EVERY DAY IN EVERY WAY

Troubling:

• One used to be able to access JFNA's current IRS Form 990 by link from its web page (well, it wasn't quite that easy, but there was a link, that would take you to another website, where you had to register...but, eventually, you would get there). If you go to the JFNA website right now, I challenge you to find the 990 link -- it, like Sam Astrof, has disappeared.
• Then, there is this: if you go searching for the current 990 -- that is the 2013 990 which has been filed, if JFNA is following the legal requirements -- and go to Guidestar.org, you will find the most recent filing that for 2012. I'd ask JFNA what it is trying to hide, but...why bother. (BTW, the 2012 990 went of record on July 17, 2013 -- check today's date.)
• Then there is the 2014 GA. Renee Rothstein, JFNA's well-regarded flack-in-chief, has taken the reins, apparently dismissed the lay Co-Chairs, and has been sending out periodic updates that, if you read them, won't encourage you to attend the November GA in some place called National Harbor, Maryland ("you can see Washington, D.C. from there"). The Speakers List, so promising when first announced has added one speaker...that's ONE speaker...in two months ("renowned TED speaker") -- for a fun exercise, go to the GA website and link to "Speakers;" then go to "See Full List" and watch the same speakers appear with those disappearing Co-Chairs, but listed in alphabetical order.
• And, worse, these from the GA Website: Plenary Two: "Modern day Aristotle's share their observations of living Jewishly and explore how we organize as a society." So, forgetting the ridiculous use of the possessive in the reference to Aristotle, that's it, nothing more.  That evening there is something called the "Israeli Jewish Congress" but the subtext discloses that this should have been the European Jewish Congress. Oh my. Maybe the "planners" don't believe anyone reads this stuff...maybe they are correct.
• As if these are the worst of what the GA scriveners have to offer, there is this beauty, planned for Sunday night: "ON Sunday evening Smithsonian's National Museum of American History is ours to explore! Visit Dorothy's ruby slippers..." Only this iteration of our continental organization could further reduce itself to a joke.
• Then there are the JFNA Solidarity Missions -- I think the fifteenth or 20th just went or returned. I have never been on a national Mission (and I have been on, last count, 23 of them) that had no fund raising component; yet, the leaders of JFNA have now run whatever the number of Solidarity Missions is without any fund raising. How does that happen? How is that allowed to happen? I understand these Missions were short but, communal Missions of the same length, have raised significant dollars in light of the emergency. It should be noted that JFNA CEO Silverman has been on most if not all of these Missions -- guess he either didn't notice, was distracted while writing his summary of the success of the Missions or didn't understand that missions=fund raising...or did, once upon a time.

We at least had hoped that the national organization could rise to a crisis. A "target" for an Israel Emergency Fund was first $10 million, then $30 million. Last month the federations had raised $41 million but transmitted to JFNA only about 50% of that figure. What did JFNA contribute to the raising of this funds?? (That's just another rhetorical question, of course.) Folks are beginning to ask the inevitable -- "do we need a JFNA that costs us $30.5 million a year when we are getting about $5 million in value, if that?"

Well, do we?

Rwexler