Even as organized American Jewry reacted with dismay more than a decade ago when the 1990 NJPS intermarriage data was released and all kinds of activity to promote Jewish continuity were launched, most American Jews had already entered a post-intermarriage stage in which marrying out was not regarded as wrongful and not necessarily incompatible with Jewish identity. In the years since, we have had an abundance of surveys showing that Jews accept intermarriage, both conceptually and in their own families.
Around midyear we will have the results of the National Jewish Population Survey 2000. The data may show that the intermarriage rate has gone down, a result that can be obtained only by ignoring the cumulative impact of intermarriage and by disregarding altogether what remains of the traditional understanding of Jewishness. Whatever the numbers, it isn’t likely that intermarriage will get the attention given to it in the 1990’s. American Jewry has entered a new stage, beyond the post-intermarriage phase. The behavioral consequences of Judaic abandonment, including marrying out, are forging a conception of Jewish life that accepts Christianity in ways that would have been unthinkable, much less acceptable, not long ago.
This may come as a shock, but it should not be surprising. Intermarriage and Judaic abandonment are dynamic, not static, elements in contemporary Jewish life. Since intermarriage often, but of course not always, includes the union of a Jew and a Christian, in order to establish a comfort level in many homes it is inevitable that efforts will be made to accommodate, if not also to integrate, the two religions. The most common expressions of this are the menorah and Christmas tree, as well as the families where some attend church, others synagogue and perhaps still others go to both.
The behavior described here involves people who regard themselves as Jewish and not the 1.5 million or one-quarter of Americans who were born Jewish and who now say that they practice another religion or no religion. They are not in two-religion situations.
The new ecumenicism involves Jews (by whatever definition) who say that they are Jewish and want to remain that way, yet who accept a measure of Christianity in their lives and homes. They say that they care about Israel, belong to our organizations, contribute to our causes, pay attention to our messages. Because of their advanced assimilation and acceptance of intermarriage, they are open to two-religion arrangements.
The behavior and attitudes of American Jews anticipate the orientation and activities of our institutions and organizations, especially in those sectors where religious fidelity is most attenuated. Social necessity is the mother of communal invention. While evidence of the acceptance of two religions may not as yet be fully apparent, the phenomenon is spreading nearly everywhere in Jewish life, including in our schools and synagogues.
This has been true for quite a while in Reform congregations which have accepted, even welcomed, non-Jews, a circumstance that casts doubt on the movement’s membership claims. New Jersey’s major Conservative group recently adopted an open-door policy toward non-Jewish spouses and other persons who aren’t Jewish, irrespective of any intention to convert.
A growing number of congregations use church facilities for their services or permit churches to use theirs, a practice that is usually described as an expedient on financial grounds or because other facilities are not available. Interestingly, the practice was far rarer years ago, although presumably there were at least as pressing financial or facility needs.
A recent back page piece in The New Republic by Gregg Easterbrook described how in his suburban Washington community a Protestant church and Reform temple have joined to build a Christian-Jewish house of worship. There will be more of this.
Our theologians have gotten into the act, sanctioning, though not sanctifying, the integration of Judaism and Christianity. Several hundred scholars and rabbis joined in a statement called Dabru Emet which received wide circulation in the New York Times and elsewhere. The statement includes the dubious claim that “a new relationship between Jews and Christians will not weaken Jewish practice.” Of history, sociology and psychology, these scholars apparently know not.
The statement was not fashioned in an historic vacuum. In fact, it could not have been adopted in a previous period and not only because Christian attitudes were different then than they are now. The sea change in Jewish attitudes has made all of the difference.
Even Jewish day schools are being affected. I have said for years that because many day schools are weak Jewishly and bereft of a commitment to religious purposefulness, this form of education is being oversold in its capacity to provide for Jewish continuity. Instead of celebrating the growth in day school enrollment as if nothing else counts, we ought to consider what is happening in these schools. Dozens now admit non-Jewish students and more will follow. Predictably, financial and enrollment needs are offered as justification, though this can hardly account for the bylaw provision of a wealthy and successful Houston Community day school that mandates the admission of non-Jews. Day schools, especially in the Reform and Community sectors, are reacting to the realities of American Jewish life. If Jewish homes are open to non-Jews, why shouldn’t Jewish schools be open to non-Jews?
Where all of this may lead to is an interesting question, for it is hard to describe the next stage of the evolution of American Jewry into what is alien to our history and tradition. Ultimately, much of what is now accepted as Jewish will turn out to be bogus and ephemeral. But we live in the present and we must deal with today’s realities. And the primary reality is that American Jewry is moving rapidly toward the attempted integration of Christianity and Judaism.
Monday, February 04, 2002
Monday, January 21, 2002
How Many Tables Please?
Since I was somehow involved in its creation, it was good to get an invitation to the 25th Anniversary Dinner of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, scheduled for February 27 at the Plaza. The accompanying “Dear Marvin” letter had the specimen signatures of eight past presidents of the JCRC, all people of distinction, and it concluded, “We look forward to speaking with you about your important contribution to this worthwhile cause.”
Except for money, the JCRC is not interested in my contribution or anyone else’s. In any case, I made an important contribution to the cause long ago and it was ignored and forgotten long ago. JCRC has embraced an elitism that is, to be generous, unbecoming for an agency that purports to represent Jews around the city. Although it has some good people on staff and some useful accomplishments, by being Manhattan-based in as extreme a manner as can be imagined and by confusing fame and wealth with Jewish leadership, JCRC has distanced itself from the mission that was central to its establishment and has violated its trust.
What’s wrong is immediately evident in the dinner invitation. For a mere $100,000, the “dinner sponsor” gets two tables for ten and the back cover of the dinner journal. Half of this amount gets the inside back cover and one table. The ordinary folks – if any show up – can have tickets at the bargain basement charge of $750 per seat. In all, the dinner is an exercise in fundraising overkill, a distortion of what charity is about or for. The JCRC does not need or deserve the funds that it is soliciting.
When New York Jews first established a community council or the Kehillah in the early years of the last century, Dr. Judah Magnes who was its key leader insisted on the inclusion in a significant way of Lower East Side Jews. He did not want the group to be the exclusive province of uptown, affluent Jews. The Kehillah eventually ran out of steam about 1920 and for a half-century there was no Jewish coordinating council in New York, an anomaly in view of the existence of such agencies in nearly every city in the country with a modest-sized Jewish community.
In the early 1970’s, I suggested to Jack Weiler of blessed memory that he convene an ad hoc group of New York Jewish leaders to meet as necessary to deal with issues of importance to the city’s Jews. The group always met in Mr. Weiler’s office and it had an impact. While I preferred a continuation of this arrangement, in line with my lifelong view of organizational life, others understandably felt that a full-fledged council was needed and so the JCRC came into being.
