April 29, 2009

Over a 48-hour period last week, through a series of Jewish events, I discovered the limitations of tolerance.

On Thursday night, Rabbi Dr. Benny Lau, representing Beit Morasha of Jerusalem, came for a “conversational dinner” at my house. Lau was in Los Angeles as part of a citywide celebration of religious Zionism, and he spoke to a group of us about his and his organization’s efforts to build bridges in Israel between the Torah-observant and secular communities.

It was a mixed crowd: several Hollywood writers, a playwright and journalist, a Sephardic leader, an Internet entrepreneur, an Israel activist, an Orthodox outreach leader, a music producer, a philanthropist, etc. My co-hosts, Gary Wexler and Dan Adler, and I wanted the guest list to reflect some of the same cultural and ethnic differences Lau faces in his work.

Lau, who is the nephew of the former chief rabbi of Israel, was not there just to speak. He also came to listen. We talked about a lot of things, mainly around Jewish identity, but as the evening progressed an overall theme bubbled up: tolerance.

Some guests craved more tolerance — they seemed almost befuddled by the level of intolerance in Israel between the Orthodox and secular communities.

For others, there was more ambivalence: Is there a limit to tolerance when it comes to God-given truth? Should belief in one truth be something that should also be tolerated?

But it was a third perspective that, in my mind, really cut through — a view that says the Jewish nation must aim higher than just tolerance if it is to maintain its sense of common purpose and shared destiny.

It must aim for connection.

That was Lau’s message, and also his life’s purpose. As he sees it, being Jewish means being responsible for one another. It’s not enough to tolerate each other, if that means turning our backs on the other. We have a timeless Torah, the rabbi said, that belongs to all of us and can help connect us. Lau’s ongoing challenge is to make this Torah more welcoming and sensitive to the secular Israeli Jew.

The morning after our dinner, I was at a conference at UCLA Hillel titled “Building Jewish Los Angeles: A Leadership Conversation,” where about 40 community leaders gathered to talk about how to strengthen the local Jewish community and help “chart its future.”

Just like at the dinner, there was plenty of diversity among the attendees. Over the course of three hours, enough good ideas were expressed that even if we could do only 10 percent of them, our community would get an immediate boost.

But here’s what got me about our talkfest: I can’t recall anyone bringing up the word tolerance. I heard a lot of words like cooperation, connection, coordination, cohesion, innovation and education. But tolerance? Not so much.

It was as if we all realized that tolerance is only a beginning, not an end, and that settling for just tolerance means settling for a community of discrete and disconnected bubbles — hardly an ideal roadmap for building a thriving and engaged community.

Of course, once we got down to practical stuff — like what to do next and who should do what — things got more complicated. It’s easy to agree in principle, but turning principles into action means compromise and sacrifice.

It means struggling to find common ground.

Later that Friday night, at a private home in Pico-Robertson, I met an epic struggler, Rabbi Seth Farber, from Jerusalem. He’s an Orthodox talmudic scholar whose organization, Itim, helps disenfranchised Israelis navigate through the maze of the Rabbinate. If, for example, the Rabbinate rejects your marriage application because you can’t prove you’re a Jew, if it rejects your conversion, won’t give you a get or simply makes your life miserable, you call Farber.

He’s a halachic commando. He’ll send a private eye to a remote village of Chechnya to find a copy of an old get. He’ll videotape witnesses to prove a halachic point. He’ll find obscure loopholes in the law. His consuming passion is to assist Israelis who identify as Jews and want to be Jews (like 300,000 Russian immigrants) but who have run up against the brick wall of the Rabbinate.

On Shabbat afternoon, during a panel discussion at Young Israel of Century City with four distinguished religious Zionist rabbis from Israel — Shlomo Riskin, Ari Berman, Farber and Lau — there was so much talk of bringing back compassion and inclusiveness to Jewish law, it was easy to forget that they were Orthodox rabbis. But theirs was a primal scream against the status quo — against a politicized and dogmatic Rabbinate that has refused to allow innovative and inclusive halachic solutions to Israel’s most vexing civil problems.

Like Lau on Thursday night and our community leaders on Friday morning, Farber and his colleagues are engaged in a noble struggle: breaking down the walls that separate Jews and helping us connect with one another.

Going beyond tolerance is not easy, but in the great Jewish story, what is?

David Suissa, an advertising executive, is founder of OLAM magazine, Meals4Israel.com and Ads4Israel.com. He can be reached at {encode=”dsuissa@olam.org” title=”dsuissa@olam.org”}.

