Our War Against Religion

In the days before the Democratic convention, Jewish notables issued, in the words of the headline in this newspaper’s lead article, “stern warnings” to party leaders. They weren’t concerned about Israel, despite questions that have been raised about Barack Obama’s views, nor about strengthening the safety net for tens of millions of Americans. Their target was faith-based initiatives, the social service programs sponsored by religious groups that assist the needy and receive public funding. In the pages of Forward, we were treated to the pseudo-wisdom of Abraham Foxman whose shallowness as a thinker is matched by the skimpiness of his achievements. The ADL boss groused that “religious institutions have been eligible to receive billions in government social service grants.”

Because these non-conscientious objectors are secularists and overwhelmingly Democratic in their political orientation, I wonder whether down deep they prefer another Republican victory in November, as this would allow them to continue to complain. They should read Peter J. Boyer’s important article in last week’s The New Yorker called “Party Faithful” and subtitled, “Can the Democrats Get a Foothold on the Religious Vote?” Boyer describes how Democrats alienated faith-based voters and the toll that this has taken on election day and the new efforts to draw some of these voters back to the party.

The critical issue for Jews is not political expediency, whether we do or should favor this or that candidate or party. What is most at stake is intellectual honesty, the truth about how best to meet the enormous challenge to tend to the vast number of Americans who are poor or needy in any of a great number of ways. If we would follow the “stern warnings” of our leaders who wage a constant war against religion, poor and needy people of all ages and groups would be hurt.

Boyer cites “a remarkable speech” given two years ago by Barack Obama before a liberal Christian group “in which he offered a frank critique of liberal queasiness regarding faith,” saying that “there are some liberals who dismiss religion in the public square as inherently irrational or intolerant, insisting on a caricature of religious Americans that paints them as fanatical.” He then challenged secularists who “are wrong when they ask believers to leave religion at the door before entering into the public square,” insisting that “a sense of proportion should also guide those who police the boundaries between church and state.”

We Jews are in the first rank of these police, as we have been for at least sixty years. This is our surrogate religion, the idol that we worship as we remain steadfastly faithful to faithlessness. We reflect not on this orthodoxy, nor do we pay heed to realities or liberal voices that suggest that our fanaticism is misplaced. Nor do we reflect on the potential harm that our anti-religious stance may cause to American Jewry.

There is in this a remarkable disconnect. This newspaper has reported the anguish in the Federation world arising from cutbacks in governmental funding to some Jewish social service agencies. We are told that the Jewish needy will suffer. There is not a peep from our anti-faith vigilantes regarding First Amendment issues, not even regarding programs that have an overt and distinct Jewish character, as when a Federation facility or agency has a synagogue on its premises.

Nor have we been concerned – and for good reasons – about public funding for Black churches that provide vital social services to their members. Surely, such activity strengthens the identity of individual recipients with the church. For even better reasons, we have enthusiastically applauded the civil rights activism of churches, although clearly this advocacy inherently eradicates the boundaries between church and state.

Our opposition to faith-based programs is selective, based largely on our ideological preferences. We save our fire primarily for those who do not share our liberal agenda. We issue stern warnings because we are fearful that Democrats may reach out to Catholics and fundamentalist Protestants who have become alienated from a party that they once supported and have come to believe is hostile to their interests and faith.

When Catholic hospitals tend to the sick, they serve a necessary public function which is not diminished by the presence of crucifixes and religious attire. The same is true of faith-based sponsored activities that fulfill governmental obligations to assist the poor, the mentally ill, the handicapped, the elderly and frail, children in broken families and many others. Without faith-based initiatives our society would be far worse off and this is not an abstraction but a reality in millions of homes. Without faith-based initiatives, many who need help would have nowhere to turn.

Faith-based initiatives generally do a better job than governmental-based social service initiatives because they provide a caring environment that is often absent when bureaucratic barriers impede what government is trying to accomplish.

It is time for American Jewry to grow up, time to acknowledge that Barack Obama was right when he said that “Not every mention of God in public is a breach to the wall of separation – context matters.” It is time that we not be the only “religion” in America whose agenda promotes a war against religion.

Sadly, there is little prospect that we will change course. Our hostility to our own religion has become hostility to other religions and now, hostility as well, to the critical needs of millions of Americans. We can only hope that our intolerance will not one day result in the defamation of Jews by other Americans.

