tell us it’s permissible to set aside after-tax monies, and deduct business expenses and Jewish education. (Deducting the cost of Jewish education would bring a lot of us to zero, but that’s another editorial.) Even so, I know few Jews who actually, literally tithe.

That fact alone explains why rabbis have to spend as much time kissing wealthy tuchises as Democratic presidential candidates do, why $100,000 Mercedes SUVs fill the parking lots of Jewish day schools that have to hold bake sales to pay preschool teachers a barely livable wage, and why in Los Angeles, where 51 of the 100 richest Angelenos are Jews, 47 percent of Holocaust survivors — more than 4,000 Holocaust survivors — currently live in poverty. Shame on us.

Even if we do give, and give generously, we most often do so after being asked, pleaded with, cajoled and convinced.

Why is this? Those hotshot entrepreneurs who tout being proactive in seeking out business opportunities can’t spend some time seeking out charitable ones?

As for the ideal of anonymous giving, please. We parody ourselves by putting our names on anything we pay for — trees, defibrillators, elevators, bathrooms. When the hero of Michael Chabon’s novel “The Yiddish Policeman’s Union” lands in a renegade Jewish sect’s jail, he looks up to see a plaque: “THIS DETAINMENT CELL COURTESY OF THE GENEROSITY OF NEAL AND RISA NUDELMAN SHORT HILLS NEW JERSEY.”

And how often do we attain the Rambam’s ideal of giving anonymously to help people in need help themselves; or, higher still, to help people even before they become needy? There are ways — Jewish Free Loan, Grameen Bank, OxFam — but how much do you give them to give?

All these ideas floated around in my head as I drifted around the grounds of the Playboy Mansion. Hef — that’s what those of us invited there call him — only rents the grounds out to a handful of charities each year, and for years he has blessed Monty Hall, the philanthropist of “Let’s Make a Deal” fame, with the opportunity.

Hall, unlike Maimonides, is a realist. That’s why he is arguably one of the most successful fundraisers in Jewish communal history — one story put his fundraising gross at $1 billion over 50 years.

Hall took over the tournament begun by Dr. Robert Feder and William Morris Agency CEO Norman Brokaw. This year’s event raised nearly a half-million dollars for diabetes and pancreatic cancer research.

Guests paid dearly for the fun of playing friendly, competitive doubles matches, watching celebrities (Jon Lovitz, Paul Sorvino) do the same, nibbling some great donated food, and taking their families to the famous lair of Hugh Hefner.

That’s right, families.

Visitors are relegated to the glorious acreage of the front yard, where they can amble around the aviary and orchard and stand in front of the fountain, the French chateau-style mansion behind them. Dads posed their kids there like they were in front of Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland. Try to go inside the mansion or behind it to the pool and infamous grotto, and guards with sledgehammers for forearms suddenly appear.

After I left, I was told, Hef came down to the courts for a moment, accompanied by two fully clothed aspiring models/actresses. But there were plenty of attractive women if, like me, you find smart, successful and charitable middle-aged Jewish women totally hot.

What Hall understands is that doctors need money for research and treatment, and the way to get it is to twist some donors’ arms, to placate others, to lure still more with images of prancing bunnies, and to provide everyone with fun, good food and a mention in the tribute journal.

Leave the noble aims to Maimonides — this is Jewish philanthropy, circa 2007.

Rambam’s Bunnies Read More »

Stop ostracizing the intermarried

Leave a Comment / Family, Judaism, Opinion /

This column would not have been written had its subject not first described himself and his predicament in this week’s New York Times magazine.

Noah Feldman was a brilliant Orthodox Jewish Rhodes scholar who arrived in Oxford in my fourth year as rabbi there in 1992. We quickly hit it off. For one thing, there was scarcely a subject — Jewish or secular — upon which Noah did not have some profound knowledge. We studied Talmud together several times a week, and I made Noah a kind of secondary rabbi at our L’Chaim Society, such was the range of his Jewish erudition and his phenomenal capacity for teaching.

Noah was one of the most accomplished young students I had ever met. He was valedictorian of Harvard, a Rhodes and Truman scholar, and completed his Oxford doctorate in about 18 months, which may or may not be a university record. It was a source of great pride for me that Noah was observant and wore a kippah. We all marveled every Shabbat at Noah’s incredible ability to read any section of the Torah at our student synagogue.

