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

KAL YISRAEL AREVIM ZEH L'ZEH?? PROVE IT.

The last time that JFNA published the data on foundations and endowments within the Jewish federation world was in 2017, the statistics from 2016. Back then, the total of "assets under management" was $21.7 billion (you read that correctly). And, with most, if not close to all, of our communal institutions in extremis still in the midst of the COVID pandemic, the question has to be asked: when will any of our organizations -- are you listening JFNA -- take its head out of the sand and argue for an immediate and urgent commirtment of funds before (if we aren't there already) to these vital foundational blocks of the communities and the social safety net that we have built? WHEN?

In the earliest of days, even before the extent of the financial catastrophe that would accompany the pandemic but as an integral consequence of it, a small number of major Jewish Family Foundations stepped forward to address....certainly not meet -- address...what was then the incipient emergency. These Foundations recruited each other, ultimately raising a formidable $91 million through a vehicle they named the Jewish Community Response and Impact Fund -- as always, an acronym: JCRIF. Reading between the lines of the JCRIF's self-description, these founding Foundations were done soliciting other Foundations to join them, while the Fund "...welcomes additional investors." 

I doubt that now, as our organizations confront the incredible, overwhelming unmet needs generated by the pandemic directly and collaterally, anyone believes that $91 million -- as generous as that contribution for interest-free loans and an "aligned grant program" was, it could not possibly fully address the overwhelming needs...needs that grow 24/7. Yes, there are a number of remarkable communities, like Chicago, where the most generous have reached even deeper in the midst of the pandemic; but many more are confronting multi-million dollar deficits, closing agencies and programs...and getting neither guidance nor financial support from what we used to call "the system."

And, so the question -- what's next? What might be done? 

And, friends, the seminal question: is this the best that we can do....really? Our federations and our agencies and beneficiaries are facing the worst financial crisis in their (and our) history and, after this initial voluntary funding from that small number of Foundations...nothing. Why? What exactly is that "rainy day" these foundations and endowments have been building the corpus of their funds for, if not the deluge of today? So many of these self-same foundations and endowments have been built for the long-term on the philanthropic aspirations of the donors the distributions from which may or may not support the Jewish community or the organizations at the community's core. (In fact, I once asked the CEO of one of Large Cities most significant Jewish Community Foundations why they even keep "Jewish" in the name inasmuch as over 80% of its distributions were not to Jewish organizations.) To meet the real crisis of today, that must change.

JFNA, which as the inheritor by merger of the systemic fund-raising flag once flown with pride by the long-forgotten (by some) United Jewish Appeal, seems wholly satisfied with the allocations role assigned to it within JCRIF -- fund-raising? Are you kidding?  (Also, one can only note with frustration that JFNA seems to believe that it can continue with "business as usual" in the midst of the deepest financial crisis in communal organization history. How else can one explain the glee that JFNA leaders expressed over its brand new Changemakers programs, the latest shiny object to distract the so easily distracted?)

I know from historic experience that in its day, the UJA -- maybe with the similarly extinct Council of Jewish Federations -- would have immediately convened a national meeting (today by Zoom) to rally the federations, to lay out a national plan on the JCRIF "model" of loans and grants by reaching out to those whose wealth, the super majority of which is found in Supporting Foundations and Donor Advised Funds to recognize the emergency in which communities and beneficiaries find themselves today and then act in a manner similar/identical to that of JCRIF. Contrary to what appears to be the case evidenced by JFNA's inaction, this advocacy is one of the core purposes for which JFNA was created.

Yes, this would be hard. In many (most??) instances it would change the historic Planned Giving and Endowment "model" -- just raise and manage the funds and let the donor determine the beneficiaries -- no advocacy for any cause let alone a Jewish communal one. The reality of the historic crisis which we are all confronting now and into an indeterminate future cries out for changed practices. After all, the application of even a small portion of the $21.7 billion in assets under management (and, surely, that corpus has grown in the four years since the last accounting) could mean life or death to the social safety net federations and our local/national/overseas agencies have built over their history. 

Now is not the time for timidity.

Carpe diem.

Rwexler

WHITHER JDC?