RJJ Newsletter - September 2008

Torah and mitzvos constitute an ideal world, a world in which our obedience to the commandments frees us from slavery to our ego, desires and impulses and also from slavery to the outer environment which compels us to yield to hedonism and fleeting pleasures. The world of Torah and mitzvos is ideal not in the sense of a utopia that exists in the mind and is beyond our reach. By ideal is meant a state of perfection achieved through obedience and service to Hashem. This world is at once nearby and elusive. It is, in the words of the Torah reading in several weeks, not in heaven or in a distant place but very close. It is within our grasp through fulfillment of the mitzvos, yet because of failings that are inherent in the human experience, we fall short.

There is thus a gap between our ideals and our reality, a disconnect between how we are required to act and how we do act. The life of a religious Jew is a struggle to control and overtake the appetites and inclinations that create the disconnect between what is required of us by Torah and mitzvos and our behavior. In varying degrees and ways, our thought, speech and actions compromise our compliance with Torah obligations. The distinctive characteristic of a religious person is to know this, to acknowledge the disconnect and to work at self-improvement. Among those of us who are righteous, the gap between the ideal and practice is narrow, in some measure because these individuals are blessed with elevated attributes but surely also because of their struggle to draw close to the ideal. That some of us succeed provides assurance that the disconnect can be challenged.

However, the powerful forces that induce wrongful thought, speech and action are always alive in our lives. As the Talmud teaches, the more we triumph over wrongful inclinations, the more these inclinations seek to entrap us. These negative forces serve as justification for what is wrongful, so that we come to think of inappropriate behavior as appropriate. We are taught that when a sin is repeated and then repeated again and again, it becomes permissible in the mind of the transgressor. The justification of wrongdoing serves as the guardian and advocate of wrongdoing.

For improvement, this barrier must be recognized and then challenged. Rambam accordingly underscores that the process of teshuvah requires the conscious acknowledgement that what is wrong is wrong. This is never easy, yet our religious commitment provides an opening and opportunity for halachic and hashkafic improvement so that we can triumph over wrongful inclinations. This opportunity is particularly heightened in the period beginning with Elul and extending through Yom Kippur when we are more alert to the obligation to engage in self-assessment and, at least for a while, to draw closer to the standards and behavior required of us as observant and obedient Jews.

The prayers and confessions recited during this period are essentially personal expressions that relate to personal shortcomings. This is as it should be because departures from Torah standards in thought, speech and deed are, in the main, personal defects and it is a hallmark of religious life that we take responsibility for our behavior. Even when the expressions are in group terms, as in the Avinu Malkeinu recitations, the reference is primarily to the individual wrongdoing of the many and not to the collective sins of the community as a community.

For our communal sins, by which is meant not the aggregate of individual wrongs but departures from appropriate Torah behavior that have become ingrained in our community so that many of us are entrapped by wrongful societal and communal imperatives that are difficult to resist, there is a paucity of liturgical language and opportunities for acknowledging the wrong. There are, of course, gatherings, more often for women than for men, where effective speakers implore us to improve in one way or another. These are sincere occasions and they evoke a desire to change while the speeches are being heard. Yet, they are also invariably and without intention superficial occasions, if only because the words that are spoken are divorced from reality, the reality being potent forces that compel adherence to practices that do not necessarily conflict head on with Torah requirements but which are nonetheless divorced from the life of Torah and mitzvos.

What is involved is not a blatant violation of halacha. Rather, there is an embrace of values and attitudes that are discordant with Torah values. A useful illustration is hedonism, the excessive and relentless pursuit of material things and pleasures. The consequence of hedonism is not the commission of an overt sin – although there is a negative impact on the giving of tzedakah – but the dimunition of our community as a sacred people. It is remarkable that at a time when there is a sincere and enhanced commitment to Torah study, there is a parallel sincere and enhanced commitment to living it up.

At the communal level, there is a disconnect between Torah values and societal appetites and impulses that pull in a discordant direction and there is too little in our liturgy and mussar that may serve as restraint on wrongful communal behavior. Nor is the Elul through Yom Kippur period, whose salutary effect on individual reflection and teshuvah is evident, a time for greater fidelity to Torah norms at the communal level. There is no apparent narrowing of the communal disconnect between the ideal and reality. In fact, in one crucial respect, the communal disconnect is enlarged during this period.