After graduating from Oxford, Noah went to Yale, where his observance began to wane. I heard from some of his classmates that he was dating a non-Jewish girl. Hearing that he was quite serious about her, when his girlfriend in turn came to Oxford as a Marshall scholar, I made a point of reaching out to her and inviting her to our Shabbat dinner.

My thinking was that Noah was far too precious to me and to the Jewish people to lose. If he was dating a woman whom he wished to marry, then it was our duty to try and expose her to the friendliness of the Jewish community with a view toward her exploring whether a serious commitment to our tradition was something that would suit her.

Sadly, others took a far different view. A mutual friend of ours, who was a rabbi in Noah’s life, essentially told him that if he married outside the faith he would have to sever his relationship with him. Apparently, many of Noah’s Orthodox friends made the same decision. The net result was that one of the brightest young Jews in the entire world was made to feel that the Jewish community was his family only if he made choices with which we agreed.

Of course I had wanted Noah to marry Jewish, and I took pride in the fact that I had helped to sustain his observance during his two years at Oxford. But the choice of whom he would marry was not mine to make. Before his wedding I wrote him a note that said, in essence, that we were friends and my affection for him would never change.

I told him that he was a prince of the Jewish nation, that his obligations to his people were eternal and unchanging, that whether or not his wife, or indeed his children, were Jewish, he would never change his own personal status as a Jew. I added that I knew he would do great things with his life as a scholar of world standing, and that he would always put the needs of the Jewish people first.

We remain good friends today. I admire and respect Noah, and my wish is that perhaps, some day, his brilliant wife might see, of her own volition, the beauties of our tradition and how family life is enhanced by husband and wife being of the same faith and practicing the same religious rituals.

True to my prediction, Noah went on, in his 30s, to become one of the youngest-ever tenured law professors, first at NYU and then at Harvard, and was chosen by the American government to serve as the consultant to the Iraqi provisional government in drawing up their constitution. Today he ranks, arguably, as one of the youngest academic superstars in the United States.

How tragic, therefore, that Noah’s article in The New York Times magazine is a lengthy detailing of the alienation he has experienced from his former Orthodox Jewish day school and friends, who even cut him out of a class reunion photograph in which he participated.

For more than two centuries now, since the Emancipation, Jews have been debating how to deal with those who marry outside the community. The conventional response has been to treat them as traitors to the Jewish cause. We are all familiar with the old practice of sitting shiva for a child who marries out, as if he or she were dead, made famous in “Fiddler on the Roof.”

The extreme practice of ostracization was justified by the belief that only by completely cutting off those who married out would we be making a sufficiently strong statement as to the extent of their betrayal, thereby dissuading those who might follow suit.

There is one problem with this practice. Aside from the ethical and humanitarian considerations, it does not work. We have been practicing this alienation for decades, and yet intermarriage has grown to approximately 50 percent of the Jewish population! Worse, the practice is a lie insofar as it propagates the false notion that our Jewishness is measured only in terms of our being a link in a higher chain of existence, and that our Jewish identities have meaning only through our children. This absurd notion would deny the idea of Jewish individualism and how we are Jews in our own right.

I am well aware of the fact that intermarriage is a direct threat to the very continuity of the Jewish people. But that does not change the fact that those who have chosen to marry out are still Jewish, should still be encouraged to go to synagogue, should still be encouraged to put on tefillin and keep Shabbat, should still have mezuzot on their doors, and should still be encouraged to devote their lives and resources to the welfare of the Jewish people and the security of the State of Israel.

And as far as their non-Jewish spouses are concerned, do we really believe that by showing the most unfriendly behavior we are living up to our biblically mandated role of serving as a light unto the nations? Is there any possibility that a non-Jew married to a Jew will look favorably at the possibility of becoming halachically Jewish if he or she witnesses Orthodox Jews treating their husbands or wives as pariahs?

Stop ostracizing the intermarried Read More »

Partners, daughters, couples and nice Jewish girls gone bad

Leave a Comment / Picks and Clicks /

Saturday

Seth Menachem is a super-adorable Jewish writer and actor who used to write a singles column for The Jewish Journal. Since proposing to his girlfriend in one of his witty columns in 2005 and living blissfully ever after, he’s had to find other work. He and Avi Rothman wrote and are starring in a television pilot called “Partners,” which will be screened at the second annual Independent Television Festival this weekend. The half-scripted, half-improvised comedy centers around two Jewish best friends who struggle with life’s basics: relationships, jobs and kosher fish markets.