Mr. Weiler was its principal founder and its major funder. In the more than twenty years of our close friendship, he spoke often of the necessity to avoid an elitist orientation. He wanted a body that would give prominence to those who worked in the community and particularly staff members of local Jewish agencies and not to people whose main claim was their wealth and fame. As one illustration of this feeling, he made a significant gift to allow the JCRC to give recognition and monetary awards to local activists. In the early years of the JCRC, there were, I believe, two modest ceremonies that fulfilled his wishes but there has not been any follow-up since.
What happened with the funds provided by Mr. Weiler remains a mystery. When the JCRC honors Jessica M. Bibliowicz and Rupert Murdoch at the dinner, it might find the rectitude to fulfill its moral and fiduciary obligation and the commitment it gave to Jack Weiler when it accepted his gift.
A key figure in Jewish life who has been involved in the JCRC said to me the other day that the agency is no longer relevant because it has cut itself off from the community. As I have said, there are good staff members who have struggled to keep the agency true to its mission. What is wrong emanates from the top. There is an elitist attitude that elevates celebrityship as it ignores and in a way denigrates those who work in the field.
The JCRC needs a geography lesson and maybe also a history lesson. Of the more than 25 names included in the invitation letter, only one or two live in the boroughs outside of Manhattan. What the Council does not seem to understand is that the serious issues confronting New York Jews arise in their neighborhoods, not in the major brokerage houses, Wall Street law firms, executive suites, Manhattan townhouses or Upper East Side penthouses.
What is at stake is more than propriety or JCRC’s snobbishness as it chooses its leaders, honorees, etc. Crown Heights demonstrates what can go wrong because the agency is out of touch. It is widely recognized that when the riots erupted, JCRC was asleep at the wheel. Its initial reaction was to play down, if not to ignore, the pleas of local Jews for help.
This is but the most painful example of a painful reality. Whatever the reasons for elitism elsewhere in organized American Jewish life, the Jewish Relations Council must operate differently. That was the original intention. It’s sad to see a trust so badly violated.
Of course, JCRC’s machers don’t see it this way. They’ll have some unkind words to say about me and go about their dinner with speeches extolling themselves. Doubtlessly, the event will be a financial success. But after all of the self-congratulation, what will remain of the JCRC’s legacy is another matter.
These lines are written in memory of Jack D. Weiler, a great philanthropist whose friendship and kindness I shall always cherish.
Except for money, the JCRC is not interested in my contribution or anyone else’s. In any case, I made an important contribution to the cause long ago and it was ignored and forgotten long ago. JCRC has embraced an elitism that is, to be generous, unbecoming for an agency that purports to represent Jews around the city. Although it has some good people on staff and some useful accomplishments, by being Manhattan-based in as extreme a manner as can be imagined and by confusing fame and wealth with Jewish leadership, JCRC has distanced itself from the mission that was central to its establishment and has violated its trust.
What’s wrong is immediately evident in the dinner invitation. For a mere $100,000, the “dinner sponsor” gets two tables for ten and the back cover of the dinner journal. Half of this amount gets the inside back cover and one table. The ordinary folks – if any show up – can have tickets at the bargain basement charge of $750 per seat. In all, the dinner is an exercise in fundraising overkill, a distortion of what charity is about or for. The JCRC does not need or deserve the funds that it is soliciting.
When New York Jews first established a community council or the Kehillah in the early years of the last century, Dr. Judah Magnes who was its key leader insisted on the inclusion in a significant way of Lower East Side Jews. He did not want the group to be the exclusive province of uptown, affluent Jews. The Kehillah eventually ran out of steam about 1920 and for a half-century there was no Jewish coordinating council in New York, an anomaly in view of the existence of such agencies in nearly every city in the country with a modest-sized Jewish community.
In the early 1970’s, I suggested to Jack Weiler of blessed memory that he convene an ad hoc group of New York Jewish leaders to meet as necessary to deal with issues of importance to the city’s Jews. The group always met in Mr. Weiler’s office and it had an impact. While I preferred a continuation of this arrangement, in line with my lifelong view of organizational life, others understandably felt that a full-fledged council was needed and so the JCRC came into being.
Mr. Weiler was its principal founder and its major funder. In the more than twenty years of our close friendship, he spoke often of the necessity to avoid an elitist orientation. He wanted a body that would give prominence to those who worked in the community and particularly staff members of local Jewish agencies and not to people whose main claim was their wealth and fame. As one illustration of this feeling, he made a significant gift to allow the JCRC to give recognition and monetary awards to local activists. In the early years of the JCRC, there were, I believe, two modest ceremonies that fulfilled his wishes but there has not been any follow-up since.
What happened with the funds provided by Mr. Weiler remains a mystery. When the JCRC honors Jessica M. Bibliowicz and Rupert Murdoch at the dinner, it might find the rectitude to fulfill its moral and fiduciary obligation and the commitment it gave to Jack Weiler when it accepted his gift.
A key figure in Jewish life who has been involved in the JCRC said to me the other day that the agency is no longer relevant because it has cut itself off from the community. As I have said, there are good staff members who have struggled to keep the agency true to its mission. What is wrong emanates from the top. There is an elitist attitude that elevates celebrityship as it ignores and in a way denigrates those who work in the field.
The JCRC needs a geography lesson and maybe also a history lesson. Of the more than 25 names included in the invitation letter, only one or two live in the boroughs outside of Manhattan. What the Council does not seem to understand is that the serious issues confronting New York Jews arise in their neighborhoods, not in the major brokerage houses, Wall Street law firms, executive suites, Manhattan townhouses or Upper East Side penthouses.
What is at stake is more than propriety or JCRC’s snobbishness as it chooses its leaders, honorees, etc. Crown Heights demonstrates what can go wrong because the agency is out of touch. It is widely recognized that when the riots erupted, JCRC was asleep at the wheel. Its initial reaction was to play down, if not to ignore, the pleas of local Jews for help.
This is but the most painful example of a painful reality. Whatever the reasons for elitism elsewhere in organized American Jewish life, the Jewish Relations Council must operate differently. That was the original intention. It’s sad to see a trust so badly violated.
Of course, JCRC’s machers don’t see it this way. They’ll have some unkind words to say about me and go about their dinner with speeches extolling themselves. Doubtlessly, the event will be a financial success. But after all of the self-congratulation, what will remain of the JCRC’s legacy is another matter.
These lines are written in memory of Jack D. Weiler, a great philanthropist whose friendship and kindness I shall always cherish.
Thursday, January 10, 2002
Thou Shalt Not Kill a Jewish Organization
Am I the only Jew in American who believes that it would be a mitzvah to bump off Jewish organizations? Not a handful or just dozens, but at least several hundred. We have thousands of them in the U.S. and those that are done away with are certain to be quickly replaced. After all, American Jewry has been on an organization binge for more than a century and there are no signs that it is abating.
After forty years of preaching against our mountain of waste, I know that I am a lonely voice in the wilderness. Nor is it much comfort that one day things will change, that our mania for organizations will be recognized for the folly that it is. We live and act in the present and right now I feel quite lonely. This is a puzzlement because it can’t be maintained that we need all of these groups to protect us against our enemies, defend Israel or provide for Jewish continuity. There is, in fact, an inverse correlation between the number of groups and the number of Jews. The only continuity is the survival of an arrangement that is dysfunctional.