This is because Elul and Rosh Hashanah coincide with the opening of the school year, the period when there is a spirit of renewal as children begin another year of Torah study and, hopefully, a year that will result in further growth of their religious commitment. Ever since the Talmudic period, it has been accepted that the establishment of schools for religious study is a communal responsibility. This means that there is a communal responsibility to provide the opportunity to study Torah to all children. This communal responsibility extends to children from marginally observant homes whose parents are willing to send them to a yeshiva or day school, children who in today’s usage would in the main attend schools with a kiruv orientation. We do have such schools, although they are scarcely provided for by our community and few Orthodox Jews any longer pay much attention to them. It is no wonder that enrollment in these schools has declined and since few mainstream yeshivas and day schools now accept such children, an ever-increasing number of Jewish children are being deprived of the opportunity to be nurtured in our noble heritage which is the great treasure of our people.

That is one communal disconnect in Torah education and it is a disconnect that is most pronounced at the start of the school year in the month of Elul.

Another disconnect is that during the same period, retention and admission decisions are made by school officials. This is a period when our well-advertised ideal of providing a Torah education to our community’s children is put to the test. Such decisions are also made throughout the year, often in the form of students being told that they must leave. While there are situations that justify parents being told to find another school for their children, what has erupted in our ranks is a culture of rejection, a set of attitudes that have become embedded and which result in an expanding array of situations where it is regarded as the right and “Torah” way to deny admission or re-admission. I regard this culture of rejection as anti-Torah. It encompasses children from homes that are not sufficiently religious, children with even mild behavioral problems, children who are not sufficiently bright, children who have committed minor misdeeds, children from poor homes and much else.

The number of children who have been affected by the culture of rejection is in the thousands. I wonder whether during Elul there are principals or other yeshiva officials who pause and reflect on the relevance of this period as they reject students. Are there principals who say that precisely because it is Elul it is necessary to admit a child who has a particular shortcoming? Are there principals who say that because it is Elul it is necessary to give a student another chance? I know that some do, but far too many do not. I am astounded by the willingness of principals to cavalierly reject students in the month of Elul. How easy it is for them to expand the gap in Torah chinuch between our rhetoric and the ideal on the one hand and the reality on the other hand. The culture of rejection in Torah chinuch is at its strongest during the period of teshuvah.

Why do I write of a communal disconnect when the decisions to accept or reject students are made by individuals? Let the principals and deans bear the burden of guilt, not the community. At a Torah Umesorah convention years ago, Rav Elya Svei, the Philadelphia Rosh Yeshiva whose illness has deprived us of the guidance of the outstanding figure in American Torah chinuch in the past generation, noted that Rav Mendelowitz, ztl, of Yeshiva Torah Vodaath would fast on the day that he was required to fire a rebbi. Perhaps principals should be obligated to fast on the day that they expel a student. The question, however remains, in what way is our community responsible for the actions of principals and deans?

One answer is that they are community leaders and what they do carries a communal imprimatur. Another reason is that the culture of rejection arises in some measure because parents pressure schools to turn away certain students.

I know that these words will have little or no impact, that they repeat a message that I have been sending for more years than I can remember. We have ignored the sacred words of the Chazon Ish that I have printed in this space. Still, I believe that the message is necessary and we are obligated to challenge the culture of rejection. I should note that over the years I have been involved in a number of admission and retention decisions where I have prevailed in the direction of retention and admission. In each of these situations, my faith in the student has been rewarded.

We often do not see the outcome of a rejected child. He or she is gone and out of sight and definitely out of the thoughts of those who made the decision to reject. The sin is therefore easier to bear and yet greater in consequence. When Joseph was sold by his brothers, they first cast him into a pit so that he was out of their sight and they went on with their shepherding. Years later in Egypt, they did not recognize him and the reason they did not recognize him is because in a meaningful sense they did not recognize him as their brother when they committed their original sin.

As Jacob was about to be reunited with the son he thought had died, he initially saw the agalos or wagons that Joseph had sent and this prompted him to think of the last time that the father and son were together and studied the laws of eglah arufah, what is required of the elders of a community when an unidentified corpse is found. They must proclaim, “Our hands did not spill this blood and our eyes did not see.” Rashi asks, “Can we even imagine that the elders of Beth Din are murderers?” He responds that what they are proclaiming is that “we did not see this man and we did not send him away without sustenance and proper accompaniment.” Their transgression was the failure to see and to provide sustenance, which is a metaphor for Torah. The elders were all righteous people and Torah leaders and they therefore bore a great responsibility. Not seeing can be sinful.

Those who make retention decisions in our schools and who partake of the culture of rejection are in the aggregate good people. Yet, they sin when they do not see, when they send away. Elul should be a time when they see and do not send away because this is a time of drawing closer to G-D and Torah and mitzvos, a time for teshuvah.