6 p.m. Also Sunday at 8 p.m. $10. Raleigh Studios, Pickford Screen Room, 5300 Melrose Ave., Hollywood. (323) 931-4846. ” target=”_blank”>http://www.chuckandlarry.com.

Tuesday

” target=”_blank”>http://www.theatre40.org.

Wednesday

” target=”_blank”>http://www.feelabout.com.

Thursday

” target=”_blank”>http://www.brownpapertickets.com.

Partners, daughters, couples and nice Jewish girls gone bad Read More »

Should charity for the homeless begin at home?

Leave a Comment / Judaism, Opinion, Philanthropy, Politics /

Among Jews and Christians, there is much confusion about the Bible’s preferred course for addressing the needs of poor Americans, the dominant assumption being that support for the impoverished is a public responsibility.

Recently, the issue came up in the Seattle suburb where I live. Our local weekly newspaper reported that a tent city for the homeless was to be set up in a church parking lot. In the article, a representative of the city government explained preemptively that the church had every right to do this and so, like it or not, the rest of us had no grounds for complaint.

Apart from the legal question, an implicit moral challenge was being issued: Anyone who did grumble couldn’t be a very good Christian, or Jew.

In a subsequent issue of the paper, a letter to the editor appeared making a wonderfully biblical point. I was proud that this lone voice of protest belonged to a Jewish woman. Given the modern Jewish weakness for socialism, I was also surprised.

Would it not be better, she asked, if instead of setting up the tent city, members of the church invited individual homeless people to live with them? That would be so much more personal and loving. It would also provide these needy individuals with role models: functional, successful families, a setting they may never have experienced, perhaps accounting for the dysfunction in their own lives that resulted in their being homeless. Graciously, the writer did not mention that this would not impose an unwanted cost on the rest of us who do not belong to the church and who may feel very ill at ease having an encampment of transients as neighbors.

This personal approach is exactly what the Bible commends to us. I can find nowhere in Scripture where the nation or the city is directed to compel generosity to the impoverished. Nor is a city like ours commanded to assume the responsibility (and dangers) created by someone else’s generosity.

While society in general is indeed obliged, it is understood that the society is composed of individuals, bearing individual moral responsibility.

The book of Leviticus turns this ethos of charity into legislation: “If your brother becomes impoverished and his means falter in your proximity, you shall strengthen him — proselyte or resident — so that he can live with you” (25:35). Live with you, it says — not in a tent city, nor in shelters funded by money taken by the government from other people.

The prophet Isaiah was echoing the Pentateuch when he told the Jews living in his time, “Surely you should break your bread for the hungry, and bring the moaning poor [to your] home; when you see a naked person, clothe him and do not hide from your kin” (58:7). The emphasis on a personal relationship with the poor is unmistakable, not a pole’s-length interaction as in the model of charity through taxation — or of inviting the poor to camp out in a parking lot adjacent to other people’s homes.

I anticipate a couple of objections. The first might reasonably be raised from Jewish tradition, based on a different verse in Isaiah (32:17). A conventional translation reads, “The product of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness, quiet and security forever.” That sounds like a nice, if somewhat vague, sentiment.

At first glance, the meaning of the verse in Hebrew is quite ambiguous. Having considered a grammatical fine point, however, the Talmud (Baba Batra 9a) interprets Isaiah as offering a comparison between an individual who causes others to give charity and another individual who gives charity on his own without being compelled.

The verse is understood to mean, “The reward of he who causes [others to do] righteousness is peace, and the reward of he who does righteousness is quiet and security, forever.” Since the Talmud assumes that peace is the greater reward, the Bible is seen as indicating the superior merit of causing charity to be given over simply giving it yourself.

With this in mind, Jewish communities from ancient times would appoint a communal officer in every locality where Jews lived to collect charity from community members, compelling them to give, if necessary, according to their means. Rabbinic law deemed the merit of this individual to exceed that of the Jews from whom he collected.

Isn’t that a pretty good indication that the Bible favors using the power of the government to coerce the citizenry to be charitable over relying on private generosity? Actually, not at all.

For the model of the communal charity collector is a communal, not a city, state, or national one. Specifically, it applies to a religious community, from which at any time you can disassociate yourself. Membership in such an association is voluntary, a free-will act.

