February 27, 2009

I’ve done a lot of bloviating about the consequences for the Jewish community of the economic downturn and the Bernard Madoff investment scandal. But Jonathan Sarna, the imminent American Jewish historian, recently gave a speech to the Jewish Funders Network that provides everything you need to know about how American Jews became so wealthy and where the community is headed.

The Jewish Journal has published a transcript of his talk. Here’s what I found to be the most telling part:

At the moment, following billions of dollars in losses to Jewish endowments and a significant decline in annual gift giving, different sectors of the American Jewish community are busy explaining to all who will listen why their particular area of the Jewish economy has to be preserved at all costs. Human services (obviously a priority in tough times); Jewish education (as necessary as oxygen); Jewish camping (shapes Jewish memories and lifelong associations); innovative Jewish start-ups (they are the most efficient sector of the Jewish economy and in many ways the most creative); Birthright Israel (perhaps the most successful program we have established in decades & critical to preserving American Jews’ ties to Israel). And so on and so forth—more or less every program is too good to give up. In a way, the community is like my university: everyone understands that we need to cut back in hard times. The faculty simply insists that: nothing be cut from crucial areas like the arts, the humanities, the sciences, the social sciences and the co-curriculars. Everything else is on the table!

The problem in the American Jewish community at large is that, aside from killing off CAJE: The Coalition for the Advancement of Jewish Education and the American Jewish Congress, nobody has put forth serious ideas about how to cut the Jewish communal budget by one-third. That, however, might well be what we need to do. Foundations, even not taking into account the Madoff losses, are about one-third poorer than they were this time last year. If the downturn stretches into 2010, annual campaigns may be down by one-third as well.

Inevitably in downturns, the weaker organizations are the first to fall. As Warren Buffett observed in his usual colorful way, “you don’t know who is swimming naked until the tide goes out.“ My own guess is that, at the very least, many of the Hebrew colleges, many of the bureaus of Jewish education, several of the Jewish museums and some other shakier Jewish organizations will not survive this downturn.

Orthodox Jewish organizations are apparently in the worst shape. Orthodox Jews have been disproportionately involved in banking and the stock market, and were also disproportionately hurt by Madoff ($2 billion, by one account, were lost by members of a single Orthodox synagogue). They also are heavy users of our most expensive Jewish institutions (synagogues and schools). I have felt for a long time—and for numerous reasons—that Orthodoxy’s rise had run its course. My sense is that the downturn will confirm this. I do not expect to see same kind of Orthodox growth moving forward as we have seen since 1960s, and my guess, sadly, is that some significant Orthodox institutions will not survive.

Sarna goes on to detail seven trends to watch:

I do not have high confidence that we can predict the future today any more clearly.

But this much I am prepared to predict: the economic downturn will end, the stock market will turn around, Jews will begin to make money again, and Jewish funders will regain their confidence and search for new ways to make our community better and stronger.

Let’s hope that this happens soon.

The Los Angeles mayoral race on Tuesday’s ballot is really a 10-candidate uncontested campaign for incumbent Antonio Villaraigosa. The mayor’s opponents largely lack name recognition and money, and little newsprint has even been dedicated to covering the campaigns.

But that doesn’t mean there hasn’t been drama. At least, there was plenty of it last night when L.A. police questioned David “Zuma Dogg” Saltsburg, a City Hall gadfly and sometimes journalist, about whether he made a death threat against another candidate.

That other candidate would be Craig X Rubin, the Reagan Republican and former pot pastor who revealed his candidacy on The God Blog last fall. You may remember Rubin as the founder of Temple 420, a house of worship that used cannabis as a sacrament for communicating with God. The church landed Rubin in court, though he avoided jail time.

Here is what Rubin, now a pastor at The Family Church in Pasadena, claims happened:

Rubin said he believes it all began during a forum at UCLA on Wednesday when Saltsburg stormed out. Saltsburg apparently thought that Rubin and another candidate were mocking his comments embracing W. Edwards Deming’s 14-point management philosophy.