RJJ Newsletter - Charter Schools

Charter schools are now the rage in education. Thousands have been established in the recent period and many more are on the way. The hope – and, for sponsors, the expectation – is that these publicly-funded institutions will do a better job than conventional public schools which in turn will be impelled to improve because of the competition they face. This is a nice theory and like other ideas that promise educational or social reform, the reality is complicated and achievements fall somewhat short of expectations. The record so far for charter schools is uneven and quite a few have already closed, yet there is evidence that overall they perform better than the competition. This isn’t surprising because charters have the advantage of relative smallness and a sense of mission, particularly those that focus on discrete groups.

In accordance with an iron law of Jewish life, wherever we live as a minority among other people, sooner or later we Jews are certain to join the parade. There is a nascent Jewish charter school movement, which consists of much talk, little action and a great deal of media attention. So far, there is one such charter, it being the Ben Gamla school in South Florida which opened last September to much fanfare and scrutiny. There will be others, but overall the Jewish or, more accurately, Hebrew variety will remain no more than a drop in the charter school bucket.

Because of church-state considerations, a Jewish charter is constitutionally not kosher, no more than a Catholic charter school would pass muster. Accordingly, any that have our label will specialize in teaching Hebrew, perhaps both as a separate language and in connection with certain academic subjects. As a public institution, admission will be open to all and while the Hebrew angle will be a disincentive for many non-Jews, it is a good bet that a fair number of such students will be enrolled, maybe because their parents believe that anything with a Jewish label is likely to be superior.

At Ben Gamla, there is an optional after-school component that is privately funded and teaches Judaic subjects. How this can improve over the familiar supplementary school or Talmud Torah model that is almost universally regarded as a failure is an interesting question that does not deter the Jewish charter school advocates. They give us a new recipe for failure that is being marketed as having the capacity to accomplish what is beyond its reach. Of note, when Ben Gamla opened its doors, two-thirds of the students attended the after-school program; half of these dropped out as the school year progressed.

Why all of the Jewish charter school hoopla? Part of the answer is that we are joining a much applauded bandwagon, a movement that is the new kid on the education block, has momentum and is attention-grabbing. As with start-up companies whose stock soars even though there are no earnings to speak of, a Jewish charter has the enormous advantage of having a virtually non-existent track record. If a new charter attracts three-hundred students in its first year, about Ben Gamla’s number, there is reason to celebrate and the celebration is scarcely dampened by evidence that a considerable number of enrollees transferred out of a Jewish day school, meaning that they are now receiving an inferior Jewish education than previously and also that the schools they left are now on shakier ground because of their enrollment decline.

As American Jewish losses have mounted, with many already having chucked off any sense of Jewish identity and many others headed in the same direction, we have become at once desperate and creative in devising minimalistic Jewish activity that we claim or hope will impel some who are moving away to remain in our fold. In the process, we cast aside as immaterial the argument that this approach is certain to fail. Paradoxically, the weaker the activity is from a Jewish standpoint, the more fervently we embrace it. We are desperate and desperate people are willing to try anything. To be sure, charter schools are not the weakest in our current array of activities.

The best argument for Jewish charters is that only a small proportion of children in non-Orthodox homes are in a day school. True enough, but why make the percentage even lower? The issue is further enmeshed in the tuition crisis that is a reality for most day school families. As tuition rises, the charter option becomes more attractive, especially in places like South Florida where there is an abundance of ex-Israeli families.

While the debate over charters seems to involve the Orthodox only tangentially because overwhelmingly they must adhere to the yeshiva/day school model, the Orthodox community does have a stake in the development of charter schools. There was a time when the Orthodox and notably what is referred to as the yeshiva world felt a strong sense of responsibility for the religious education of children in marginally Jewish homes. There was a linkage between Torah education and kiruv and we established and helped to sustain schools that were aimed at families with children who would not fit in an ordinary yeshiva setting.

This is no longer the case. We continue to talk a good game about the paramount importance of day school education, but it is nearly all talk without corresponding activity. Enrollment at schools with an immigrant or outreach population has declined enormously and this process is continuing.

The notion that kiruv can be effective without sufficient day school opportunities for the families that are being reached out to is astounding and in a sense is a form of heresy. The responsibility for what we are not doing must be attributed to our Torah leaders. They preach about day schools and basic Torah education but they are absent without leave as they direct their energies and influence elsewhere. As I have pointed out, they work mightily to promote basic Torah education in Israel, which of course is praiseworthy, but they then neglect the obligation to do so in their own backyards.

