THE 2020 GA AND MORE

 JFNA convened a GA this week streaming it worldwide. And its workshops/breakouts which I joined were uniformly excellent; the Plenary sessions, noit so much. (If you go to JFNA's website and you wish to do so, some of the Plenary "experiences" are available on replay; so you can come to your own conculsions. Here are some observations:

• Registration: At the JFNA Board meeting just days before the GA, there was a great deal made of the projected attendance -- 9,000 pre-registrations. Sounded like a lot -- after all, this is the same JFNA that announced a laughable 3,000 registrants for GA after GA for the last decade until confronted with a real number of...750. And, by the time the GA ended, that number was up to 10,000. Honest!! Yet, there were 2,800 registrants who participated in the Opening Plenary; a great number given past experiences. Shows what can happen when you give something away to the sofa-loving, quarantined Jewish leadership;
• Bougie Herzog, the Chair of the Executive of the aJewish Agency, an omportant position in Jewish communal life, is a great and self-effacing partner. He was relegated to the role of a panelist with the leader of OneTable, a great program, somewhat of a false equivalence and to a conversation with one of Israel's top entertainers. I give Bougie great credit for his equanimity.
• The streaming worked quite well if one wanted to observe, Mark Wilf and Eric Fingerhut spoke well.
• And, yes, streaming is no substitute for being together.

Now, the unmentioned. There were many references to the "collective" -- its importance, and our system's commitment to it. The reality that collective financial support of our overseas "partners" has fallen once again to historic lows went unmentioned. In fact that support will have fallen at calendar year-end to levels that keadership should be calling "an embarrassment." The total amount that will be allocated (and remember that this is JFNA's projection; it may actually be even lower) -- $102.8 million in the aggregate to JAFI ($72 million), JDC ($29) and ORT ($1.9) -- yes, that aggregate total was exceeded at the time of the merger by an allocation to the Jewish Agency alone was greater by 200% than the total allocation to all three agencies. 

Shame on us and shame on the top leadership of the three "partners" for their pro forma public "thank yous" for allocations which are no longer worthy of "partners" but wholly appropriate for supplicants. 

At the close of its numbers presentation, JFNA announced: 

"JFNA/Federations will pursue al;l possible avenues to increase the available amount."

Sure.

Rwexler