Perhaps one of you can explain to the rest of us what has happened at the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee over the past few years? How has one of our system's most vital Overseas partners come to this:

• After a Search JDC hires a young law dean with no evident background or experience in Jewish life as its CEO only to watch this fish out of water flounder...at an unbelievable level of compensation ($850,000/year!!) He proved to be neither manager nor fund raiser. It took only a few months to convince many in JDC lay leadership that he had to go;
• In a further deterioration, this on the lay side, a JDC Nominating Committee decided to support for President a lay leader from Virginia whose meagre Jewish organization background and lack of non-profit governance experience (and, no doubt, other substantive matters) gave rise to a contested election for the first time in the Joint's history. The institutional nominee, a gregarious business leader, prevailed -- how's that working out?
• As if to prove his critics correct, the newly installed President, apparently unhappy with the direction taken by the JDC CEO Search Committee -- which had been dutifully vetting candidates for months -- decided, process be damned, and unilaterally attempted first to add multiple new members to the Search Committee and, then, apparently frustrated with his own interference,  unilaterally discharged the existing Search Committee appointing a successor Committee to succeed it. Some would argue this was all ok; after all, this interference was permitted by JDC's By-Laws. Yet, as anyone with Jewish organizational leadership experience knows, some discretion and building consensus are far better tools than "I can do it because the By-Laws say I can."
• Caught up in the chaos and controversy was a long-term JDC senior professional who had garnered major support for the CEO position but was derided (and supported) in the press (in particular in a poorly sourced article in The Jerusalem Post). Ultimately, this excellent candidate withdrew from consideration.

I had the privilege, growing out of my service as National Chair of the United Jewish Appeal, to interact with a succession of incredible lay and professional leaders of JDC -- Ambassador Milton Wolf, z'l, Jonathan Kolker, Alan Jaffe on a through line to Stan Rabin with CEOs of incredible commitment, creativity and leadership, among them, Ralph Goldman, z'l,  Michael Schneider and Steve Schwager. I was privileged to join with these leaders in advocacy for the Joint's communal allocations. 

Back then, the Joint was a true "secret weapon" for good; but, long ago, the "secret" was out. JDC's work, in the Soviet Union and then in the FSU, throughout the Diaspora and in Israel, inspired and continues to inspire generations of donors with its life-saving work. But, somehow and somewhere, the Joint appears to have lost its way in the deep hole of organizational politics -- a CEO Search that yielded a bad choice followed by a divisive Nominating process that appears to have produced a lay leader focused on the powers of the office rather than the sacred purposes of the organization.

In the past months alone, JDC, with an interim CEO, has lost its preeminent Israel-based fund-raiser, faces a loss of a number of Board members growing out of the fiasco of the election and the Search, and, now, the leading contender for the CEO position has withdrawn her name.

This is not the JDC with which I or you grew up; what it will be remains to be seen.

Rwexler

OFF THE RAILS

I have complained on these pages about the lack of focus of some, too many of our most important organizations -- I leave it to those with influence (as in -- MONEY -- for instance) to effect change if they believe change will result in focus. Yet, some organizations put on their blinders and stagger on -- no focus, no priorities (other than the "priorities" on which their leaders obsess). These are the "Shiny Object Organizations."

As Henny Youngman (I know, I know, my age...) would have said: Take JCPA...Please.

Yes, JCPA...here is how JCPA itself has set forth its "priorities" in a recent email solicitation:

• JCPA is at the forefront of the Civil Rights movement.
• JCPA mobilizes the Jewish community to affect (sic) change.
• JCPA is a leading voice in ending systemic racism and criminal justice reform.
• JCPA leads national advocacy on ending racism in policing.

      Be part of the solution.

      It's time.

The fund raising mailing begins with the admonition (I'm not making this up):       It's Time. Stop Doing Nothing.

Then, but a couple of days later, JCPA promoted other of its "organizational goals" in a further solicitation:

          JCPA mobilizes the Jewish community to affect change. 

         JCPA is a leading voice in ending systemic racism and in criminal justice reform.

JCPA leads national advocacy on ending racism in policing

 I have serious doubts as to whether any of these claims is true. You? Examples, please.

As our communities and donors confront the most catastrophic and devastating financial circumstances in our history, I see an organization that proceeds as if it has an entitlement to your dollars for whatever purposes it may determine. 