All Isaiah is saying is that the person who undertakes the difficult role of pressuring his fellow community members to give money to support the poor deserves an even bigger pat on the back than the householder who writes out his check and voluntarily hands it over.

This Hebrew prophetic approach to poverty is, you might say, the diametric opposite of socialism. In the latter, the burden of your generosity is imposed on other people, with government acting as the enforcer.

The members of my neighborhood church, while being a voluntary community themselves, force the burden of their generosity on me. The city guarantees their right to do so. Church members may live a half hour away, but we who live right here have to deal with having a homeless encampment next door.

A second objection would cast doubt on the sincerity of the Jewish letter-writer who advocated, as a solution to homelessness, not parking-lot camping but home hospitality. Is the solution a remotely serious one?

For some homeless, no. For others, yes. Who are the homeless, exactly? It depends on what part of the country you’re talking about.

Should charity for the homeless begin at home? Read More »

Bush flirts with peace talks but won’t commit to Palestinians

Leave a Comment / Judaism, Politics, Power, United States, Worldwide /

The rug that Syrian President Bashar pulled out from under his widely reported but vaguely defined peace offensive last week was a Persian weave.

He had been talking for months about unconditionally resuming negotiations with Israel over the Golan Heights, and it seemed like Israel, under American pressure, was the disinterested party. Then roles were quickly reversed in a week filled with feints and false starts, but so far there’s been more motion than movement.

President George W. Bush kicked off the week by reaffirming his vision of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but it was widely seen as an attempt to divert attention from his debacle in Iraq rather than a commitment to sustained diplomacy.

That view was reinforced by a White House mailing to Jewish leaders recommending an article by historian Michael Oren quoting Israeli officials as satisfied “there were no changes in Bush’s policies.”

White House aides also quickly shot down any notion that the “international meeting” Bush announced would be a peace conference. Just a meeting, they said, chaired by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; Bush may not even show up. And don’t look for many Arab leaders to be there, either. The price of admission will be recognition of Israel, Bush said. That leaves out all those who should be there, like Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States and Iraq.

That’s right, Iraq. Bush’s icon of Arab democracy where leaders have repeatedly denounced the Zionist enemy and have no more interest in peace than that other benefactor of Bush’s democracy crusade — Hamas.

Assad’s shift hardly seemed coincidental, coming on the eve of a visit by his Iranian benefactor, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. According to a London-based Arabic newspaper, Ahmadinejad signed a strategic agreement with Syria promising increased military, political and economic assistance conditioned on a refusal to make peace with Israel.

To press his point, Ahmadinejad also met in Damascus with leaders of Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other terror groups, encouraging them to unite in armed struggle against Israel, and he pledged Iran’s support.

Reversing his recent rhetoric, Assad announced he would resume talks with Israel only through a third party and only with advance written Israeli “guarantees” to meet all his demands, including a full return of the Golan Heights.

That came on the heels of a tactical shift by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who after months of dodging Assad’s probes, told Al-Arabiya television last week that he is ready for direct talks without preconditions.

Olmert had been under pressure from Washington to rebuff Assad’s peace feelers on the assumption the Syrian leader was just trying to deflect American pressure to stop aiding the Iraqi insurgents. As a condition for talks, Olmert had demanded Assad withdraw his backing for Hezbollah, Hamas and other anti-Israel Islamic extremist groups prior to any talks.

American sanctions have had little impact on Assad’s behavior, and the Syrian dictator apparently concluded threats of military action were a bluff in light of American problems in Iraq and Israel’s poor performance against Hezbollah in Lebanon last year.

Iran, according to Israeli analysts, has been trying to raise regional tensions by telling Assad that Israel is planning a war against Syria to block Hezbollah’s takeover of Lebanon and to erase last year’s failures. Ahmadinejad’s real goal may be to discourage American or Israeli attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities, they say.

The other prominent visitor to the region this week, with a totally opposite agenda, is former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the new Middle East envoy for the Quartet (United States, European Union, United Nations and Russia). His assignment is to help the Palestinians rebuild their institutions and economy, but he’d like to expand that and be an active peace negotiator as well.

That’s not what President Bush had in mind when he outsourced Middle East diplomacy to his old friend and loyal Iraq war partner. Blair has been a longtime advocate of accelerating the peace process and has the backing of three quarters of the Quartet.

His greatest obstacle might be Rice, who doesn’t want him treading on her turf. She’s made it clear that he should stick to his official mandate. That’s the way Ehud Olmert wants it, too; he’s no more ready than the Americans for the final status negotiations that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas wants.