It isn’t surprising then that charter schools have gained momentum or that many believe that charter schools and not day schools are the wave of the future.

Our Money Tzoros

As the economic clouds darken further, it is apparent that we are not in the midst of a cyclical downturn of the kind that comes around every decade or so but in for something that is far more serious. The news is ominous, extending beyond steep declines in financial markets and housing, the two familiar barometers of economic health. Banks have experienced staggering losses and the stunning increases in the price of oil and other key commodities are developments that will retard any easy or early recovery. We are beset by severe inflation at a time when nearly all financial indicators are going south. There is no light at the end of the tunnel.

There are places that seem oblivious to the bad news, such as legislative bodies across the nation which appropriate money that they do not have and cannot print. They have gotten away with such political expediency because economic recovery has replenished governmental coffers. The panderers may be in for a rude awakening this time around.

Jewish communal life is feeling the pinch and this obviously is true generally of the nonprofit world. The nonprofits that have nurtured a sufficient endowment should weather the storm. Those that depend entirely on fundraising, often with some governmental largesse thrown in for good measure, will experience rough sledding. Federations are already howling in pain and there is talk of staff and service cutbacks. This newspaper reported last week the decision to close NYANA, an agency with a good record of assistance to Jewish refugees and immigrants. Other organizations and projects may follow suit.

For American Jewry there is the corollary unsettling development in the startling 25% decline of the dollar against the shekel, a decline that translates into a sharp drop in what Israeli causes are receiving. There is a steadily rising chorus of wailing and lamentations from the Holy Land. While we must be concerned about the financial stability of Israeli institutions, it’s time to recognize that although there are many poor Israelis, Israel is no longer a poor country and its government should invest far more than it now does in the social and economic infrastructures. It deserves mentioning also that the dollar’s decline inevitably means that a greater number of dollars are flowing into Israel.

Instead of kvetching about the sharp economic downturn, we ought to ponder what adjustments are needed to align our commitments and activities with available resources. The bad news may be what is needed to jolt us out of our complacency, out of our inertial mindset. We just might assess whether all of the organizations on our communal landscape are needed. This isn’t an easy challenge even with the impetus provided by financial shortfalls because it is in the nature of organizations and their machers to soldier on even if what they are attempting to achieve is relatively meaningless.

I imagine that nationally and locally we can lop off several hundred organizations, agencies and projects without their disappearance negatively affecting the character of American Jewry. Most do very little and the little they do can be absorbed by the survivors. This isn’t going to happen anytime soon, although if fundraising nosedives, necessity may be the mother of invention.

Whatever the fate of organizations, hopefully we will rein in our ravenous appetite for collateral activities, including a packed agenda of conventions and conferences, meaningless research and reports and the reliance on a huge cohort of experts and consultants who have responsibility for nothing and whose bank accounts are fattened when they are hired to tell those who do have responsibility how to do a better job.

It is impossible to estimate how much our conferencing costs. The certain figure is way above $100 million annually and it is climbing rapidly. In fact, Israel’s appetite matches ours, as there is a steady parade of such events, including many in academic settings that deal with arcane subjects or those that have already been discussed endlessly. It was recently reported that the world Jewish conference convened by President Shimon Peres cost $17 million, an astounding figure even if it includes preparatory work and follow-up. I haven’t seen a single comment questioning the extravagance.

Then there is the cosmetic activity, the quickie research that scarcely anyone pays attention to and the reports that are dead on arrival. We now have an army of academics and former functionaries who understand that the grass is greener when pseudo-expertise is being marketed. Intended or not, their enterprise is exploitative, if not cynical.

I fear that the brunt of any hardships resulting from financial constraint will be most felt in places where we can least afford to cut back, primarily in day schools and activities aimed at enhancing Jewish commitment. I expect that if the choice is between support of what goes on in school and support of an educational conference, the latter will win out. We love to feed what is inconsequential and the proof is in the roster of Jewish educational conferences.

Our economic life operates not merely at the communal level but importantly consists of hundreds of thousands of stories, of how people fare in the job market and how families cope and what they cut back when they face financial hardship. In view of the high cost of day school education, there is the prospect that we will see a drop in enrollment in those sectors for whom a day school education is as much an option as it is a religious obligation. There is, in short, much to be fearful about.