Friday night, I’m at the Los Angeles Times Book Awards reception downtown. It is, quite appropriately, given the number of newspaper writers and staffers who have lost their jobs in recent times, a smaller, much less lavish affair than in years past. Instead of 1,200 guests, about 300 have been invited; instead of Royce Hall, the venue is an auditorium in the Times building on West First Street. Sometime during the affair I find myself standing next to a tallish woman before a display of cheese and crackers, miniscule lamb chops and something that looks like Japanese noodles piled delicately in a small, crispy shell. I overhear one of the organizers tell the woman, “The food worked out well,” which to me implies she had something to do with it. Thinking I’m making cocktail-party small talk (as opposed to negotiating TARP, for instance), I ask the woman if she planned the menu. Her eyes grow wide in horror.

“Planned the menu?” she repeats, as if each word had been fished out of the depths of a swine-filled gutter. There’s enough disdain in her eyes to warrant 12 years of therapy from this night on, just so I can recover my self-esteem.

“Yeah,” I shrug, “you know, planned the menu. Like, decided what to serve.”

She stares at me for what must be 15 minutes.

“I’m an EVENT organizer,” she finally says, as if the event in question were the parting of the Red Sea. “I organize events.” 

She sounds like she gave up planning Obama’s inauguration in favor of this party, or that planning the inauguration is a more important job than the presidency itself. It doesn’t surprise me, of course, this being a town where parties have a whole different meaning from everywhere else. Any polite person in my place would apologize for ignorance, express sincere hopes that she hadn’t insulted the event planner by assuming she was a mere caterer, and spent the rest of the evening kicking herself for having displayed how far off the range of “cool” she was.

“Oh,” I say, “so you did plan the menu.”

Is it just Los Angeles, or do people everywhere have a sense of self-importance that moves in reverse correlation to their level of intelligence?

Three feet away from the party planner, a small, slender woman with birdlike features stands with a couple, talking about books. She has a shrill voice and she doesn’t mind projecting it, so I have no trouble discerning that every other word out of her mouth is an “I.” She’s an Armenian writer who lives in Los Angeles, and something about all this must make her feel uniquely — what? Unique? — because she’s managed to publish a couple of novels that (unlike the other 300,000 new books published in this country last year) should have taken the world by storm, but — due to the innate stupidity of the reading public and the general illiteracy of critics — didn’t. Just then, a man approaches her enthusiastically to say he’s a fan. She likes this, but not enough to extend more than a curt “Thank you” before going back to her original audience of two. The man persists. He says that he, too, is a writer. He says he lives in Oregon. Then he says his name. She turns her lips up and shrugs.

“Never heard of you,” she says. 

Call me petty if you must, but for some time now I’ve been hoping that all the current trouble in the world — global warming, economy, war … you know — will inspire in the average Angeleno an awareness of just how relatively small and inconsequential many of our Most Important People, and issues, and accomplishments, really are.

Getting a book published; planning parties; Angelina Jolie’s adoption habits. Hiring the most expensive decorator in town; buying the most expensive clothes at Neiman Marcus; working for minimum wage at Neiman Marcus so you can deride customers who can’t afford $1,200 blouses and $3,000 bags. Designing those $3,000 bags. Being Angelina Jolie. Being Angelina Jolie’s agent, or personal trainer, or dog walker.

It’s not just our celebrity culture, or our materialism, or our appreciation for beauty at all costs that has become increasingly bizarre in the face of such greater, more imminent realities; it’s our belief in our own individual significance to the world, the idea that it should be watching us instead of us watching it, that we should inspire awe — with our talent, money, ingenuity, cheese display — instead of kindness, or humility, or unity. It’s our assumption (let’s be honest here, which one would you rather grill about her work?) that a celebrity event planner is of greater cosmic consequence than the social worker who helps crazy people off the streets of downtown.

In between the event planner and the writer who doesn’t know the guy from Oregon, a tall, middle-aged woman with gray hair and a gray scarf stands alone, clutching a book to her chest. When I introduce myself to her, she feels compelled to do the same. She says her name is Marilyn; she writes books. “I know,” I say, “the one in your hand just won the Fiction Prize.”

Her name is Marilyn Robinson. Her first novel, “Housekeeping,” is a modern classic. Her second novel, “Gilead,” won the Pulitzer Prize. She’s from Sioux City, Iowa.

Not that I could idealize Iowa even if I wanted to, or that I believe for a second that people there are, at their core, any different from people anywhere else, but I’ll bet in Iowa a writer is just that — someone who writes.

Gina Nahai is an author and a professor of creative writing at USC. Her latest novel is “Caspian Rain” (MacAdam Cage, 2007). Her column appears monthly in The Journal.

