April 23, 2009

On Sunday, May 3, I will be at the city animal shelter in South Los Angeles, creating gripping mini-biographies about the dogs, cats and whatever other strays are residing there that day. The idea is to write those stories on cards, affix them to the cages, and make those wannabe pets attractive to wannabe owners. Want to join me?

Last year, around this same date, I was serving pizza, salad and dessert to runaway teens now living in a shelter in Hollywood. They were visiting a prop shop filled with cool stuff easily recognizable from their favorite TV shows. The year before that, I cleaned out the closets and organized donated goods at a drop-in center for Santa Monica’s homeless located right off the pier.

Over the past dozen or so years, I’ve planted public-school gardens and painted murals, decorated cookies for sick kids, each spring taking at least one day to move outside my comfort zone to go to places I’ve never been and meet people I might not otherwise have the chance to get to know.

One year, a good friend hooked me into helping him organize a carnival for 600 people at an elementary school in South Los Angeles; we brought in a disc jockey, clowns, face-painters, portrait photographers and much more. That day we also hosted a clothing giveaway, planted gardens and helped put in new fencing to give the kids’ lunch area more privacy. We worked alongside the neighborhood community, and when the day was over, what had been a littered and drab schoolyard had become tidy, colorful and utterly transformed.

I was transformed, too.

This all happened through Big Sunday, the nonprofit organization that is a big umbrella for volunteerism and, according to its Web site, “the largest regional community service event in America.” That Web site is also the place where you can sign up to “serve” next weekend, May 2-3, in ways that might sound way too interesting, enjoyable, or sometimes even goofy, to be considered dutiful: Helping your kids set up a lemonade stand to raise money for kids’ charities, anyone? Washing pigs (really!) or knitting clothes for preemies? You can also sort donated clothing, fix up apartments for the formerly homeless and cook for the ailing or elderly.

In this new Era of Obama, this kind of service has become cool, if it wasn’t already. Sharing, repairing, giving back, tikkun olam, whatever you want to call it. And if that all sounds a bit like taking medicine, there’s another message here: With Big Sunday projects, it’s often not the service to others that makes participating so rewarding. It’s the chance to get out of your shell and become more comfortable in your own town. To get off the freeway and into neighborhoods. To shake hands with people who don’t live right across the street. Or maybe ones who do that you’d never met before. And in the process, you do get to share a sense of accomplishment, and maybe even break bread together.

This year Big Sunday (it’s actually Big Saturday-Sunday or maybe just Big Weekend, but never mind) is expected to attract as many as 50,000 volunteers of all ages, ethnicities and backgrounds. Between 400 and 500 projects are planned (the number is still growing) to help some 250 organizations from San Diego (cleaning parks) to Solvang (home of those dirty pigs). And just reading about them on the Big Sunday Web site will make you laugh, cry, and hopefully jump in. To be honest, it sometimes seems hard to escape the day’s presence, even if you don’t participate. On a Big Sunday day, all over Los Angeles, people are working together wearing the signature T-shirts with a big colorful handprint logo. Open your eyes; you’ll see them everywhere. And for those of you going to the Yom HaAtzmaut Israel Festival the same Sunday this year, you too can join in — it’s one of the volunteer venues.

David Levinson is the face behind Big Sunday; he founded it as Temple Israel of Hollywood’s Mitzvah Day in 1999 with 13 projects, and he has overseen the event’s explosion into an independent, year-round nonprofit operation, for which he serves as executive director, aided by Sherry Marks, associate director, and a small staff. Last Sunday, Levinson was sitting in his office on Beverly Boulevard near La Brea, in a moment of calm as volunteers dropped by to pick up posters, flyers and other promotional materials.

It’s been a little rougher than usual this year, he said, because while there’s a great need for help in many communities, and a huge number of willing volunteers — from churches, mosques, synagogues, community groups, you name it — fundraising has become harder, too. Corporate donors that once gave tens of thousands now give a few thousand. That can hurt with an annual budget of $1 million (they’d hoped to reach $1.2 million this year, but had to lower their goal). So individual donations are welcome, too. What does the money go to? Well, while I was there, a great discussion was going on about moving donated furniture. No storage space was available, so alternate arrangements had to be made involving transfers from trucks to trucks. Each project costs money — all provided by Big Sunday’s budget — to provide materials, serve food, pay those vendors who can’t afford to donate, and all that has had to be handled more creatively than ever this year.