This survival is testimony to the power of inertia. Despite their lack of useful things to do, irrelevance, overlap, inability to be creative, many of our organizations exist because that’s the way things have been for so long. We are comfortable with what doesn’t work because it is familiar.
It is recognized nearly everywhere in Jewish life, including within their agencies, that the Federation system is in extremis. Things are so bad that the worried machers within the Federation network have borrowed the religious practice of changing the name of the gravely ill in the hope that the Angel of Death will stay away. So we now have the United Jewish Communities. Alas, the patient’s condition continues to worsen. Since our organizations have not completed their living wills, no one has been authorized to pull the plug.
It is not fair to say that our thousands of organizations serve no useful purposes. They keep the unemployment rate down, bolster the travel and lodging industries, help a great number of small businesses and provide ego gratification for an army of machers.
For all of the role of inertia in maintaining that which should be discarded, it remains that overwhelmingly our organizations are Jews by choice. They exist because people want them to exist, because somehow they can come up with money to pay the rent and staff and do what is needed to keep open. This is especially true of the newly-minted nonprofits, many of them the brainchild of the fabulously wealthy philanthropists who have become a dominant force in our communal life. They are, in the main, people with brains, accomplishments and independence and they are not wed to the tired status quo, yet from the look of things they have been co-opted into arrangements that none of them would tolerate in their own business affairs.
American life is awash in downsizing, in powerful corporations becoming smaller or being taken over, companies and organizations going out of business and in the recognition that because things change, what once existed need not exist any longer. What makes the Jewish situation more bizarre still is the role played by our supermachers, men like Michael Steinhardt and the Bronfmans. They have spoken out against retention of the dysfunctional status quo and they have backed alternate arrangements that to an extent side-step our tired bureaucracy, yet they increasingly appear to be involved in a system that they have criticized.
“Entangled” may better describe the fix that they and we are in. The elephantine size, geographic diversity and complexity of our organizational infrastructure make it largely invulnerable to attack or even reform. There is no single entry point to serve as the linchpin for change. Rather, we have the dazzling and dizzying, albeit also decrepit, pattern of intertwined umbrella agencies. The madness of all of this is self-perpetuating.
Isn’t it madness that after having lost half of American Jewry we manage to have perhaps twice the number of organizations that we once had and that we continue to add to the number almost daily? This is a fundamental question that isn’t even raised. For all I know, there may be more adults employed by Jewish organizations and institutions than there are practicing religious Jewish adults in the U.S.
The mountain of waste will start to crumble one day, but given the willingness of too many who give life support to organizations that are barely alive, it is not likely that this will occur any time soon. The more probable short-term scenario is that as more Jews disaffect, we will continue to add new groups to our already bloated infrastructure.
One day, though, we will come to see that we do not need fifty or more allegedly major American Jewish organizations, that spending a couple of hundred million dollars a year on defense organizations does not provide for Jewish security, that our many umbrella organizations are leaking badly and ought to be discarded, that the annual General Assembly is a pathetic exercise in communal irrelevance and folly, that the Federation network is an anachronistic and awfully expensive arrangement, that our public relations are mainly self-deceptions, that to spend more on our bureaucratic infrastructure than on Jewish education is indecent, that smaller may be bigger and more effective, that the Biblical injunction to be fruitful and multiply is not a command to establish more organizations.
After forty years of preaching against our mountain of waste, I know that I am a lonely voice in the wilderness. Nor is it much comfort that one day things will change, that our mania for organizations will be recognized for the folly that it is. We live and act in the present and right now I feel quite lonely. This is a puzzlement because it can’t be maintained that we need all of these groups to protect us against our enemies, defend Israel or provide for Jewish continuity. There is, in fact, an inverse correlation between the number of groups and the number of Jews. The only continuity is the survival of an arrangement that is dysfunctional.
This survival is testimony to the power of inertia. Despite their lack of useful things to do, irrelevance, overlap, inability to be creative, many of our organizations exist because that’s the way things have been for so long. We are comfortable with what doesn’t work because it is familiar.
It is recognized nearly everywhere in Jewish life, including within their agencies, that the Federation system is in extremis. Things are so bad that the worried machers within the Federation network have borrowed the religious practice of changing the name of the gravely ill in the hope that the Angel of Death will stay away. So we now have the United Jewish Communities. Alas, the patient’s condition continues to worsen. Since our organizations have not completed their living wills, no one has been authorized to pull the plug.
It is not fair to say that our thousands of organizations serve no useful purposes. They keep the unemployment rate down, bolster the travel and lodging industries, help a great number of small businesses and provide ego gratification for an army of machers.
For all of the role of inertia in maintaining that which should be discarded, it remains that overwhelmingly our organizations are Jews by choice. They exist because people want them to exist, because somehow they can come up with money to pay the rent and staff and do what is needed to keep open. This is especially true of the newly-minted nonprofits, many of them the brainchild of the fabulously wealthy philanthropists who have become a dominant force in our communal life. They are, in the main, people with brains, accomplishments and independence and they are not wed to the tired status quo, yet from the look of things they have been co-opted into arrangements that none of them would tolerate in their own business affairs.
American life is awash in downsizing, in powerful corporations becoming smaller or being taken over, companies and organizations going out of business and in the recognition that because things change, what once existed need not exist any longer. What makes the Jewish situation more bizarre still is the role played by our supermachers, men like Michael Steinhardt and the Bronfmans. They have spoken out against retention of the dysfunctional status quo and they have backed alternate arrangements that to an extent side-step our tired bureaucracy, yet they increasingly appear to be involved in a system that they have criticized.
“Entangled” may better describe the fix that they and we are in. The elephantine size, geographic diversity and complexity of our organizational infrastructure make it largely invulnerable to attack or even reform. There is no single entry point to serve as the linchpin for change. Rather, we have the dazzling and dizzying, albeit also decrepit, pattern of intertwined umbrella agencies. The madness of all of this is self-perpetuating.
Isn’t it madness that after having lost half of American Jewry we manage to have perhaps twice the number of organizations that we once had and that we continue to add to the number almost daily? This is a fundamental question that isn’t even raised. For all I know, there may be more adults employed by Jewish organizations and institutions than there are practicing religious Jewish adults in the U.S.
The mountain of waste will start to crumble one day, but given the willingness of too many who give life support to organizations that are barely alive, it is not likely that this will occur any time soon. The more probable short-term scenario is that as more Jews disaffect, we will continue to add new groups to our already bloated infrastructure.
One day, though, we will come to see that we do not need fifty or more allegedly major American Jewish organizations, that spending a couple of hundred million dollars a year on defense organizations does not provide for Jewish security, that our many umbrella organizations are leaking badly and ought to be discarded, that the annual General Assembly is a pathetic exercise in communal irrelevance and folly, that the Federation network is an anachronistic and awfully expensive arrangement, that our public relations are mainly self-deceptions, that to spend more on our bureaucratic infrastructure than on Jewish education is indecent, that smaller may be bigger and more effective, that the Biblical injunction to be fruitful and multiply is not a command to establish more organizations.