The Meaning of Obama

This column is about race, not about politics. The impending nomination of Barack Obama is a seminal moment in U.S. history and its significance will not be much affected by the outcome of November’s election. That a Black candidate has progressed so far is a measure of how far this country has progressed in race relations, how far we have moved away from the sins of racism and slavery, its more ignoble antecedent.

There is more progress to be made, but we are surely past the halfway point in achieving the promise of equality which is one of the blessings of liberty. Social pathologies are tenacious. They have roots and even reason and their total eradication is a utopian fantasy. Discrimination persists in all pluralistic societies – and nowadays all societies are pluralistic – because ethnic diversity ensures that it persists. Where ethnic diversity is manifested through physical features such as race, there is a heightened prospect that pockets of bigotry will endure. They are shrinking and this is an indication of how much has been achieved.

It is necessary, I think, to distinguish between what may be termed positive and negative discrimination. The former arises out of the understandable desire of group members to favor their own, whether in employment or housing or some other key social indicator. The negative variety is manifested in hate language and actions aimed at hurting others. Admittedly, the two are often linked but they operate on a different moral, if not also legal, level.

It is deeply painful to write that one of the pockets of enduring racism is the community that I am part of, a community that contributes inordinately to what is good and noble in Jewish life and yet has lost its way on an issue that should be fundamental to religious Jews. I imagine that I will be pilloried for writing about this, the least of the charges being that I have aired dirty linen in public. Unfortunately, Barack Obama’s emergence has, it seems, been a catalyst for additional racism and that is why I write now. Emphatically, what is not at issue is criticism of his views on the Middle East or any other policy matter.

Over the years, I have taken certain Orthodox Jews to task for their negative attitudes toward all non-Jews, emphasizing that when we denigrate others we denigrate rather than elevate ourselves. Racism partakes of the same characteristic and it too needs to be condemned. It should not be necessary to point out that the language used at times about Gentiles and Blacks is a desecration of G-D’s name and a defense of such language expands the desecration.

My co-religionists who seem unperturbed by this religious consideration should ponder how we can condemn language that is hostile toward Jews when some of us use hostile language when speaking about race. They ought to reflect on our thriving in this land of freedom and opportunity. Do we believe that this blessing, bestowed to hundreds of thousands of Holocaust survivors, is reserved to Jews alone?

On the larger canvas of American life, overwhelmingly what remains to be done on the racial front is less of a challenge to whites than it is to Blacks. I do not refer to anti-white sentiments among Blacks, although there is an excess of that, but rather to the internal racism of Blacks toward Blacks that is on display without end in the cesspool that is popular entertainment. The fetid message emitted is that Blacks are an inferior people.

In the aggregate, the primary thrust of music, television and movies marketed to Blacks is that they are a people who are engulfed by promiscuity, obscenity and various forms of animalistic behavior. To ensure that this base profile is maintained, Black youth in particular are bombarded with admittedly seductive messages that extol what most of us would find disgusting. The point was made last week in a New York Sun column by John McWhorter, a Black writer whose book, “All About the Beat: Why Hiphop Can’t Save Black America” has just been published. McWhorter quotes a popular Black rapper whose lyrics include the gem that high school is a “four-year sentence” with teachers “tellin’ white man lies.”

Unless the trash of internal Black racism is challenged – and the challenge must come primarily from Blacks – there is, in McWhorter’s words, “little hope for our future.” Whites, and I specifically include Jews because of the role that some play in the entertainment industry, have the additional responsibility of challenging the white dominated exploitation of Blacks that is one of the major stories of contemporary entertainment. It is not sufficient to preach about tolerance and equality and to contribute to liberal and noble causes. It is no defense of the Ku Klux Klan and its despicable ilk to note that these days popular culture degrades and harms Black Americans far more than the white-sheeters.

There is also the vexing question of Black leadership. Any people led by Al Sharpton, the greatly talented and equally cynical civil wrongs leader, are in deep trouble. Can we ever count the ways that this charlatan has sinned? He has trafficked throughout his career in bigotry and hypocrisy and he is a stain on the political leaders and media types who enthusiastically embrace him. Blacks are the primary victims of his phoniness.

It may be too much to expect that Barack Obama’s startling success will cut Sharpton down to size, although I sense that the Illinois Senator has not given him a role, nor has he paid much attention to Jesse Jackson who by now is a caricature of a caricature of Jesse Jackson. However he fares in November, it is to be hoped that Obama’s extraordinary story will mark a salutary turning point in the saga of Black America.

