Perhaps one of you has an answer to the simple and almost daily question: Where's JFNA? We have all seen how easily distracted they've become what with the Israeli elections, an important Mission to...India, and, well, everything else.
But let me take you back just a few years, to the last Jerusalem General Assembly, the annual soporific event even when transferred to the streets of Yerushalayim. Oh, yes, to the streets. In an expression of "total solidarity" with "Women of the Wall," CEO Silverman called for a major walk/parade/march on those very streets, apparently expecting the entirety of sorry crew of attendees to hit the pavement and walk to the Kotel. Attendance was so poor, Jerry and his staff were pleading with folks along the way to join the parade; few did. The point of that faux March was simple -- JFNA wrapped itself in the tallitot of the Women of the Wall, promised eternal fealty to them and pledged, if not in words in deeds, to be at the forefront in the quest for equal access to the Kotel as part of its civil society commitment.
The next step? The Egalitarian Prayer Space at the Kotel. Of course, JFNA did nothing but offer its unequivocal support to Natan Sharansky's efforts to bring all parties together -- and no organization could match JFNA's when it came (1) to taking credit for the Prime Minister's and his Cabinet's agreement to support the space, the egalitarian management of the space; and (2) leading the shrei when the PM breached the same agreement...and, that was all. If the Women of the Wall expected continued support for their efforts from JFNA and its leaders, it was looking at a different organization than the one with which we have become so familiar; you know, the one that cannot concentrate, cannot achieve (unless one passes off failure as success) and is immediately distracted by the next shiny object.
Just weeks ago, the Women of the Wall were savagely attacked as they went forward with a planned demonstration at the Kotel; savagely attacked by hundreds and more ultra-orthodox students, mainly women and girls, organized with malice aforethought. No police intervention, just a criminal assault. The outcry from the Women of the Wall, the RAC, the Conservative and Reform Movements was loud, clear and to the point -- this was the most intolerable demonstration of intolerance in a history of same. (Kal ha'kavod o Judy Maltz for her superb reporting in Haaretz on this matter.)
And JFNA...where was JFNA? Where was its impotent JFNA-Israel? Where was the lamest of ducks, its CEO? I'm guessing "monitoring the situation." (If past is prologue, I expect that by the time this is published, wewill have received a summary of Israeli newspaper articles on the "situation" over Becky Caspi's signature.) Where are those donors to JFNA's I-Rep, the surviving remnant of the now-buried Global Planning Table, urging, demanding that JFNA take a public stand?
Once again, JFNA cannot bring itself to utter even a word of condemnation of the physical violence to which the Women of the Wall and their supporters were subjected; to the GOI's and the Prime Minister's apparent total indifference (yeah, yeah, yeah, there's an election, yada yada yada). Intolerable.
And yet...and, yet...when the Israeli Culture Minister announced that Diaspora Jews would not be lighting a torch at the national Yom Ha'Atzmaut celebration, Federation leaders joined Bougie Herzog and the Jewish Agency in an "angry letter"...and that decision was reversed. What should JFNA learn from this? Anything? Anything at all?
Isn't it time to pull the curtain and just say...enough?
Rwexler
Posts
5 comments:
To answer your last question on the day when America's Past Time kicks off, I suggest it is "Past Time" to say enough. It is time for action.
Yesterday, the UIA Board voted to essentialy eviscerate itself at the behest of JFNA leadership. UIA's leaders were doubtless congratlulated profusely by JFNA's leaders for so heroically leading the UIA Board to its own demise. There were courageous UIA leaders, who, probably, would not want their names cited, who suggested the breach of fiduciary duty that the UIA Board itself was being asked to undertake en masse, but that Board, now UIA in name only, after its cooption, but that Board chose harikari instead.
Now, JFNA, whch has so abandoned its overseas partners time and time again (see for example the overseas allocation about which you have written) takes over another critical function.
"Distracted"? Every time.
further to the comment by Anon 1:15,
The UIA board members were naively led to actually kill their own organization instead of letting the powers that be dirty their own hands. The result would have been the same because the all powerful JFNA can do what it pleases but now they have won their war without having to fire a shot. What ever happened to a vote being a statement of belief and of principle?
The UIA lay leadership did not act in the best interests of UIA. They were misled into bowing down to the holy merger and the professional Jewish communal service bureaucrats, abandoning their organization's purposes and goals to a dying trade organization which couldn't care less about them.
They are good people, dedicated and passionate Jewish Zionist leaders. Unfortunately, they have proven to be too naive and too polite to fight for what they believe in. Instead, they have allowed themselves to be co-opted into cooperating with a plan to get rid of active lay leaders like themselves and anyone who puts Israel front and center.
With them out of the way, the organization will now be free and unhindered in ignoring the functions of UJA and UIA which, instead of being merged into the new organization, have been destroyed by it.
I guess we will be seeing more missions to places like India down the road as we continue to follow a path that leads us to nowhere and as what is left of our organization continues to circle the drain.
This is more than a distraction - it is a disgrace!
UIA and JFNA leaders should speak for themselves answering the serious question: what have the fefderations gained from collapsing the UIA, already weakened by the merger, and requiring it to be absorbed totally into the bowels of JFNA and its insipid JFNA-Israel. Claiming, as the UIA leaders who played patsy to JFNA's throughout here while claiming to "fight hard" for UIA, that UIA still exists is like painting lipstick on a pig, all of us can see what has been allowed to happen here.As you have pointed out many times, Richard, UIA was a place as a JFNA subsidiary where excellent work was being done; it was functioning, it was not broken as was and is the r4est of JFNA especially in Israel. So what does JFNA do? It chose to break UIA?
That UIA leaders acquiesced in this inexplicable action speaks volumes about them. This is the saddest of chapters.
Richard, "Distracted" suggests that at one time this Clown Show that Silverman has been "running," at one time had a focus. It didn't, it never did. Nothing ever stuck. JFNA is not a serious organization -- it has no purpose, it is lost and it cannot be found. The fact that Silverman still hangs on (how is that "running FRD" working out) shows hw lost JFNA is.
Post a Comment