JFNA AND THE FETISHISTIC OBSESSION WITH NUMBERS

Most of you know me for the dinasour I am (and have been for a long time). My Continental service in Jewish organizational life began as a member of the United Jewish Appeal Young Leadership Cabinet. That was back in the day when the Cabinets (there were Men's and Women's) were focused on young leaders' capacity giving -- "capacity" tested in small groups where we were challenged individually to reach at or beyond our reach. It was the era the incredible scholar, our friend, the late Jonathan Woocher, z'l, recounted in depth in his seminal work Sacred Survival. So many of you grew out of the same experiences (who will ever forget those "caucuses," or the inspiration of Rabbis Yitz Greenberg and Irwin Kula, or the shock on the faces of the Gentile service staff at our antique venue, Harrison House, in Lake Bluff, Illinois, as 100 Jewish young men paraded behind the lanky Yitz singing out David Melech Yisrael through the halls). 

Our Cabinet commitment did not end with Lake Bluff even as some in Cabinet leadership had tunnel vision when it came to campaign. As my Cabinet responsibility I travelled monthly to Decatur, Illinois where UJA organized a group of 20 couples, most intermarried, with whom I explored Jewish texts, brought some scholars and engaged in a program that my great chaver (and tennis challenger) Bernie Reisman, z'l, developed. I know that I learned more through this two year experience than did my friends in Decatur.

UJA, back then, wasn't pumping out numbers of participants, it was "graduating" future (none of us pretended that we were current) leaders of federation, of UJA and of local agencies. And, from the leaders of the Cabinets sprung a series of Washington Conferences. While I had long since "graduated" from the Cabinet experience, the Washington Conferences I was privileged to attend were truly remarkable -- every one -- in terms of content, attendance, Yiddishkeit and demonstrable leadership. No matter one's age no one could attend the Conferences and not have been impressed. And, then, Aipac, with the energy of its Policy Conferences, sucked the air from the Cabinets' Washington Conferences all the while the Cabinets themselves were changing -- in my opinion, not for the better.

The first major change -- and all those which followed were similarly blessed by UJA lay leadership -- was the move away from capacity giving to a minimum gift -- at the outset a high floor for many of these young leaders, later a low bar as over the years, that "minimum" was seriously reduced in the interest of...numbers. (Your author was not immune from the seduction -- approached by the Cabinet leaders while I was UJA National Campaign Chair, I agreed with them that a further gift reduction would work.) Instead of the Washington Conferences, there was to be an Israel Conference that just didn't work. Cabinet Missions, once the most dynamic Israel experiences morphed into travel to almost "anywhere but Israel." And the evolution ultimately led to pool parties and Yoga weekends and other assorted narishkeit of the past decades -- programs that may build ruach and...numbers. Leadership though? I'll let you be the judges.

But the Cabinet leaders were merely following what became the JFNA "model" -- exaggerating the number of participants at all events, the most notorious of which were the annual General Assembly where year-after-year the number of paying registrants were exaggerated to the point of mockery. The result, after a decade of overstatement, the GA itself, once the seminal annual event was canceled for something called a "laboratory.".

(For those of you interested in some illustrations and definitions of "leadership," please read the award-winning article that the brilliant Jeff Solomon and I co-authored as the merger which created what is now JFNA moved forward -- Setting Standards for Volunteer Leadership and the Profession in the Journal of Jewish Communal Service. Therein we agreed that lacking codified standards everyone can be termed a "leader" and, thereby, there is little if any way to ascertain what true leadership is. Jeff and I identified the criteria we believed should be applied in defining "leaders.")

And, so JFNA, in the midst of the great and tragic economic crisis of the pandemic

chose to distract itself with the newest of "shiny objects" -- its Changemakers. As I have read the glowing, breathless reports from JFNA HQ which recited that 548....count 'em, 548..."...Fellows -- 20-25 years old -- representing more than 60 Jewish communities..." who began a "...three-week intensive Jewish leadership development journey." The journey? What's My Story? How Do I Find My Voice? How Do I Stay True to Myself? And, no doubt, other equally important themes. Together, these Changemakers we are told "...built a community, formed friendships," etc.

Now, I don't deprecate the achievement; I do question the end product and the timing. Are our leaders really suggesting that after three Zoomweeks will emerge 548 young "leaders" who will have immediately"earned" community Board service; that is, is JFNA with all good intentions setting up these young men and women for frustration, for unrequited expectations? And, while so many federations and agencies are literally underwater, needing help to survive, is Changemakers the best use of professional time or merely a distraction from the exceptionally hard work necessary to confront the crisis?

We all know that numbers had been an obsession of the prior JFNA administration,

leading to, e.g., the constant falsification of real attendance at GA after GA, event after event. Now, there is no suggestion that 548 isn't a real number; just that this may not have been the right time.

Again.

Rwexler