August 6, 2008

Rabbi right to your door (NYT)

The New York Times, in tomorrow’s paper, checks in on Aish HaTorah’s dial-a-rabbi program for the richer and even richer. It’s a good article, well written, on target and surprising as can be. (Did you know the cost for these weekly Torah studies at your home or office or home-office runs about $10,000 a year?)

Still, despite the fine reporting and a few good quotes—“I think of this as similar to my yoga class, only much, much more satisfying”—I prefer the Talk of the Town piece on this topic last fall. Like the NYT article, The New Yorker begins with Rabbi Stuart Shiff but instead of jumping around takes the reader through one meeting:

“What this program does is it blows away all the excuses,” Shiff explained recently, in one of Aish’s conference rooms in midtown. “We have almost a postal carrier’s motto: nothing stops us.” It was 9:30 A.M. on the day before Hanukkah, and Shiff—who was wearing a black velvet yarmulke—had a meeting with Seth Horowitz, the former chief executive of Everlast, the boxing-supply company (which he had just sold for a reported hundred and sixty-eight million dollars). Horowitz, who is thirty-one, started studying with Shiff eighteen months ago. “I just needed to talk to someone,” he said, turning off his iPhone. “I’ve gained so much knowledge. This is the beauty of the program—the rabbi comes to your office, you discuss the Torah, and you talk about life.”

They had been reading Genesis 37, where Jacob arrives with his sons in Canaan. “ ‘Jacob settled in the land of his father’s sojournings,’ ” Shiff read. “Now, there’s an interesting extrapolation in the rabbinic commentary. It says vayeshev—that Jacob wanted to dwell. The extrapolation is that he wanted to have a life of ease. He didn’t want to have pressure or issues.” Then disaster happens: Joseph, Jacob’s favorite son, is sold as a slave into Egypt. “It’s a very strange thing here,” Shiff said. “All Jacob wanted was some peace and quiet. What’s so wrong with that?”

Horowitz leaned back in a swivel chair. “It’s kind of the opposite of what we’re here for? Free will? Our opportunity to choose between good and bad?”

Shiff’s exegesis abounded with business-world metaphors: in prison in Egypt, Joseph mistakenly puts “all his trust in his network,” but he later rises to become “like the vice-president” of a company. Shiff had an appointment at eleven, at Bear Stearns. He arrived in a cluttered corner office where an executive in pinstripes was yelling into a telephone. A secretary sat nearby. She explained that although she was not Jewish, she enjoyed listening in on Shiff’s weekly visits. “I love everything about the Jewish faith,” she said. “I think it has a lot of wisdom.” The executive hung up the phone. “Basically, I’m a quasi disbeliever,” he explained. “I like talking to the rabbi, because I challenge him on a lot of the stuff. I like to ask my questions, which are mostly about the rigidity of religious beliefs. I’m probably his worst patient, if you want to call me a patient.”

The full article can be read here.

Maybe I’d be found hypocritical if I had the funds to afford it, but this program seems to make religion way too convenient for my comfort, merely a small part of your daily schedule that actually makes time for you. Essentially, religion is UPS and your teacher is that guy with the whiteboard and bad haircut.

Obviously, we don’t know if the bigwigs who participate in Aish’s Executive Learning Program, who sometimes delayed from meetings by financial crises and personal-training sessions and All-Star baseball games, are active in a synagogue. It’s likely they are members somewhere, and their visiting Torah tutor may be a supplement to what they’re learning on Saturdays. But I imagine in many cases this program serves as a substitute, which returns us to my complaint in the previous paragraph: How, if you can’t make time for God, could you make the time and sacrifices to do what he commands you?

But the important thing to recognize, and its easy to overlook, is that this program, despite its cost, is not for the devout. It’s for the cultural Jew looking to identify more with the religious tradition of the Jewish people, which corresponds with Aish HaTorah’s mission of in-reach.