Friday, January 04, 2002
The Unpardonable Ms. White
We are a week away from the first anniversary of President Clinton’s last day in office, the day of the midnight pardons that gave additional ammunition to his obsessed army of haters and left his shrinking company of admirers in a state of bewilderment. In addition to the inevitable political and journalistic tumult, there was much prosecutorial activity centered in the Southern District of New York under the direction of Mary Jo White, the U.S. Attorney who has just left office.
Whatever we may think of Mr. Clinton or his actions, he was exercising his constitutional authority, a point that should matter in a democracy, although it hardly deterred Clinton haters, the media and Ms. White. She seized the public relations opportunity and used every resource available to prosecutors to harass and bully, to do all that she could to find the smoking gun that would allow her to claim some scalps. Along the way, there have been steady leaks to the press, in clear violation of Justice Department rules.
The large local office of the FBI which already served as her satrapy was marshaled in service to this noble cause. Between February 1 and September 11, this investigation was the principal task of the FBI, as thousands of agent hours were spent on fruitless assignments. Terrorism and Osama Bin Laden became lesser concerns.
One of Ms. White’s two main targets was the Skwere chassidic community in Rockland County. Several key members of the community had been convicted of fraud in governmental programs and they were serving extended sentences. While there must be no excuses for their wrongdoing, there also should be no excuses for the kind of prosecutorial abuses that occurred in this case along the way, including deliberately misleading statements by Ms. White’s office regarding the dollar amount of the fraud and, most shockingly, language imbued with group hate that was included in governmental documents.
President Clinton did not pardon any of the Skwere. Rather, he reduced their sentences to what similarly convicted persons usually serve. Here, too, he was exercising presidential authority, a circumstance that also deterred Ms. White not at all. She saw crime in the fact that the chassidim had voted nearly as one for Hillary Clinton. The prosecutor thus sinned twice against democracy, for a modest appreciation of the virtues of our system should beget the understanding that how people vote is their right and business. Ms. White unloosed the FBI in an ugly crusade that bore little fruit and has left scars.
In an important way, her techniques are now standard operating procedure for many prosecutors. I believe that the most powerful journalism in the recent period is Dorothy Rabinowitz’s many articles in The Wall Street Journal detailing how from Massachusetts to Washington State zealous prosecutors abused their authority in their fervent determination to track down and punish alleged child abusers. After being programmed and prodded, children told fantastic stories about highly improbable – at times impossible – acts. Innocent people were prosecuted and imprisoned.
These witch hunts bring to mind the more infamous Salem trials, about which Justice Brandeis wrote, “men feared witches and burned women.”
Too much of our criminal justice system is predicated on fear, fear of crime and on the fear that criminals may go free. As a consequence, we give great latitude to prosecutors who, after all, are the good guys going after the bad guys. We have come to tolerate practices that are wrongful. Despite a steady and shocking flow of incontrovertible stories about doctored evidence, FBI mistakes and worse, prosecutorial overreaching, wrongful convictions and so much else along the same lines, we refuse to reform or even reflect seriously on a system that is in much need of repair.
We have come to routinely accept practices that I believe are alien to the ideal of justice. Senator Harrison William of New Jersey and ABSCAM notoriety died recently, largely forgotten and unmourned. Also forgotten is that ABSCAM was in its entirety a governmentally manufactured crime. Entrapment is now considered proper and we blithefully allow persons who are caught red-handed in criminal acts to purchase leniency by providing testimony against higher-ups who could not be convicted without their testimony. This is an open invitation to exaggeration and lying and both of these elements are real prospects whenever such testimony is offered. For whatever it is worth, I believe that Alfred Taubman of Sotheby’s who is in his 70’s was wrongly convicted because nearly all of the testimony against him was tainted.
There is more than a touch of Javertism in the prosecutorial world. This is a world where too much is seen in terms of black and white and there are too few gray areas. Life, in fact, abounds in gray areas, in ambiguities. It is said about doctors that they bury their mistakes. Those who suffer prosecutorial mistakes are worse off because prosecutors seek to destroy their prey. Prosecutors say that not they but judges and juries decide questions of guilt. In a formal sense, this is true. But in our entirely adversarial system it remains that even when prosecutors operate in a zone of ambiguity, they go full force after their targets.
Even by the reduced standards of prosecutorial propriety, Mary Jo White’s conduct in the Skwere case stands out for its egregious embrace of group hatred. It wasn’t sufficient for her office to prosecute the accused. The larger aim was to go after the entire community, to paint a picture of men, women and children all guilty of the crime of living a chassidic lifestyle.
I have been involved in these matters for four decades and I doubt that there is any other Federal prosecutor in the last generation who has expressed the kind of fetid bigotry that marks the Southern District’s handling of this case.
What Mary Jo White did was, to utilize the relevant term, unpardonable.
Whatever we may think of Mr. Clinton or his actions, he was exercising his constitutional authority, a point that should matter in a democracy, although it hardly deterred Clinton haters, the media and Ms. White. She seized the public relations opportunity and used every resource available to prosecutors to harass and bully, to do all that she could to find the smoking gun that would allow her to claim some scalps. Along the way, there have been steady leaks to the press, in clear violation of Justice Department rules.
The large local office of the FBI which already served as her satrapy was marshaled in service to this noble cause. Between February 1 and September 11, this investigation was the principal task of the FBI, as thousands of agent hours were spent on fruitless assignments. Terrorism and Osama Bin Laden became lesser concerns.
One of Ms. White’s two main targets was the Skwere chassidic community in Rockland County. Several key members of the community had been convicted of fraud in governmental programs and they were serving extended sentences. While there must be no excuses for their wrongdoing, there also should be no excuses for the kind of prosecutorial abuses that occurred in this case along the way, including deliberately misleading statements by Ms. White’s office regarding the dollar amount of the fraud and, most shockingly, language imbued with group hate that was included in governmental documents.
President Clinton did not pardon any of the Skwere. Rather, he reduced their sentences to what similarly convicted persons usually serve. Here, too, he was exercising presidential authority, a circumstance that also deterred Ms. White not at all. She saw crime in the fact that the chassidim had voted nearly as one for Hillary Clinton. The prosecutor thus sinned twice against democracy, for a modest appreciation of the virtues of our system should beget the understanding that how people vote is their right and business. Ms. White unloosed the FBI in an ugly crusade that bore little fruit and has left scars.
In an important way, her techniques are now standard operating procedure for many prosecutors. I believe that the most powerful journalism in the recent period is Dorothy Rabinowitz’s many articles in The Wall Street Journal detailing how from Massachusetts to Washington State zealous prosecutors abused their authority in their fervent determination to track down and punish alleged child abusers. After being programmed and prodded, children told fantastic stories about highly improbable – at times impossible – acts. Innocent people were prosecuted and imprisoned.
These witch hunts bring to mind the more infamous Salem trials, about which Justice Brandeis wrote, “men feared witches and burned women.”