“I don’t know where the anger came from,” Rubin said.

Rubin called police and officers came to his home in the San Fernando Valley, where he filed a formal complaint.

“As a pastor, I felt kind of conflicted about it,” Rubin said. “You know, turn the other check. But I really did feel threatened.”

Zuma Dogg denies threatening Rubin. Fortunately, the controversy isn’t likely to cost him the election. The video after the jump—maybe:

Misleading headline of the year from Yahoo! News: “Rabbis rule joking teens legally married.”

See, this wasn’t an 8-year-old offering his girlfriend a Crackerjack ring and asking her if she’d be his wife. It was a 14-year-old girl and a 17-year-old boy standing in their Israeli schoolyard, reciting Jewish ritual vows and accepting the marriage rings in front of God and witnesses.

That, and what a spokeswoman for Israel’s Rabbinical Courts said was the consummation of their marriage, was enough to make them man and wife in the Jewish state.

Spokeswoman Efrat Orbach, describing the girl as the youngest Jewish divorcee in Israel’s modern history, said the couple was granted a rabbinical divorce this week.

That’s the sticking point for me. I’m not a big believer in the institution of marriage as recognized by the state, and I’m certainly too liberal to be a fundamentalist. But two becoming one flesh is the uniting of man and woman that God intended. And, um, that union is only approved in the Bible when it comes with the institutional commitment.

Thanks for the link, Dennis, though I think we disagree on this one.

Last fall, Peanut Elvis offered $50,000 to Jews willing to make aliyah to his tiny Alabama town and help grow a small and struggling Jewish community. Recently, Dothan’s first new Jewish family, the Reeds (like where Moses was found by Pharoah’s daughter) made the move:

With one new family already in the fold, and hundreds of others expressing interest, the goal is to bring as many as 19 more Jewish families to this mostly Christian town of 58,000 in rural southeast Alabama over the next five years.

Getting thousands of dollars in assistance was nice, the Reeds say, but leaving their home in Sanford, N.C., for Alabama was an easy decision: Matt Reed was able to get a job quickly near Dothan, and his wife’s relatives were members of Temple Emanu-El years ago.

The friendliness of the people was the final clincher, they said.

“It’s been freaky how easy this has been,” said Matt Reed, 25, taking a break from moving boxes inside his new home on Whatley Drive. The curly-haired Ayden, 2, plays with a new trash can while his mom watches after Sam, just 6 weeks old.

Michelle Reed’s Jewish family has roots in Dothan, while her husband was raised Mormon and is in the process of converting to Judaism. Their mixed background wasn’t a drawback for program organizers — as many as half of Temple Emanu-El’s members have similar histories.

The couple heard about the relocation program through family members in Alabama and applied in September because Matt Reed was finishing a stint with the Army at Fort Bragg, N.C. They moved to Dothan after he left the service on Feb. 1.

“We always wanted to raise our kids Jewish, but we didn’t want to do it in North Carolina,” said Michelle Reed, 26. “We didn’t know anything about the temples up there. The one here my parents actually got married in.”

You can read the rest of the AP report here. Thanks for the link, Laurel.

Holy cow:

James Dobson resigned as chairman of Focus on the Family but will continue to play a role at the Colorado Springs-based organization he founded, The Associated Press reports. Dobson’s wife, Shirley, also resigned from the Focus board.

Dobson, 72, already turned the ship over six years ago to Jim Daly, the organization’s president and chief executive officer. He will continue to host Focus on the Family’s radio program, write a monthly newsletter and speak out on moral issues, Daly told Eric Gorski of the AP.

“One of the common errors of founder-presidents is to hold to the reins of leadership too long, thereby preventing the next generation from being prepared for executive authority,” Dobson said in a statement. “… Though letting go is difficult after three decades of intensive labor, it is the wise thing to do.”

That’s the wisest thing he’s said in years.