That much seems evident from the NYT’s story, which spoke with more participants and offered an honest perspective of where these high-earning professional are coming from. More excerpts are after the jump:

Set Free’s leader Aguilar

Bad news today for the Christian biker gang. Set Free Ministries. Six members, along with three members of the Hells Angeles, were arrested in a handful of raids across Southern California. The reason: A July 27 barfight in which members of Set Free allegedly stabbed two Hells Angels.

Among those arrested was Phil Aguilar, Set Free’s founder and leader. Details from the LA Times:

Aguilar’s MySpace page says he is a resident of Anaheim who is also known as the pastor or “the Chief” of the group. Next to his photo is the statement: “Sinner or Saint you be the judge!”

Authorities said the gang has a religious ministry that recruits people discharged from parole, state prison and county jail and has an outreach program for convicted felons.

“It just seems they have a lot of people that have run into law enforcement and the court system,” Schmidt said.

On its website, Set Free Soldiers describes itself as “a group of men who love Jesus and love to ride hard. We are not your normal motorcycle club. Some say we are too good for the bad guys, and too bad for the good guys.

“We don’t argue that,” the statement says. “All we Soldiers know is that we take care of our own and help plenty of others along the way. We try to live right in this wrong world and let our light shine wherever we may go.”

I met a number of the Set Free guys when I was out in San Bernardino. They hosted a weekly Bible study in Rialto that began inside Heroes and Madmen tattoo shop and had grown out onto the sidewalk. I once watched them wash each other’s feet out there as an act of humility.

They were a fellowship of Christian misfits who I thought served a really important niche, though I imagined it was one that often toed the line of lawfulness. Innocent until proven guilty, but things don’t look good today for Set Free.

After the jump is the short vignette I wrote about the group for a package about alternative Christian ministries:

This isn’t going to be good for anybody.

The video begins with a Muslim woman questioning a Christian street preacher about the divinity of Jesus. He insults her, and she doesn’t appear to want to hear his answer. As he tries to explain, she gets in his face and grabs for his Bible, at which point the preacher blurts: “Muhammad was a pedophile; he was a liar, a thief, a murder.”

That’s when she punches him. With pretty good right cross. It’s at the 1:30 mark on the tape.

“Don’t talk about my prophet,” the woman says as a friend drags her away. “I’ll kill you!”

Basketball camp began Monday for the Israeli and Palestinian kids in Kiryat Gat. Their trainer was Jordan Farmar, former Bruin star, back-up Lakers point guard and Jewish all-star. Farmar announced last month he would make this pilgrimage, which is rooted in his interest in facilitating coexistence and will include some meetings on behalf of Seeds for Peace after basketball camp ends Aug. 11.

Farmar checks in with NBA.com with this dispatch, in which he sounds more like a dignitary on a delegation than an emissary:

“The camp is located about an hour and a half outside of Jerusalem. I worked with kids, mostly age eight through 12, of all different cultures. I saw Palestinian kids and Israeli kids, along with kids of other backgrounds, play together on the same team, do drills together, and just get along, which was real cool. Basketball is a vehicle to accomplish these things. Sometimes it’s really hard to get Israelis and Palestinians and Jordanians and Arabs in general talking. So to even get them in the same place, having fun with one another and making friends is a crucial start.

“So far, the highlight from the camp has been seeing these young people of different cultures come together, even though others around them, at home, are in conflict. In previous years, when I went to Maine, I heard how rough it was for many of the children and their families – many of which live in ghettos or tough neighborhoods. Now, I have the chance to see these areas, and witness kids of Palestinian background come together and play ball with their peers from Tel-Aviv or Jerusalem, and that’s been really gratifying.

“And I know that sports make it easier for people to unify. When I was younger I would go to the park with friends from the black side of my family, a lot of kids would say “that White Boy can play.” But once I stepped on the court, the fact that I appeared white was thrown out of the window. Basketball can bridge gaps like that, because if you play the right way you can be teammates and work together with anyone; no matter what language they speak or with which culture they identify.”