Too much of our criminal justice system is predicated on fear, fear of crime and on the fear that criminals may go free. As a consequence, we give great latitude to prosecutors who, after all, are the good guys going after the bad guys. We have come to tolerate practices that are wrongful. Despite a steady and shocking flow of incontrovertible stories about doctored evidence, FBI mistakes and worse, prosecutorial overreaching, wrongful convictions and so much else along the same lines, we refuse to reform or even reflect seriously on a system that is in much need of repair.
We have come to routinely accept practices that I believe are alien to the ideal of justice. Senator Harrison William of New Jersey and ABSCAM notoriety died recently, largely forgotten and unmourned. Also forgotten is that ABSCAM was in its entirety a governmentally manufactured crime. Entrapment is now considered proper and we blithefully allow persons who are caught red-handed in criminal acts to purchase leniency by providing testimony against higher-ups who could not be convicted without their testimony. This is an open invitation to exaggeration and lying and both of these elements are real prospects whenever such testimony is offered. For whatever it is worth, I believe that Alfred Taubman of Sotheby’s who is in his 70’s was wrongly convicted because nearly all of the testimony against him was tainted.
There is more than a touch of Javertism in the prosecutorial world. This is a world where too much is seen in terms of black and white and there are too few gray areas. Life, in fact, abounds in gray areas, in ambiguities. It is said about doctors that they bury their mistakes. Those who suffer prosecutorial mistakes are worse off because prosecutors seek to destroy their prey. Prosecutors say that not they but judges and juries decide questions of guilt. In a formal sense, this is true. But in our entirely adversarial system it remains that even when prosecutors operate in a zone of ambiguity, they go full force after their targets.
Even by the reduced standards of prosecutorial propriety, Mary Jo White’s conduct in the Skwere case stands out for its egregious embrace of group hatred. It wasn’t sufficient for her office to prosecute the accused. The larger aim was to go after the entire community, to paint a picture of men, women and children all guilty of the crime of living a chassidic lifestyle.
I have been involved in these matters for four decades and I doubt that there is any other Federal prosecutor in the last generation who has expressed the kind of fetid bigotry that marks the Southern District’s handling of this case.
What Mary Jo White did was, to utilize the relevant term, unpardonable.
Monday, December 24, 2001
The Empire State No Longer
When I was a lad and growing up in these environs, New York was always referred to as the Empire State, the largest and most important state in the Union and the breeding place for progressive government. There was the legacy of Al Smith, FDR, Herbert Lehman, Senator Wagner, Fiorello LaGuardia and others and there were ideas and ideals that were at the vital center of democracy and the foundation for a better society.
There was, of course, an excess of hyperbole in this. As with most mortals who achieve fame, some of our idols had feet of clay. We also know – and knew even then – that New York had Tammany Hall, the mob, too much corruption, too much racism, too much poverty. By comparison with other places though, New York excelled. There was ample cause for civic pride. Public housing was mainly a success, public schools were doing a good job, the city colleges were crown jewels, there was opportunity for advancement and the Yankees were winning.
They still are. But however we are called, we aren’t any longer the empire state, not by a long shot. The lustre is off our schools and colleges and there is an exhaustion of ideas, unless one mistakes the goal of making money for an idea. September 11 brought about a good measure of unity and pride and Mayor Giuliani was transformed from sinner to saint, reversing the usual progression of those in high places.
It is easy to lose sight these days of what is rotten, of the traducing of basic values and of New York being in the stranglehold of practices that we should not tolerate. Our voting system is a powerful and shameful example. A year ago, there was anger over Florida’s ballot and the counting or not counting of disputed votes. That misfortune was the consequence of Florida’s misguided attempt to develop an improved system. What we have in New York is a determination to maintain that which is broken and wrong. Our voting machines are fifty-year relics. Many do not work, the ballot is usually confusing and too many of the poll workers – recipients of minor political sinecures – have a close resemblance to the sedated denizens of old-age homes.
What we have is antithetical to democracy. For all of the calls for reform, the situation worsens as New York is paralyzed, here as in much else, by both inertia and a determination to protect special interests without a care for the public good.
This is true also of the State’s complicated electoral process which is one of the most reactionary in the country. There is a mind-boggling set of arcane rules that have the sole aim of limiting the right of voters to choose. These rules are offensive and they would emit a foul odor even in a fetid den of corruption. While they have been whittled down by several judicial rulings, the essential elements of a corrupt system are in place.
And this is the Empire State!
Months ago, the Daily News ran a series on the malignancy known as guardianships, the arrangement whereby courts appoint persons to preserve the assets of those who are presumably not competent to handle their own finances. While the ostensible purpose is to help those who are placed in guardianship, the reality is that the system is an easy street for self-enrichment by guardians motivated by greed. The Daily News provided chapter and verse of the sordid details, including the story of a once prominent person with significant assets who is now reduced to eating cat food after the guardian looted the savings.
Under the cover of law and generally away from public scrutiny, judges are able to appoint cronies who may have larceny in mind to supervise other persons’ money. New York’s Chief Judge, Judith Kaye, has issued a report criticizing the system and she has instituted certain reforms. They are by far too modest. There is, of course, the collateral processes for settling estates which provide ample feeding opportunities for cronies and other abuses. Too frequently, estates get lost in a legal thicket and their value is frittered away.
When we appear before judges in their black robes on their high benches, the convention is to address them, “Your Honor.” These may be the two most dishonest words spoken in America.
As more people live longer and as more live alone, the potential for judicial-mandated abuse is going to expand because this once but no longer empire state cares too little to safeguard orphans, widows, the elderly, the incompetent.
Cemeteries are another area where New York’s anti-progressivism is evident in the protection of special interests at the expense of the basic value of respect for the dead and their families. Too many of the cemeteries are political feeding grounds. I learned how rotten the system is when I looked into the situation at Washington Cemetery in Brooklyn. My father is buried there in the section owned by the synagogue where he served as Rabbi. Also buried there are some persons who are not Jewish, thanks to cemetery officials.
Efforts to remedy the wrongs at Washington Cemetery and other cemeteries are of no avail because of entrenched special interests protected by rules and practices that should have been abandoned long ago. New York’s Cemetery Board is scarcely more alive than the people who are interred on cemetery grounds.
These are three examples of dozens that could be given. It may be that New York is no worse than other states, that state and local governments are rife with abuse, if not outright corruption, nearly everywhere. Whatever the story elsewhere, it remains that New York is now a regressive state. Human dignity and democratic values are secondary to special interests.
There was, of course, an excess of hyperbole in this. As with most mortals who achieve fame, some of our idols had feet of clay. We also know – and knew even then – that New York had Tammany Hall, the mob, too much corruption, too much racism, too much poverty. By comparison with other places though, New York excelled. There was ample cause for civic pride. Public housing was mainly a success, public schools were doing a good job, the city colleges were crown jewels, there was opportunity for advancement and the Yankees were winning.