There’s also a great need for donations of food and clothing this year, perhaps more than any other year.

Still, even under pressure, Levinson has the laid-back air of someone who has seen it all, yet who knows how to kick the adrenaline into gear when needed. He’s the kind of guy who always remembers everyone’s name and is ever ready with an introduction. And even as the scope of the organization grows, he seems always tuned into the details on any project — and he’s always got a plan for how to make it better.

Over the years, Levinson has developed a remarkably convincing philosophy about volunteerism — that it’s not about doing good for others, but working with others to make things better. He’s got the spiel down, with catchwords like “our mission is not just community service but community building,” and the fact is he lives that mission. Sit around his office for a while, and you’re as likely to meet an imam as a rabbi, a mom or a teen, and everyone gets the same treatment. It’s infectious, and inspiring. It also means you end up finding yourself volunteering for one more duty.

Levinson, a playwright and screenwriter as well, has just sold a yet-to-be-named book on volunteering, from which he happily shared one secret with me: “Most people,” he said with a wry grin, “are willing and happy to do more than they bargained for.”

And he’s not afraid to ask.

So … about that animal shelter … there are some pups who would be very happy to see you…. What are you doing on May 2 and 3?

To sign up or for more information about Big Sunday, call (323) 549-9944 or visit this story at jewishjournal.com. 

Having just completed the Passover seders I realize that the attitude with which one asks the question is often as important as the question itself. The distance between the wise and the wicked child is not that great — it is the distance between “we” and “you,” between participation and alienation — but the response to the two questions is radically different.

So permit me to raise questions, because frankly I do not understand what is happening to our community, most particularly to our Federation. And everyone I approach — board members of The Federation, presidents of constituent agencies, even staff members of The Federation — can’t answer the question.

Perhaps a public airing of the question will yield a satisfactory answer. I surely hope so.

Why is a gift to The Federation this year different from all others?

In the past The Federation assumed responsibility for its constituent agencies, for their basic infrastructure and for underwriting the services they provide.

The Board of The Federation made important judgments as to the overall needs of the community and a gift to The Federation provided for the basic infrastructure — from rent to staffing, to programs and services — of such important agencies as Jewish Family Service and the Bureau of Jewish Education as well as to the overseas needs of the Jewish community through the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and the United Israel Appeal, among others. It also supported important national efforts and national committees, assessed the merit of claims for such support, and made the appropriate allocations.

One could quarrel with the conclusions of The Federation’s leaders, but the process was somewhat clear and somewhat transparent, and the purpose was both clear and important. A gift to The Federation was essential to maintaining the infrastructure of the Jewish community, the many essential and worthwhile — and oftentimes unglamorous — activities that a Jewish community must undertake and the responsibilities we bear for local, national and international Jews.

As I understand it, this is no longer the case.

The Federation no longer sees itself as responsible for the collective infrastructure of the community, for the constituent agencies that offer basic services. Instead, committees of The Federation will now determine priorities of their own for the services that are to be offered, either with the participation of what had hitherto been constituent agencies or in competition with them. And the constituent agencies will now be responsible for raising their own funding and covering their own basic costs.

If this is indeed the case — and it has been explained to me numerous times that it is — then I have three simple, perhaps elementary questions.

• Who, if anyone, is responsible for determining and supporting the basic infrastructure of the community?
• Why should one give one’s central gift to The Federation rather than dividing the funds that one had previously directed to The Federation to support the basic services of the agencies that have now been forced to fend for themselves?
• Has The Federation abandoned its central funding role and created a void at the core of our community?

For example, if we believe in Jewish education — which we definitely should — why not give directly to the Bureau of Jewish Education and/or to the Jewish educational institutions of one’s choice rather than to The Federation, which has now established itself as another service provider alongside — dare one say to rival — the Bureau?

If we believe — which we also should — that supporting the Jewish needy is now more essential than ever with such activities as Jewish Family Service, Jewish Vocational Services, Jewish Free Loan Association, SOVA and MAZON, why not allocate the resources previously funneled through The Federation to these agencies directly?