In this report and an article from the Jerusalem Post, Farmar talks a lot about how his multi-etnic background—black father, white Jewish mother, Israeli step-father—helps him relate with people of all colors and creeds. But, from the following quote, it’s not clear sports would be the solution to conflict in the Middle East:

“No matter where you live or what’s going on, people like sports. People riot for their sports teams and go out all night. It’s important for us to reach out to those who have a connection to it.”

Yeah, sports are a great way to break down barriers. But I don’t think we need any more rioting over there.

Mazen Asbahi

More Muslim trouble for Barack Obama, whose Muslim-outreach coordinator has resigned after questions were raised about Islamic connections. From the Wall Street Journal:

Chicago lawyer Mazen Asbahi, who was appointed volunteer national coordinator for Muslim American affairs by the Obama campaign on July 26, stepped down Monday after an Internet newsletter wrote about his brief stint on the fund’s board, which also included a fundamentalist imam.

“Mr. Asbahi has informed the campaign that he no longer wishes to serve in his volunteer position, and we are in the process of searching for a new national Arab American and Muslim American outreach coordinator,” spokesman Ben LaBolt said in a statement.

A corporate lawyer at the firm of Schiff Hardin LLP, Mr. Asbahi tendered his resignation after he and the Obama campaign received emailed inquiries about his background from The Wall Street Journal. He did not respond to the email or a message left at his law office; the campaign released a letter in which Mr. Asbahi said he did not want to be a distraction.

(skip)

In 2000, Mr. Asbahi briefly served on the board of Allied Assets Advisors Fund, a Delaware-registered trust. Its other board members at the time included Jamal Said, the imam at a fundamentalist-controlled mosque in Illinois.

“I served on that board for only a few weeks before resigning as soon as I became aware of public allegations against another member of the board,” Mr. Asbahi said in his resignation letter. “Since concerns have been raised about that brief time, I am stepping down…to avoid distracting from Barack Obama’s message of change.”

The eight-year-old connection between Mr. Asbahi and Mr. Said was raised last week by the Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report, which is published by a Washington think tank and chronicles the activities of the Muslim Brotherhood, a world-wide fundamentalist group based in Egypt. Other Web sites, some pro-Republican and others critical of fundamentalist Islam, also have reported on the background of Mr. Asbahi. He is a frequent speaker before several groups in the U.S. that scholars have associated with the Muslim Brotherhood.

There is plenty of economic uncertainty in the nonprofit world. But as the economy slowed in 2006 and it became clear charitable funds would soon slip, nonprofit CEOs saw their salaries increase.

Charity Navigator reports: “The top leaders of the 5,324 charities in America evaluated by Charity Navigator earn an average salary of $148,972. This represents a modest pay raise of 2.55% over the previous year studied, and is similar to last year’s pay raise of 2.34%.”

John Fishel, president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, brought in $375,123, which I believe—though I should reference the tax records in my desk—was about the same as in 2005. Rabbi Marvin Hier, president and CEO of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, received $249,215 in compensation; his wife Marlene, the center’s membership director, got $203,291.

Leading the CEOs of all charities in the field of Public Benefit was the head of the Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland, with an ungodly compensation package of $908,927.

Just take a moment to think about how much money that is. In Cleveland.

High earners in the Christian community included executives at the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association ($396,966 to Chairman Billy Graham), Trinity Broadcasting Network ($419,500 to President Paul Crouch; $361,000 to his wife, VP Janice; and $130,082 to their son, also a vice president) and Peter Popoff Ministries ($628,732 to President Peter Popoff; $203,029 to his wife, the executive business administrator, and;$182,166 to their son Nickolas)

Bored yesterday, I plugged into Charity Navigator’s database a few of the CEOs I deal with on a regular basis and was surprised to find that some made less than I thought, and certainly less than they would running a for-profit of comparable size. But their salaries remain nothing to sneeze at.

Hat tip to The Fundermentalist, who, in other nonprofit news, has a free link to the PDF of the annual “Power & Influence Top 50” just released by the NonProfit Times.