They still are. But however we are called, we aren’t any longer the empire state, not by a long shot. The lustre is off our schools and colleges and there is an exhaustion of ideas, unless one mistakes the goal of making money for an idea. September 11 brought about a good measure of unity and pride and Mayor Giuliani was transformed from sinner to saint, reversing the usual progression of those in high places.
It is easy to lose sight these days of what is rotten, of the traducing of basic values and of New York being in the stranglehold of practices that we should not tolerate. Our voting system is a powerful and shameful example. A year ago, there was anger over Florida’s ballot and the counting or not counting of disputed votes. That misfortune was the consequence of Florida’s misguided attempt to develop an improved system. What we have in New York is a determination to maintain that which is broken and wrong. Our voting machines are fifty-year relics. Many do not work, the ballot is usually confusing and too many of the poll workers – recipients of minor political sinecures – have a close resemblance to the sedated denizens of old-age homes.
What we have is antithetical to democracy. For all of the calls for reform, the situation worsens as New York is paralyzed, here as in much else, by both inertia and a determination to protect special interests without a care for the public good.
This is true also of the State’s complicated electoral process which is one of the most reactionary in the country. There is a mind-boggling set of arcane rules that have the sole aim of limiting the right of voters to choose. These rules are offensive and they would emit a foul odor even in a fetid den of corruption. While they have been whittled down by several judicial rulings, the essential elements of a corrupt system are in place.
And this is the Empire State!
Months ago, the Daily News ran a series on the malignancy known as guardianships, the arrangement whereby courts appoint persons to preserve the assets of those who are presumably not competent to handle their own finances. While the ostensible purpose is to help those who are placed in guardianship, the reality is that the system is an easy street for self-enrichment by guardians motivated by greed. The Daily News provided chapter and verse of the sordid details, including the story of a once prominent person with significant assets who is now reduced to eating cat food after the guardian looted the savings.
Under the cover of law and generally away from public scrutiny, judges are able to appoint cronies who may have larceny in mind to supervise other persons’ money. New York’s Chief Judge, Judith Kaye, has issued a report criticizing the system and she has instituted certain reforms. They are by far too modest. There is, of course, the collateral processes for settling estates which provide ample feeding opportunities for cronies and other abuses. Too frequently, estates get lost in a legal thicket and their value is frittered away.
When we appear before judges in their black robes on their high benches, the convention is to address them, “Your Honor.” These may be the two most dishonest words spoken in America.
As more people live longer and as more live alone, the potential for judicial-mandated abuse is going to expand because this once but no longer empire state cares too little to safeguard orphans, widows, the elderly, the incompetent.
Cemeteries are another area where New York’s anti-progressivism is evident in the protection of special interests at the expense of the basic value of respect for the dead and their families. Too many of the cemeteries are political feeding grounds. I learned how rotten the system is when I looked into the situation at Washington Cemetery in Brooklyn. My father is buried there in the section owned by the synagogue where he served as Rabbi. Also buried there are some persons who are not Jewish, thanks to cemetery officials.
Efforts to remedy the wrongs at Washington Cemetery and other cemeteries are of no avail because of entrenched special interests protected by rules and practices that should have been abandoned long ago. New York’s Cemetery Board is scarcely more alive than the people who are interred on cemetery grounds.
These are three examples of dozens that could be given. It may be that New York is no worse than other states, that state and local governments are rife with abuse, if not outright corruption, nearly everywhere. Whatever the story elsewhere, it remains that New York is now a regressive state. Human dignity and democratic values are secondary to special interests.
Monday, December 17, 2001
Unorthodox Economics
During my annual August hegira to Israel the summer before last, I began an analysis of the economic situation of American charedim, they being the yeshiva world and chassidic sectors of Orthodoxy. Much of the paper had been drafted by the time I arrived home and I turned to a study of Bureau of Labor Statistics data to determine how what I knew about the charedim meshed with work patterns in the general society. It became evident that workforce participation by charedi men is at least as high as it is for Americans generally. Many do not enter the labor market until they are well into their twenties, which parallels the behavior of Americans who pursue advanced degrees.
A similar point is made by Joel Rebibo in an important article on Israeli charedim that appears in the latest issue of Azure, the fine journal published by the Shalem Institute in Jerusalem. He writes that “among North American haredim, the age of entry into the workforce varies according to the particular religious stream. In Hasidic communities, for example, men tend to begin working in their late teens or early twenties; in the Lithuanian communities, on the other hand, they leave yeshiva in their mid-or late twenties. Overall, however, the pattern is a consistent one, in which very few students beyond the age of thirty remain in full-time study.”
It remains that there is a significant incidence of poverty among charedim in this country. The situation may be worse in the yeshiva world sector than amongst chasidim because the latter 1) do not as a rule stay in yeshiva as long and 2) they have what may be termed an instinct for entrepreneurship. Some writers, usually with an ideological axe to grind, have concluded that because many charedim are mired in poverty, it must be that workforce participation is low and that those who work settle for poorly paying jobs because they are bereft of skills and training.
In fact, while nearly all adult male charedim work, there is considerable poverty because of a confluence of factors. Many teach in yeshiva or have other low-paying positions because they regard this service as spiritually rewarding and fulfilling. Those in the regular job market are often hampered by job discrimination against religious Jews and, more importantly, by their lack of geographic mobility. Chassidic families are large and they are getting larger, a factor that obviously impacts on housing, food costs and much else, including yeshiva tuition charges. Simply put, an Orthodox college graduate or Ph.D. is certain to be in far more difficult financial straits than others with comparable degrees and jobs.
This is the reality and yet it is a certainty that knownothing bigots who venomously fabricate a picture of charedi parasitism will continue to spew out their messages of hate and that there will be newspapers eager to publish their material.
Because charedi families are large, they obviously have more weddings and other simchas to celebrate. It is presumably the desire to alleviate financial pressure on these families that inspired certain Rabbinical leaders of Agudath Israel to draft mandatory guidelines aimed at holding down the cost of weddings. For all of the good intentions, the idea misfires, although it has provided a field day for frum kibbitzers. More to the point, families in need will scarcely be affected or helped. Now that Agudath has reaped the publicity, hopefully it will pull back.
Restraint is admirable, as it is a cardinal principle of religious life. Living within one’s means is both sensible and appropriate. This is how an overwhelming number of charedi families act when they make simchas. There have been quotes aplenty that even a bare-bones Orthodox wedding costs $35,000. That’s nonsense. Apart from the evident downgrading of simchas in recent years, most charedi weddings cost much less. What can be expensive are other financial considerations, notably parental support to allow for extended yeshiva study.
Agudath has inadvertently promoted the inaccurate notion that the charedi world is awash in ostentation. That’s way off the mark, although there are some who regard showing off as a religious obligation This small group gets attention, including from Agudath leaders, and is an embarrassment. As an unfortunate example there is the forthcoming three or four day “gayvah” trip to Israel, ostensibly to study Torah there.
It does not take a sharp eye for sociological detail to know that the more modern Orthodox elements and the non-Orthodox are far more lavish in their weddings and bar/bas mitzvahs than the charedim, although the Agudath’s message is likely to result in a distorted perception.