And if The Federation is but another service provider, how are we to know how good a service provider it is and what its priorities are in order to assess where funds are to be directed? The failure of the Investment Committee of the Jewish Community Foundation that took communal endowment funds and gave them to Bernard Madoff to resign in shame or be fired for lax oversight does not give this writer great confidence.

Permit me to stress that I offer these questions NOT as an excuse for not giving — I will give and I want to give — but because I am confused not as to whether to give but where to give and how to give in this most trying of times when those of us with the resources to give must give in order to meet the growing needs of those who have fallen upon hard times.

I know that I am not the only one who is asking these questions, because every time I ask them of significant officials in both The Federation and its constituent agencies, I am given a puzzled response: “Beats me.” “I too don’t know the answer.”

What is the answer?

Michael Berenbaum is director of the Sigi Ziering Institute: Exploring the Ethical and Religious Implications of the Holocaust and a professor of theology (adjunct) at American Jewish University.

As we sat at the Passover table reading the haggadah over the recent holidays, the narrative of the exodus of our people was recited and interpreted by Jews throughout Los Angeles. The interpretation yielded important questions that challenge us to recall the historic narrative of our people and relate it to our contemporary realities.

The organized Jewish community, as embodied in its central communal body, The Jewish Federation, also has a narrative. The history of Los Angeles Jewry and its development is reflected in its growing and diverse population, the sprawling residential patterns, the evolution of its institutions and its Federation.

In today’s Jewish Journal, a crucial question is asked: “Why is a gift to The Federation this year different from all others?” 

A simple answer would be to look around at the impact of the worst economic crisis in over 80 years. Consider how fortunate many of us are, when compared to the thousands without jobs, any means of support, or basic necessities.

At the end of 2008, The Federation was already sensing the effect the economy might have on our fundraising. Some donors tearfully explained that not only were they unable to give, but they themselves were in need of help. The Federation rapidly identified emergency funds and made an extraordinary supplemental allocation to four of our human service agencies. No other organization in our community would or could do so — that is unique to The Federation.

At that time, the scope and depth of this crisis were not fully understood. The Federation reached out to agencies, Jewish schools and area synagogues to determine the extent of the challenge. 

It is a tribute to The Federation’s leadership that we took rapid action, earmarking a half million dollars to establish a fund for emergency needs of Jews in Los Angeles. With the participation of the Jewish Community Foundation, the emergency fund was increased to $750,000. We established guidelines for making small grants for health care, shelter, employment support and emergency child care needs. We helped establish a Community Crisis Hotline. The requests began to pour in.

Meanwhile, The Federation went ahead with making annual allocations, locally and internationally, without reductions to the 2008 levels of support. A focus on making program grants to specifically targeted causes was essential to move us beyond support based on historical patterns. Critical times require new responses.

Many Federation agencies receive significant public support in the form of annual grants from the state or county. These grants might be in serious jeopardy due to the economic crisis. Our effective coordination of advocacy at the local, state and national levels is becoming more essential.

While taking pride in the services provided on a non-sectarian basis, The Federation also recognized that Jews in need require special consideration at this moment of potentially shrinking resources. This means making difficult decisions around priorities.

Services are deemed more important than supporting infrastructure. And although we continue to provide communal office space and other central services at the Goldsmith Center and Milken Campus, we are placing the emphasis on funding programs for those in need.

We also maintained our commitment to engage the next generations through allocations to our schools, campuses and young adult programming. We continue to assist in Israel and around the globe, and to enhance ties between Israelis and Angelenos in the areas of education, human services and culture.

Recently, we secured two major grants to stabilize Jewish educational programming in Los Angeles. Working with the Bureau of Jewish Education, day schools, Jewish camps and early childhood programs, The Federation will assure essential programs that touch thousands in the community are not diminished by the economic crisis.

It is obvious as The Federation approaches its centennial anniversary that we are in a period in which our communal narrative is being rewritten. We are in the midst of a crisis. It is not a war, nor a natural disaster, but it is indeed a crisis — once again calling for collective action.

Why, indeed, is a gift to The Federation this year different from all others?