But it’s more than just territorial for Rice; her boss likes to talk about peace but has been unwilling to do the heavy lifting needed to get negotiations off the ground.

Initially he didn’t want to be seen following the failed footsteps of his predecessors –Poppy and Bill Clinton — but Iraq overtook that. Bush paid lip service to Middle East peace because the Arabs, his allies and the Baker-Hamilton Commission said showing movement on that front was essential to convincing others to help rescue him from his Iraq morass.

Bush will hear that again this week when Jordanian King Abdullah II comes to the White House to tell him he’s not moving aggressively enough on the Palestinian front. The president will assure his royal visitor of his sincere desire for peace, but the reality is Bush’s desire to be the father of Palestinian statehood hasn’t gone beyond the flirtation stage. Wishes don’t beget results.

From Damascus to Jerusalem to Ramallah to Washington, these days of summer sizzle are looking like a time of peace fizzle.

Douglas M. Bloomfield, a former staff member of AIPAC, writes about the Mideast and politics of Jewish life in America.

Bush flirts with peace talks but won’t commit to Palestinians Read More »

Briefs: Scholars call for American Shoah heroes honors, civil marriage coming to Israel

Leave a Comment / Worldwide /

Scholars: U.S. Activists During Shoah Warrant Recognition

More than 100 scholars and Jewish leaders are calling on the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum to acknowledge the work of U.S. activists in its permanent exhibition. A petition delivered to the museum’s chairman, Fred Zeidman, urges greater recognition of the Bergson Group, a collection of American activists whose rallies and newspaper advertisements calling attention to the plight of European Jews earned them the scorn of Jewish leaders at the time. The petition notes that the Bergson Group is mentioned on the museum’s Web site, but calls for its inclusion in museum’s permanent exhibition.

“Doing so is important for the sake of historical accuracy,” the petition reads. “It is also important because the Bergson Group’s work demonstrates the possibility of ordinary citizens taking action, through the democratic process, to bring about humanitarian action by the government.”

The petition was organized by the Washington-based David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies.

New Funds From Claims Conference

The Claims Conference, over the next three years, will allocate an extra $67 million on programs benefiting Nazi victims.

The new funds will add to the $300 million the Claims Conference already planned to spend on such programs from funds acquired in the sale of unclaimed Holocaust-era Jewish property in the former East Germany.

In a statement, the Claims Conference said the new money is meant to make up for the decline in funding for social welfare programs as a result of the International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims ending its allocations.

Israel Edges Toward Civil Weddings

A bill approved by Israel’s Chief Rabbinate would allow civil weddings for non-Jews. Justice Minister Daniel Friedmann and Sephardi Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar announced new legislation this week that would recognize civil weddings performed in Israel for couples in which neither bride nor groom is Jewish under Orthodox law.

The bill, which is expected to win Knesset ratification, could address the needs of some 300,000 Israelis — most of them immigrants from the former Soviet Union — who are barred from marrying in the Jewish state because they are considered non-Jews by the rabbinate. It would not, however, be applicable for unions between a Jew and a non-Jew.

Friedmann voiced hope that civil weddings eventually will become an option for mainstream Israelis who do not want to go the Orthodox route, currently the only legally recognized one.

“I hope that with time it will be possible to persuade the political bodies that broadening this is warranted, and that it will be broadened,” he told Israel Radio on last week.

Briefs Courtesy Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Briefs: Scholars call for American Shoah heroes honors, civil marriage coming to Israel Read More »

But Who’s Complaining?

Leave a Comment / Torah /

Imagine there is something you have worked and hoped and longed for your whole life. (Perhaps you don’t have to imagine.) Just when you are on the cusp of
achieving/getting/doing/being it, a door slams in your face, and you learn that you will never live out what you dreamed. What occurs to you in that moment? What do you do next? What do you say — or wish to say — to the one slamming the door?

This is where I am supposed to tell you that answers to those questions appear in this week’s Torah portion. But they don’t. The answers appeared four Torah portions ago.

In Parshat Pinchas, God clarified that, despite speaking to Moses about how property should be allotted in the Promised Land, Moses would never lead the people there, nor set foot in the land himself. God’s harsh decree at Mei Merivah, where Moses hit the rock, would stand. Decisively, finally, God closed the door on Moses’ dream.