Think of the American Jewish community as a business — a more than $10 billion annual business. If our organizations and leaders made programming decisions based on that notion, perhaps they would be building a stronger, larger and more effective Jewish community.

With that thought in mind, Mark Pearlman, an experienced business strategist (CBS Inc., Fox TV) and MIT graduate, spent weeks researching how much money Jewish organizations take in and spend each year, analyzing what categories get the most attention, and which the least. In effect, he sought to create a Jewish GDP, the equivalent of Gross Domestic Product studies that measure all of the services and goods produced by a country over a specific period, usually a year, to judge the growth rate.

“I wanted to compile a ‘McKinsey style’ top-level analysis of the Jewish nonprofit community, and understand where the resources are directed,” explained Pearlman, whose JInsider.com Web site aggregates Jewish news and feature stories and specializes in video interviews with a range of Jewish thinkers, celebrities and artists.

Pearlman used publicly available filings, primarily via the Web sites GuideStar and Charity Navigator, from more than 400 Jewish nonprofit organizations, and focused on all financial data. The revenue data for each organization was then “compiled and categorized according to systematic service groupings” like education, communal life, etc.

The results, he readily admits, are incomplete, in large part because religious organizations are exempt from filing tax reports available to the public. But what he has found makes for some fascinating study and discussion points in our community — for instance, that the Jewish GDP is $9.7 billion, with most funds going to social welfare (25 percent), followed by education (20 percent).

Twelve percent of services provided go for communal life, with 3 percent for advocacy, 1 percent for the arts, and less than 1 percent for Arab-Israel relations.

More than 25 percent of all funds come through the Jewish federation system, and 33 percent of all revenue is concentrated among the top 10 nonprofits, including UJA-Federation of New York, the Jewish Agency for Israel, Hadassah, American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, Yeshiva University, FEGS Health and Human Service System and the Jewish Geriatric Center.

Perhaps most surprising is that no Jewish organization has undertaken this kind of data gathering, which could create a clear and standardized annual snapshot of how many — and how — Jewish nonprofit dollars are generated in this country.

Pearlman said he undertook the study on his own because of his concern for the lack of a systematic approach to collecting financial data in the community. He has no particular cause to promote or axe to grind, but wondered “how can we effectively plan for the future without a clear understanding of our base year starting point?”

He said his intent is to have the information he collected “reviewed and discussed in the community for its findings and implications.”

Pearlman said he was impressed to learn that “Jews are committed to tikkun olam [repairing the world], by making social welfare the most significant service area.” And he noted that the overall figure for the GDP well exceeds $10 billion because his research did not include groups like Chabad-Lubavitch, believed to be in the range of a $1 billion-a-year enterprise, or the Orthodox Union, whose kashrut division is said to generate hundreds of millions for the organization.

“Religious organizations are totally under-represented in my study since they aren’t required to publicly post their IRS reports,” Pearlman said. He added that he requested information from the various religious groups and all were either unwilling or unable to disclose financial data.

Several professionals in Jewish communal life credited Pearlman for taking the initiative to bring more information and transparency to light.

After reviewing Pearlman’s findings, Shalom Elcott, president of the Jewish Federation of Orange County, Calif., concluded that “while the total numbers are impressive,” in terms of funds raised in the Jewish community, “each category has hundreds of organizations doing similar things. In this economy,” he said, “there is no way we can maintain that kind of duplication.”

Having worked inside and outside the federation world for many years professionally, Elcott said the system is impressive but needs to change.

“Our mistake is that we’ve focused almost exclusively on the high-end gift, but we need to do more to re-engage those we lost, and the grass roots. We all talk about outreach but few of us in the federation or nonprofit world invest enough in reaching others,” he said, pointing out that his federation engages only 15 percent of the Jews in Orange County.

“A company unable to reach 85 percent” of its constituency is severely challenged, Elcott added, yet too many federations today are “cutting back in areas that strive to reach those people,” like their marketing and communications departments.

Jeffrey Solomon, president of the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies, called the GDP data a “good first step” because “the better educated the community becomes, the more informed people will be about philanthropy and about making good judgments.” He said he hoped that organizations not required to divulge their financial information would be more inclined to do so in the spirit of openness.

For Solomon, the next step for Pearlman would be to “get the information out and start a debate among people” about how best to raise and spend charitable funds. “We should all start with the same set of facts because until now we end up arguing about ‘your facts’ and ‘my facts.’”