Our Federation is approaching one hundred years of service to the L.A. community. In the early 20th century, when The Federation was created, most Jews lived in a few compact neighborhoods and there was no Jewish state. The leadership of L.A.’s Jewish organizations banded together to raise funds for organizations to provide critical human services to those in need. And although the fundraising purposes today are similar, the context is totally different.

I urge each of you who have the means to give generously to organizations that will make a difference. It will make a difficult year better for those who need help.

Please remember that a contribution to The Jewish Federation reaches beyond any single cause. It can ensure our collective future as America’s second largest Jewish community as we chart our course through the next few difficult years.

John R. Fishel is president of The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles.

My good friends Michael Lynton and Gary Ginsberg and I have had an ongoing conversation about Judaism, the changing role of the rabbi and our collective Jewish future. Three years ago, Newsweek magazine published our list of the 50 Most Influential Rabbis in America for the first time. There have now been three of these lists as well as two others, the 25 Best Pulpit Rabbis and the 25 Most Vibrant Congregations.

Now clearly we are not experts and we have never professed to be. We are three people who come from very different Jewish backgrounds, but we share a deep commitment to the community. At the beginning, we had hoped that the lists would trigger a conversation, some healthy and vigorous debate.

And guess what — we have more than accomplished our goals. Newspapers, Web sites and bloggers from around the world have become preoccupied with the lists. Jewish communal leaders and rabbis (on and off the list) have joined the debate.

Of course, we have been criticized and the lists have been dissected. There have been some personal attacks and some of them have been unfounded. But we compile these lists with open eyes, open minds and, to be totally honest, a hint of mischievousness.

One criticism seems to follow us every year, and it’s the one that galls me the most: The lists are too Los Angeles-centric. I’ve been hearing that gripe for three years, from The Forward and several East Coast-based bloggers, and, to quote from the movie “Network,” “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore.”

Los Angeles has a great, organized Jewish community with innovative leadership and some of the most important Jewish institutions in America. It’s time for us to recognize our community’s strengths and let Chicago, Boston and New York know that the Jewish future is being formed here in Los Angeles.

Over the past decade, cities across the country have been searching for “cutting edge” programs and trying anything and everything that smells “transformative.” Here in sunny Los Angeles, “cutting edge” and “transformative” are in our communal DNA.

So what’s the problem? First of all, we don’t really know how good we have it. We need to get the sun out of our eyes and look around. We need to experience the best of Los Angeles’ Jewish community and then spread the word — first here and then nationwide.

Let’s invite the naysayers to tour the Skirball Cultural Center and the Museum of Tolerance, spend a Friday night at IKAR, Nashuva or B’nai David-Judea. They should sit down with Rabbis Ed Feinstein, David Wolpe, Nachum Braverman and Steven Leder and spend an afternoon with students at American Jewish University, Shalhevet, Milken and New Community Jewish High School. We have created extraordinary models here, like Bet Tzedek Legal Services, the Zimmer Children’s Museum, Vista del Mar and Big Sunday and the trailblazing Jewish Community Foundation — to name a few. It’s time for us to be a model for every Jewish community in America. We can and should lead. There has never been a more important time in Jewish life.

We need to learn some valuable lessons from Hollywood. Instead of selling the American Dream, we need to focus on selling the Jewish Dream. And we have the tools to do it. Los Angeles embraces every Jew, and every Jew has a home. This is truly an open community. It used to be that this was considered the last frontier. Many thought Jews left their homes in New York, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Boston to leave their pasts behind. We have proven that that is a myth. This is a community of immigrants who brought their traditions with them and have reinvented them.

Our best and brightest institutions reflect that reinvention and that openness to new ideas and to Jews of all backgrounds. Let’s be honest — we’re a young community that still has growing pains but is propelled by youthfulness. This isn’t your grandfather’s Jewish community, but we do still honor him (and your grandmother) by linking to our past not depending on it.

It’s time. When the fictional character Howard Beale had had enough, he opened his window, stuck out his head and yelled, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it any more.” I propose that this Friday afternoon right before Shabbat, we all open our windows, take a deep breath and remind ourselves of what a great Jewish community we have. After all, this is Los Angeles and Howard Beale lived in New York. l

Jay Sanderson is CEO and executive producer of JTN/JTN Productions.