Moses’ immediate response was: “Let Adonai, Source of the breath of all flesh, appoint someone over the community who will go out before them and come in before them, and who will take them out and bring them in, so that Adonai’s community will not be like sheep who have no shepherd” (Numbers 27: 16-17). Please, Moses asks, choose someone who can lead the people with loving care; find someone to carry on the work and the vision; make sure the military, spiritual and emotional needs of my flock are met, so that they can go to — and remain in — the Promised Land.

Twelve chapters and 426 verses later comes our Torah portion, Vaetchanan. Moses finally does what most of us would have done immediately: he complains. He blames the people: “Adonai was cross with me on your account.” (Deuteronomy 3:26). He rehashes history and pounds on the closed door. The meaning of the word “Vaetchanan” is “he pleaded.” Moses petitions, praises and pleads. However, he quickly realizes that God’s decision will not be overturned. He will never have his dream.

Moses is not at his most generous in this Torah portion, but his accusations and disgruntlement humanize him. His appeal to God makes him accessible to us humans. Moses wanted something for himself. He asked, in effect, “What about me?”

This question should come as no great shock. The shock is that it took 12 chapters and 426 verses to get there.

What took so long? Moses was busy doing God’s work, imparting to the people the information they would need to know in this new land, negotiating apportionments, designating cities of refuge. Pleading his own case simply had to wait.

How many of us put the tasks and ideals of our work ahead of our own personal status? How many times, when faced with a crushing disappointment, do we think first of others and how they will bear it? How often, how quickly and for what duration do we complain? Within two verses of his complaint and God’s rebuke, Moses is back to the business of imparting God’s word to the people.

Have you followed the story of the Rev. Will Bowen, who asked his parishioners to take a 21-day “complaint fast”? To cultivate gratitude, he suggested that people voice no complaints for 21 days. As of this writing, 5,907,266 requests have come in for the “complaint-free world” rubber bracelets that the reverend gave out to his congregation as a learning tool. He distributed them with the recommendation to switch the bracelet to your other wrist every time you complain. When the bracelet stays on one wrist for three weeks, you will have formed a new habit. So far, out of almost 6 million people, 231 report a successful 21-day run of complaint-free speech.

Yes, there is something natural, human and probably inevitable about complaining. As the people who raised murmuring to a high art during the desert trek with Moses, Jews may have more precedent to complain than others. I once invented a game called “alphabetical kvetch,” and I have rarely had a problem getting Jews to play along.

I don’t think we can eliminate complaining. Not only do we need righteous protests against inequity, we need, sometimes, to plead, carp, cry or just vent. Bowen himself felt the need of a phrase that he and his wife could use to express irritation without feeding it. Whenever tempted to complain about anybody, they say instead, “I bet he sure can whistle.”

Abstinence from complaining for some period of time is a noble spiritual exercise, but I wouldn’t ask, long term, that people stop complaining entirely. I would ask — and I personally aspire — to shift the energy and the odds. On any given day, let us express more gratitude than complaints. Let us wait longer to complain and jump in faster to thank, praise, and give. Let us remember our dreams and serve them — even if we can’t experience them exactly as we might like. Let us be a little more like Moses and a little less like that neighbor of yours — you know the one, the very close neighbor — who sure can whistle.

Rabbi Debra Orenstein, editor of “Lifecycles 2: Jewish Women on Biblical Themes in Contemporary Life,” is spiritual leader of Makom Ohr Shalom synagogue in Tarzana (www.makom.org). She aspires to achieve 21 days of complaint-free living before Rosh Hashanah and to preach on the High Holy Days about how to crowd out complaining with an overabundance of gratitude and peace.

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Teens tackle tzedakah dollars

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Courtney Teller knows all about giving. The high school sophomore won the community service award at Archer School for Girls, and her grandmother, Annette Shapiro, is a legendary volunteer and philanthropist in the Los Angeles Jewish community.

But it was the parking situation at a playground for the disabled that gave Courtney a new appreciation for the potential impact of tzedakah.

As part of her participation in the Community Youth Foundation — a program of the Jewish Community Foundation of Los Angeles where teens allocate $10,000 in grants — Teller and her friends visited Shane’s Inspiration, a West L.A. playground for the disabled. While she was moved by the hordes of kids, both abled and disabled, playing on the rubber-padded, accessibly designed equipment, the fact that it took her 30 minutes to find parking signaled to her that demand had outpaced supply.