Pearlman says he would like to see the community create a standardized, more complete and transparent database, including “financials, best practices and strategy/mission information.” He suggests creating a seal of approval for complying organizations as an incentive for disclosure. And he would like the Jewish community to emulate the United Nation’s Millennium Goals, encouraging organizations to concentrate on addressing a few major challenges.

The UN’s top goals are ending poverty and hunger, and achieving universal primary education.

“What goals would the Jewish community choose?” Pearlman asks.

It’s a good question, and one that should not be left unanswered.

Gary Rosenblatt is the editor and publisher of The Jewish Week.

Why hasn’t prevention of a nuclear-armed Iran become a priority of the highest order for the American Jewish community, particularly at the grass roots?

Many national agencies, including mine, have long urged more intense activism.

One hears many reasons for the relatively low-key response, including an overwhelming media focus on the domestic and global economic crisis. Iran does tend to be underplayed in the press. The story about a Chinese businessman being indicted for using New York banks to buy Iran materials to make nuclear weapons was buried deep inside The New York Times, while a human interest piece about the use of the Internet to return a lost camera made the front page.

In addition, the Iraq “syndrome” has had a chilling effect on any possible U.S. intervention in the Middle East.

Some in our community maintain that the Iranian threat just doesn’t seem “real.” After all, they say, “we have been hearing warnings for many years and nothing has happened yet. Even if they get a weapon, they would never use it, fearing an Israeli nuclear reprisal.”

Some things are so dreadful that we just do not want to think about them. While reading a short fiction piece in the November/December 2008 edition of Moment — “Three Dreams” by Andi Arnovitz — I was reminded of Hudson Institute founder Herman Kahn, who wrote a series of books in the 1960s about the possible effects of nuclear war, including‚ “Thinking About the Unthinkable,” as well as the “unthinkable” events of Sept. 11, 2001.

Arnovitz describes in vivid detail the consequences of Iranian nuclear-tipped rockets slamming into Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem:

“In Haifa, entire freighters were swallowed up in the fire in the water, incinerating and drowning at the same time. The light was so strong, so blinding, that millions of people died without knowing what it was … they disappeared, leaving thin, accurately drawn traces of their silhouettes on cement walls, floors, things that remained standing. Every single leaf on every single carefully tended and manicured branch on every single tree in the Baha’i garden burned off in an instant … buildings near the port slid down the molten hills and into the seething sea.”

A pre-emptive Israeli military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities also is something that is uncomfortable to think about. But along comes a study by Abdullah Toukan and Anthony Cordesman at the Center for Strategic and International Studies exploring the feasibility of such a strike and the potential military, political and environmental consequences.

One prediction in the study: “Attacking the Bushehr Nuclear Reactor would release contamination in the form of radionuclides into the air; most definitely Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates will be heavily affected; any strike on this reactor will cause the immediate death of thousands of people living in or adjacent to the site, and thousands of subsequent cancer deaths or even up to hundreds of thousands depending on the population density along the contamination plume.”

Persuading the Tehran mullahs, who may not behave with the kind of restraint shown by the Soviets during the Cold War, to step back from their current course, in fact, will require a vigorous, sustained and urgent international effort led by President Obama and his administration. The president unequivocally asserted that Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons capability is “unacceptable.” He clearly is pursuing a diplomatic engagement strategy, unlike President George W. Bush, who chose to “quarantine” the Iranian leadership.

Whether this new approach will be successful remains to be seen. But one thing is clear: There is precious little time left before the threshold to nuclear weapons capability is crossed.

Recognizing the dangers not just to Israel but to the entire Middle East and beyond, the administration is moving quickly to address what it accurately perceives as a threat to fundamental American national security interests.

The American people can play a vital role in reinforcing the centrality and urgency of vigorous U.S. leadership, and it must start from the Jewish community whose manifest commitment will help galvanize like-minded allies in the broader community.

How can individuals constructively express their deep concern about the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran?

Write and call the White House, the State Department and congressional offices, not just once but again and again; publish letters to the editor and op-ed pieces; encourage the convening of forums on Iran in synagogues and communal organizations; ask stock brokers whether they have terror-free investment options and support appropriate divestment initiatives; discuss with and send e-mails to your friends, neighbors and business associates; sign the petition on the Web site of United Against a Nuclear Iran (unitedagainstnucleariran.com) and join its Facebook group; and contact your local community relations committee to learn what other steps can be taken.

As unpleasant and difficult as it may be, we have an obligation to think about the unthinkable and to do everything within our power to try to prevent it from coming to pass. There is no time to waste. Let’s get busy.

Martin J. Raffel is the senior vice president for the Jewish Council for Public Affairs.