Looking Back

I went the other day to a memorial service for Barry Gottehrer, a name not known to many. As a young man and after a spectacular start as a journalist at the old Herald Tribune, still admired as perhaps the greatest newspaper New York has seen, Barry joined the Lindsay administration in the mid-1960s and was a key staffer for five or six years, giving of his heart and soul and abundant skills as he reached out to young Blacks and others headed toward a life of social decay and crime. I served at City Hall during Mayor Lindsay’s second term and that is why I was at the memorial, along with an impressive group of now mostly near-elderly people who were in city government during that period.

I do not recall Barry and I speaking or communicating in the more than thirty-five years since our paths last crossed. Nor have I had more than flimsy contact with ex-Lindsayites, partly because their reunions invariably took place on Friday evenings when I couldn’t come. In any case, my life and work went in a different direction.

About two months before Barry died of pancreatic cancer, Jay Kriegel and Sid Davidoff – the Lindsay people I was closest to – told me of his illness and suggested a visit, a request that struck me as odd in view of the lack of contact for a third of a century. I soon learned that Barry had written a book a long time ago about his City Hall experience (“The Mayor’s Man,” 1975) and that near its conclusion he included two letters that had more meaning for him than the farewell dinner in his honor attended by 1,000. One was from a police officer, the other from me.

The letter foretold the expectation that the relationship with colleagues would end when Lindsay’s term ended. “Friendship at City Hall is an illusive matter,” I wrote, and “people can work closely for years and laugh and drink together and somehow – even if they do not know it – they are not friends. After the experience is over, they will not see each other too often. This is true even when colleagues have a strong liking for one another.”

Rereading the letter now and going to the memorial service have opened a window in my mind for memory and reflection.

History hasn’t treated John V. Lindsay kindly and that’s to be regretted. Hopefully, there will be a reassessment. He was honest and honorable, a good and decent man. The people I worked with were dedicated and talented and not tainted by the sleaze that collects around political power. In the years since their governmental service they have in the aggregate made notable contributions to American life. However, the whole was less than the parts and their reach was far short of the ambition. There were failures, some glaring, and they have induced neglect of the achievements.

Why do some administrations fail and others succeed? The ready and easy answer is the choices that are made and skill in governing. That’s part of the story, but there is more, such things as timing and fate, as when an administration enters when the economy is healthy or in a downturn or whether in a period of civil calm or unrest. Lindsay took office when the Black Revolution was in full force and other ethnics, specifically including Jews, were moving beyond the melting pot and becoming far more assertive. It is to Lindsay’s credit that for all of the tension and thanks to staffers like Barry Gottehrer, New York was spared the calamitous rioting that afflicted much of urban America.

The failures arose from the inability to understand the white side of the ethnic coin, to appreciate that ethnic consciousness and demands would attach to groups that weren’t labeled as minority. Even as the process of Jewish assimilation accelerated, there was the perhaps paradoxical expansion of Jewish emotionalism and militancy, impelled by a confluence of factors including a new awakening to the horrors of the Holocaust, the struggle for Soviet Jewry, enhanced pride in Israel, the legitimating of ethnicity resulting from the Great Society and the Black Revolution and the feeling among inner city Jews that they were being forced out by policies that favored Blacks.

There were serious skirmishes before I joined Lindsay’s staff in 1970 and they left scars. I touched on these issues in the weekly “In the City” column that I wrote for the Jewish Press while at City Hall, a rather unique arrangement that was occasionally challenged by colleagues who felt that such writing was inappropriate. Lindsay sided with me, but although I had other responsibilities, in a dialectical fashion this writing fortified the perception both in and out of government that I was the house Jew, a term not meant as a compliment.

For all of the ethnic and other stress, there were singular achievements, the funding of projects and initiatives that to this day have made an important difference for New York Jewry. Working with my extraordinary friend Jack D. Weiler, a great Jewish leader now mostly forgotten, the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty was established, as were the Jewish Community Relations Council and neighborhood Jewish organizations. There was much more. Yet, the watershed event was the Forest Hills housing controversy. I clashed with the Mayor and colleagues, first to no avail and then the project was halved in scope, something that Mario Cuomo has wrongly taken credit for.

The people I worked with were mainly Jews from a different background and perspective. They were good people who did much good. As for Mayor Lindsay, he suffered terribly in his last years from serious illness and pain and there was also financial hardship. Perhaps others in his administration will write about their experiences, so that the record will be more complete.