“It was a Saturday afternoon and it was packed — you couldn’t get near it,” Teller said. “It was important to me that I saw where we could really make a difference.”

It was her impassioned plea, in part, that convinced the group of 11 teens to award Shane’s Inspiration a $1,000 grant to support their expansion of similar projects.

Teller and her peers are among a growing number of teens getting involved in the giving — not just doing — end of community service. Youth foundations and individual teen endowments across the country are empowering teens of all economic levels to make values-based and technically informed decisions about what is worthy of their support.

Jewish teens have given away an estimated $1 million dollars — most of it community money, a token amount of it their own — since these philanthropic training camps began to emerge in scattered Jewish communities about 10 years ago.

In the last year energy has been building, and there are about 50 such projects. Last spring, the Jewish Funders Network co-sponsored the first-ever Jewish Youth Philanthropy conference in Denver, after about five years of informal networking among teens and professionals. The conference attracted more than 150 teens, and a follow-up conference for professionals this spring attracted dozens. A Web site launched at the first conference, jphilanthropy.com, run by Jewish Family and Life Media, received 200,000 hits in its first year.

After the youth philanthropy conference last spring — which overlapped with the high-powered Jewish Funders Network conference — several donors backed the establishment of the Jewish Teen Funders Network to serve as a central address for these programs. This year, the network is considering proposals to award 10 communities matching grants of $30,000 to set up new youth foundation programs.

“I think a very strong motivation behind these programs is the idea of providing a hands-on, values-driven educational opportunity for teenagers that provides an alternative to Hebrew school,” said Stefanie Zelkind, who runs the Jewish Teen Funders Network, an arm of the Jewish Funders Network. “The general area of service learning and tikkun olam resonates a lot with teenagers, and this is a program that really engages teens very seriously and gives them a lot of responsibility.”

The experience also demands serious work from the teens.

Teller and her peers spent three Sundays learning the mechanics of giving — how to read the financials of a nonprofit, how to conduct the research and what questions to ask to assess an organization’s efficacy and the impact of a potential donation.

“We were the ones doing everything,” Teller said.

This is the fourth group of teens — all of them children and grandchildren of philanthropic families associated with the Jewish Community Foundation — that the Community Youth Foundation has entrusted to disburse $10,000.

They begin by brainstorming about problems and organizations that can achieve solutions. They each research several organizations, and then narrow the list down to organizations worthy of site visits — an important step for a generation that relies heavily on the web for information.

After the visits, the teens gather to debate each organization’s comparative merits, and negotiate with each other to choose who will receive grants.

The only limitation is that half the money must go to Jewish causes. Beyond that, teens decide not only which organizations around the world to give to, but to how many and at what level, an exercise that opens up deep discussion on Jewish traditions of giving.

“The kids really learn how complicated it can be to conduct effective philanthropy,” said Susan Grinel, who runs the Community Youth Foundation for the Jewish Community Foundation. “It’s really a maturing process.”

Aside from Shane’s inspiration, Teller and her peers awarded $5,000 to Jewish World Watch, which is working for humanitarian aid and political awareness in Darfur, and $4,000 to L.A. Youth Network, which works with homeless kids and teens.

The fact that the kids decided to give to programs that are not specifically Jewish is typical not only of their generation, but of gen-Xers as well — a trend some baby boomers and their parents find disconcerting. Grinel says the Jewish Community Foundation set up the youth program in response to concerns about generational disparities that kept coming up among foundation donor families.

“When the younger generation says I want to give to Darfur, and the older generation says this Jewish community in Los Angeles is what gave me my start and I think we should focus here, how do you begin to bridge that gap and let people talk on common ground?” said Grinel, who also runs the Family Foundation Center for the Jewish Community Foundation.

Grinel has found that focusing discussions on core, motivating values usually reveals a smaller gap than initially perceived, and unpacking those values can be educational for everyone involved.

“I think these programs present the Jewish community with a serious opportunity to listen and to learn from these teenagers,” said Zelkind of the Jewish Teen Funders Network. “The best of these programs are being used in that way rather than in guiding the teenagers to make the kinds of decisions that their community leaders and parents would like them to make.”

It is that interplay between adults and teens that makes these programs attractive — kids are handing out large sums of money, and the adults who want that money, or who want to see that money disbursed intelligently, must treat teens seriously whether on site visits, at the dinner table, or in the board room. Kids, in turn, learn how to behave in adult milieus.

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