FROM THE LAND OF VENDETTAS

Sadly, I have to report that over the past weeks, UJC leaders have escalated their personal attacks on your author suggesting their desperation and fear that I am so close to the truth of their failure and so willing to discuss it on these pages as to require that they employ tactics used by Richard Nixon and his ilk in a failed attempt to discredit me. Let me count they ways:

When this lay and professional leadership wanted me to resign as UIA Chair, they publicly and privately alleged a litany of fabricated examples of my "disloyalty" to UJC -- all of which...each of which...were false, and worse, known to them to be false. My real acts of "disloyalty" were and remain my criticism of UJC's lack of leadership, focus, vision, management and mission reflected in my opinions, fairly expressed, in this Blog. My refusal to resign only further infuriated the Chairs and CEO.

Notwithstanding intensive investigation within UJC, management has been unable to identify the Blogger(s) responsible for disunitedujc.blogspot.com, these leaders continue to state with absolute certainty that it must be me, my outright denials and all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.

The UJC CEO created a scurrilous defamatory rumor, in reckless disregard for the truth, that my and my family's ILR-level annual campaign gift is the aggregate of all of the gifts of all of the lawyers in my law firm -- there are over 600 of them around the country. Rieger knew this information to be false when he spread it within and outside UJC; if he claimed he did not, all he had to do was call his friend, Steve Nasatir in Chicago. He did not want to know the truth or, maybe, he "couldn't handle the truth" that my gift -- Pinkert-Wexler Families gift -- is made up of mine, my wife's, my generous uncle and Aunt, and two cousins and our spouses. When I confronted Rieger about this, he apologized in his way, blaming a faulty informant for the slander he chose to spread. Yet, I am not the first lay person whose gift has been disparaged -- and I probably won't be the last.

In a truly desperate, Nixonian attempt to find something that might "dirty" me up, I have been told from within UJC that Rieger has demanded that the UJC Finance Department conduct a "forensic audit" of my Expense Reimbursement requests for my travels on behalf of UJC and UIA over the years. Let's see if I can spare them the time and cost: I have charged UJC or UIA for only my direct expenses and have not charged back for hotels or car rentals, even when entitled to do so. (Even though I was invited to seek reimbursement by UIA's Executive Vice Chair and UJC Senior Professional, Yitzchak Shavit, for my research trip to Israel with him on the frustrated Resource Development Guidelines [see my earlier Post: A Cautionary Tale], I bore all of those costs myself.). The facts notwithstanding, Rieger has told lay and professional leaders inside and outside UJC that I have stayed at "expensive hotels" suggesting that I have charged UJC the cost thereof. He knew or should have known better.

It probably isn't fair to speculate whether Howard is seen late at night in the north-south hallway at 111 Eighth Avenue trying to pry my picture (up there as a past UJA Chair) off the wall.

The great fear should be that with Howard's announced retirement one year in advance there will be no accountability, as there is none today.

As the saying goes: power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Shame.

Rwexler