Say It Ain’t So Michael

A wonderful friend who was close to Sir Isaiah Berlin is fond of quoting this principle about philanthropy that was formulated by the great British-Jewish philosopher: In the effort to do good through philanthropy, it is necessary to avoid doing bad.

As American Jewry continues to hemorrhage in commitment and numbers, we have become adept in stratagems claiming that the statistics are actually rosy and we are in good communal health and in developing projects that although far removed from – and even alien to – our heritage will allegedly draw alienated Jews closer. We are awash in Judaism lite, as well as in numbers games showing that intermarriage adds and does not subtract. We flit from one desperate and overly hyped initiative to another, hoping and claiming that American Jews will pay attention and grow in commitment.

Charter schools are one of our current flavors. In fact, we always have at least several because we are a diverse people blessed with a heightened philanthropic instinct and saddled with tons of organizations and projects seeking support. “Jewish” charter schools are being promoted, not because there is an iota of evidence that they can make a meaningful difference, but because public funds are available and this is an easier route to take than promoting and strengthening day schools.

There are significant and well-meaning philanthropists who look at the fifteen years of incontrovertible research showing that day schools are more effective than any other approach to Jewish continuity and then embrace approaches that are far less effective and perhaps totally ineffective. Many of our key philanthropic players in private foundations or federations put their money and bets on what is destined to fail and though they continually lose, as gamblers are wont to, they indulge in self-deception and once more choose the wrong path.

A weak case can be made for Hebrew language charter schools in locations where day school opportunities are limited. Suffolk County, where the Solomon Schechter School is about to close, is one such place. The county has not been hospitable to day schools and this isn’t going to change, so why not try a charter school? In Sheepshead Bay, however, smack in Brooklyn with an abundance of day schools, a charter school is Jewishly irresponsible.

According to the lead article last week in this newspaper, that’s what Michael Steinhardt and his family, along with his Foundation for Jewish Life, are planning. They want to open a charter that is “not for Jews only” which will be entirely bereft of Jewish identity. How this will contribute to Jewish life is not an open question. It is a mirage. Worse yet, if opened, the school will detract from Jewish life because it will attract parents who otherwise would enroll their children in a day school. For some marginally Jewish families, the choice between a tuition-charging school and a free charter is a no-brainer.

Michael Steinhardt is a gambler who knows that the odds are long against this initiative succeeding Jewishly. He is also resourceful and resilient, willing to support far out ideas that have small chance of success. He happily acknowledges this proclivity, arguing regarding day schools that they are mainly for the Orthodox and since only a very small percentage of non-Orthodox children are enrolled in them, alternate Jewish educational means must be utilized to reach out to these families. This argument isn’t watertight, but it has validity. But why charters when the Florida experience and the Arabic school in Brooklyn demonstrate how difficult it is to achieve even modest goals? The evidence from Florida shows conclusively that charters can hurt day schools.

There is a large school in Brooklyn located not far from where the Sheepshead Bay charter may open that is identified by New York educational officials as Jewish. It is called the Big Apple School or Bambi and enrolls about 1,500 students, nearly all of them Russian and I have been told, all of them Jewish. When I visited several years ago along with Jason Cury and Joel Beritz, the outstanding officials of the Gruss Foundation who have done so much for day schools, there was no more than a tiny indication that this is a Jewish institution, although its roots were clearly Jewish, as it was established by an Orthodox rabbi who understood that to attract Russians it was necessary to have a strong academic curriculum together with an effective Jewish component.

Unfortunately, he died soon thereafter and control of the school passed to a Russian educator with no commitment to a Judaic curriculum. When Jason Cury and Joel Beritz offered to provide significant funding for a Judaic component, they were rebuffed. Bambi students graduate after the 8th grade, very few continue in a Jewish school and overwhelmingly they are lost.

The record is apt to be worse for Mr. Steinhardt’s charter, what with its anticipated large non-Jewish enrollment and the planned curriculum. At most, the contribution to Jewish life will be negligible. If he wants to direct some of his giving to a secular cause, as he does in his important involvement in New York University and critical cultural projects, it’s his money that is being spent and what he does is his business. But when a product is marketed as Jewish, somewhat akin to the “Jewish style” cuisine once served by some non-kosher establishments, that’s our business, especially since the non-kosher charter will result in Jewish harm. Mr. Steinhardt and his family have every right to be charter school advocates. They do not have the right to open a school that has a strong prospect of drawing children and their families away from Judaism.

Say it ain’t so, Michael.