The Rabbis seem to have lost sight of the critical difference between what is discretionary and what is mandatory. Making a wedding is obligatory; spending a ton of money or going beyond one’s means is not. If some do overspend, as a small number do, that’s no justification for the overheated reaction that we have seen or for the institution of conditions that are likely to be untenable.
Financial pressures on Orthodox families arise from mandatory expenses, notably tuition. This is what causes anguish in many homes – disrupting shalom bayis – and yet there is not a peep about this severe problem. Nor is there a word about other mandatory costs engendered by a religious life-style.
It may be that the Rabbi’s message is intended for those who are wealthy and indulgent, for those who go overboard. If so, a good place to start is at home, for the yeshiva world which is truly the glory of the Jewish people in its fidelity to the ideal of hatznea leches (modest living) is being harmed by the small number of exhibitionists whose antics are condoned, if not encouraged, by some leaders who should know better.
In fact, if reform is needed, the Agudath convention may be a good place to start.
A similar point is made by Joel Rebibo in an important article on Israeli charedim that appears in the latest issue of Azure, the fine journal published by the Shalem Institute in Jerusalem. He writes that “among North American haredim, the age of entry into the workforce varies according to the particular religious stream. In Hasidic communities, for example, men tend to begin working in their late teens or early twenties; in the Lithuanian communities, on the other hand, they leave yeshiva in their mid-or late twenties. Overall, however, the pattern is a consistent one, in which very few students beyond the age of thirty remain in full-time study.”
It remains that there is a significant incidence of poverty among charedim in this country. The situation may be worse in the yeshiva world sector than amongst chasidim because the latter 1) do not as a rule stay in yeshiva as long and 2) they have what may be termed an instinct for entrepreneurship. Some writers, usually with an ideological axe to grind, have concluded that because many charedim are mired in poverty, it must be that workforce participation is low and that those who work settle for poorly paying jobs because they are bereft of skills and training.
In fact, while nearly all adult male charedim work, there is considerable poverty because of a confluence of factors. Many teach in yeshiva or have other low-paying positions because they regard this service as spiritually rewarding and fulfilling. Those in the regular job market are often hampered by job discrimination against religious Jews and, more importantly, by their lack of geographic mobility. Chassidic families are large and they are getting larger, a factor that obviously impacts on housing, food costs and much else, including yeshiva tuition charges. Simply put, an Orthodox college graduate or Ph.D. is certain to be in far more difficult financial straits than others with comparable degrees and jobs.
This is the reality and yet it is a certainty that knownothing bigots who venomously fabricate a picture of charedi parasitism will continue to spew out their messages of hate and that there will be newspapers eager to publish their material.
Because charedi families are large, they obviously have more weddings and other simchas to celebrate. It is presumably the desire to alleviate financial pressure on these families that inspired certain Rabbinical leaders of Agudath Israel to draft mandatory guidelines aimed at holding down the cost of weddings. For all of the good intentions, the idea misfires, although it has provided a field day for frum kibbitzers. More to the point, families in need will scarcely be affected or helped. Now that Agudath has reaped the publicity, hopefully it will pull back.
Restraint is admirable, as it is a cardinal principle of religious life. Living within one’s means is both sensible and appropriate. This is how an overwhelming number of charedi families act when they make simchas. There have been quotes aplenty that even a bare-bones Orthodox wedding costs $35,000. That’s nonsense. Apart from the evident downgrading of simchas in recent years, most charedi weddings cost much less. What can be expensive are other financial considerations, notably parental support to allow for extended yeshiva study.
Agudath has inadvertently promoted the inaccurate notion that the charedi world is awash in ostentation. That’s way off the mark, although there are some who regard showing off as a religious obligation This small group gets attention, including from Agudath leaders, and is an embarrassment. As an unfortunate example there is the forthcoming three or four day “gayvah” trip to Israel, ostensibly to study Torah there.
It does not take a sharp eye for sociological detail to know that the more modern Orthodox elements and the non-Orthodox are far more lavish in their weddings and bar/bas mitzvahs than the charedim, although the Agudath’s message is likely to result in a distorted perception.
The Rabbis seem to have lost sight of the critical difference between what is discretionary and what is mandatory. Making a wedding is obligatory; spending a ton of money or going beyond one’s means is not. If some do overspend, as a small number do, that’s no justification for the overheated reaction that we have seen or for the institution of conditions that are likely to be untenable.
Financial pressures on Orthodox families arise from mandatory expenses, notably tuition. This is what causes anguish in many homes – disrupting shalom bayis – and yet there is not a peep about this severe problem. Nor is there a word about other mandatory costs engendered by a religious life-style.
It may be that the Rabbi’s message is intended for those who are wealthy and indulgent, for those who go overboard. If so, a good place to start is at home, for the yeshiva world which is truly the glory of the Jewish people in its fidelity to the ideal of hatznea leches (modest living) is being harmed by the small number of exhibitionists whose antics are condoned, if not encouraged, by some leaders who should know better.
In fact, if reform is needed, the Agudath convention may be a good place to start.
Wednesday, December 12, 2001
A Reply and an Appeal
This column, about which I am already uncomfortable, is essentially a response to a note that I received and an appeal for support for the Rabbi Jacob Joseph School. I am in my 28th year as RJJ’s president – a voluntary position – and only the fifth president in our 102 years. I can say that my predecessors have been persons of distinction.
RJJ publishes the Journal of Halacha and Contemporary Society, a scholarly semi-annual publication devoted to an analysis of modern-day issues in the context of religious Jewish law. This is a successful project in that it has an impressive subscriber base and is well received. Volume 42 was recently published. The Journal is but one of our special projects for we also support the publication of important scholarly books through the Rabbi Jacob Joseph School Press and provide food for the Jewish poor before Pesach. Since the Journal loses money and, besides, RJJ’s four schools certainly need philanthropic support, it is my practice to enclose a fundraising letter in the Rosh Hashanah issue.
In this year’s letter, I wrote that our situation is difficult because of the economic downturn and “also because I have found it necessary to devote a significant proportion of my time to helping yeshivas and day schools around the country. RJJ has suffered as a consequence.” One subscriber returned the letter, underlying the quoted portion with a yellow marker and attached a post-it averring that “I didn’t find this paragraph inspiring” and “to put that in a letter and then ask for $ is inappropriate. Please address this in your next letter.” The next letter is eight months off and since the writer did not include a name, this column serves as a reply.
I suppose that the writer has a point, although it could have been made in a more sensitive way. There are community leaders aplenty who devote themselves nearly entirely to a single cause for which they have accepted responsibility. They rarely roam far a field or accept new challenges. They reason that they have a job to do and other tasks should not interfere. There’s much to be said for this approach, if only because of the benefits that usually accrue to the institutions that are led by people who give it all they’ve got.
The RJJ tradition is to be engaged. Samuel Andron, the key person in the family that founded the school in late 1899 and RJJ’s first president, was one of the founders of what is now Yeshiva University. Jacob Dukas, his successor, was the head of the Hebrew Free Loan Society and a good deal else, while Joseph Golding and Irving Bunim were widely respected as outstanding community leaders who devoted themselves to a multiplicity of causes. And so I am following in rather respectable footsteps. More importantly to me, for fifty years I have been inspired by the great Rosh Yeshiva of Lakewood, Rabbi Aharon Kottler of blessed memory, the transcendent Torah leader of the past two generations. He had the burden of his own yeshiva yet he embraced other daunting responsibilities, here and in Israel. Lakewood was hurt financially because of this.
I have tried to follow the example of Rabbi Kottler because I believe that that is what he wanted of me. It’s hard, maybe impossible, to write with grace about one’s community activity. I will simply say that I have always been involved in an array of causes and activities. What has changed in recent years is that there have been additional challenges and responsibilities, including research and writing and an exhausting effort to assist other schools, many projects and activities outside of the United States.
The fact that RJJ has been hurt is not a sufficient reason for anyone else to care. Each cause must stand on its own merit. Our four schools and 1,100 students form an arrangement that I believe is unprecedented in American Jewish life. There are two core schools on Staten Island, separately for boys and girls, and an advanced dormitory yeshiva and Beth Medrash in Edison, New Jersey that is regarded as one of the best in the country. The fourth school is the Jewish Foundation School, a co-educational day school on Staten Island that was in danger of collapse because of a mountain of debt. To prevent its closing, in an extraordinary act of communal altruism RJJ assumed full responsibility for all of the debt, which has been paid in full. RJJ has also maintained the school’s mission and character and strengthened its program.
This is remarkable when we consider that the educational philosophies of the two institutions were widely divergent, even incompatible. The truth is that we weakened ourselves – financially and in other ways – to assist a Jewish school whose loss would have deprived many hundreds of children of the Jewish education they needed. It is also the fulfillment of what should be the guiding principal in religious Jewish education, chanoch l’naar al pi darcho. Children should be educated according to the ways that provide for their advancement.
During the year that this column has appeared, I have received hundreds of communications, some asking how they could help my work. These inquiries have added to my willingness, albeit in a state of discomfort, to ask readers to assist RJJ.
I began this column on a flight from Russia, concluding a difficult nine-day trip whose sole purpose was to look at Jewish life and to recommend how philanthropic assistance might be effective, particularly in the educational domain. I hope that the trip, which came at a crucial time for RJJ, will result in much benefit.
I hope as well that there will be readers who will provide support for an institution that has been a treasure of American Jewish life for more than a century, for an institution that welcomes the challenge of being vibrant in its second century.
Contributions can be sent to the Rabbi Jacob Joseph School, 350 Broadway, Room 300, New York, NY 10013.
RJJ publishes the Journal of Halacha and Contemporary Society, a scholarly semi-annual publication devoted to an analysis of modern-day issues in the context of religious Jewish law. This is a successful project in that it has an impressive subscriber base and is well received. Volume 42 was recently published. The Journal is but one of our special projects for we also support the publication of important scholarly books through the Rabbi Jacob Joseph School Press and provide food for the Jewish poor before Pesach. Since the Journal loses money and, besides, RJJ’s four schools certainly need philanthropic support, it is my practice to enclose a fundraising letter in the Rosh Hashanah issue.
In this year’s letter, I wrote that our situation is difficult because of the economic downturn and “also because I have found it necessary to devote a significant proportion of my time to helping yeshivas and day schools around the country. RJJ has suffered as a consequence.” One subscriber returned the letter, underlying the quoted portion with a yellow marker and attached a post-it averring that “I didn’t find this paragraph inspiring” and “to put that in a letter and then ask for $ is inappropriate. Please address this in your next letter.” The next letter is eight months off and since the writer did not include a name, this column serves as a reply.
I suppose that the writer has a point, although it could have been made in a more sensitive way. There are community leaders aplenty who devote themselves nearly entirely to a single cause for which they have accepted responsibility. They rarely roam far a field or accept new challenges. They reason that they have a job to do and other tasks should not interfere. There’s much to be said for this approach, if only because of the benefits that usually accrue to the institutions that are led by people who give it all they’ve got.
The RJJ tradition is to be engaged. Samuel Andron, the key person in the family that founded the school in late 1899 and RJJ’s first president, was one of the founders of what is now Yeshiva University. Jacob Dukas, his successor, was the head of the Hebrew Free Loan Society and a good deal else, while Joseph Golding and Irving Bunim were widely respected as outstanding community leaders who devoted themselves to a multiplicity of causes. And so I am following in rather respectable footsteps. More importantly to me, for fifty years I have been inspired by the great Rosh Yeshiva of Lakewood, Rabbi Aharon Kottler of blessed memory, the transcendent Torah leader of the past two generations. He had the burden of his own yeshiva yet he embraced other daunting responsibilities, here and in Israel. Lakewood was hurt financially because of this.
I have tried to follow the example of Rabbi Kottler because I believe that that is what he wanted of me. It’s hard, maybe impossible, to write with grace about one’s community activity. I will simply say that I have always been involved in an array of causes and activities. What has changed in recent years is that there have been additional challenges and responsibilities, including research and writing and an exhausting effort to assist other schools, many projects and activities outside of the United States.
The fact that RJJ has been hurt is not a sufficient reason for anyone else to care. Each cause must stand on its own merit. Our four schools and 1,100 students form an arrangement that I believe is unprecedented in American Jewish life. There are two core schools on Staten Island, separately for boys and girls, and an advanced dormitory yeshiva and Beth Medrash in Edison, New Jersey that is regarded as one of the best in the country. The fourth school is the Jewish Foundation School, a co-educational day school on Staten Island that was in danger of collapse because of a mountain of debt. To prevent its closing, in an extraordinary act of communal altruism RJJ assumed full responsibility for all of the debt, which has been paid in full. RJJ has also maintained the school’s mission and character and strengthened its program.
This is remarkable when we consider that the educational philosophies of the two institutions were widely divergent, even incompatible. The truth is that we weakened ourselves – financially and in other ways – to assist a Jewish school whose loss would have deprived many hundreds of children of the Jewish education they needed. It is also the fulfillment of what should be the guiding principal in religious Jewish education, chanoch l’naar al pi darcho. Children should be educated according to the ways that provide for their advancement.
During the year that this column has appeared, I have received hundreds of communications, some asking how they could help my work. These inquiries have added to my willingness, albeit in a state of discomfort, to ask readers to assist RJJ.
I began this column on a flight from Russia, concluding a difficult nine-day trip whose sole purpose was to look at Jewish life and to recommend how philanthropic assistance might be effective, particularly in the educational domain. I hope that the trip, which came at a crucial time for RJJ, will result in much benefit.
I hope as well that there will be readers who will provide support for an institution that has been a treasure of American Jewish life for more than a century, for an institution that welcomes the challenge of being vibrant in its second century.
Contributions can be sent to the Rabbi Jacob Joseph School, 350 Broadway, Room 300, New York, NY 10013.
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