Now, we know that JCPA is a "partner" in the Israel Action Network (especially if one uses a very, very loose definition of "partner") at one time providing some "expertise" and staffing. This "partnership" was a device, really, to pump some federation cash into the JCPA Budget. No offense, but here is how JCPA defines itself:

"JCPA is the national hub of the community relations network made up of 125 community relations councils and 17 national Jewish agencies.  Its mission is to inspire, support, coordinate, convene, build consensus and mobilize the network while serving as the national representative of the network’s public policy platform."

And, where is JCPA today? Everywhere and...nowhere, perhaps?

I must admit that back when I Chaired the Chicago JCRC, our mission and work were more narrowly focused (make that "actually focused") -- on matters relevant to our community and the broader community. I know that my mentor on community relations and my then professional partner, the pioneering community relations professional, Peggy Norton, z'l, would have read this JCPA solicitation, rolled her eyes, puffed on her ever-present cigarette, muttered an appropriate expletive and dialed up the JCPA CEO and suggested, as only Peggy could, that "if this is what JCPA is about, resign." Peggy probably would have been more direct.

Over the years JCPA had a succession of great, strong lay Chairs: women and men like my dear friends Shoshana Cardin, z'l, and Maynard Wishner, z'l, and Arden Shenker, Marie Abrams, Michael Newmark, Jackie Levine and Andrea Weinstein, Lynn Liss  and so many more distinguished leaders on a through line to Cheryl Fishbein and the current Chair. But it is apparent that those in leadership today are willing to abide the organization they helped to build focused on nothing.

So how does one identify where JCPA lost its focus? And, where should it go from here?

Hmmm.



Rwexler

MORE STUFF

~~ Little did I know it would come to this. Way back when, upon the release of the 1990 National Jewish Population Study, the organized Jewish community let out a collective shrei upon the revelation that over 50% of marriages involving one Jewish spouse were found to be inter-marriages. Meetings and conference calls were dedicated to the subject of inter-marriage, the system was obsessed with the subject -- and rightfully so. At that time I argued that we should discontinue the National Jewish Population Study on the theory that "no NJPS, no intermarriage." Little did I suspect that almost 30 years later a President of the United States would make almost the same specious argument about COVID-19 testing. I was joking to make a point; President Trump is so serious that he has repeated this idiot theory sometimes daily, many times more often.

I apologize.

~~ What's Next...Bingo? The Jewish Agency for Israel undertook an on-line fund-raiser to support its efforts to assist communities worldwide in the face of the CONVID-19 epidemic. To its credit, the JAFI governance (Board or Executive, I'm not sure which) voted to appropriate $10 million it does not have to provide funding for this effort. Guess that those who made this noble decision thought it was still the year 1990, when the communties actually cared as much as JAFI's own leaders but...never mind. For some reason, the Agency decided to "sell" this fund-raising event to an Israeli retail jewelry operation which offered a 20% kickback to the Agency for every piece of jewelry purchased during or shortly after the television event. It wasn't just the "sponsorship" that surprised me; it was the intrusion into the broadcast of extensive time given to the promotion and the promoter -- more time than provided to the communities to articulate their needs. 

#embarrassing.

~~ Speaking of embarrassing... Reading the columns of Caroline Glick I have come to understand that she constantly proves that she is beyond embarrassment -- never more so than in her piece How Can Israel Help Diaspora Jewry? Therein Glick argues that an Israel Diaspora Ministry effort is doomed to failure because it is premised in part upon tikkun olam which she concludes -- based upon no facts -- is a concept associated with those she most despises -- liberal/progressive/radical (they are all one to Glick) American Jews. Yes, that mantra, at the heart of so much of American Jewish philanthropy, that concept of helping to repair the world, is, to Caroline Glick...evil. Glick has focused so much her most recent venomous excretions on American Jewry and American Jewry's institutions. It has obviously been too many years  that have passed since she lived in Chicago's Hyde Park -- she knows so little of us but has so much to spew about us.

#very embarrassing

Rwexler

#SAD

One of my great friends, a lay leader of incredible brilliance and insight, was describing the lay Chair of a (once) great community. Everything said about this Chair, a person of uncommon generosity, was hedged in such terms as to resonate a single word that appeared to be the seminal descriptor: pliant. Yes, pliant. Look the adjective up if you need.

Pliant is the adjective I would never allow to be applied to me, even as I reflect  back to moments during my own leadership roles when I was so. If you know me, if only from these thousands of pages, I think that pliant wouldn't be how you would describe me. Yet, today, as the culmination of a terrible trend line, more and more organizations have elected lay leaders based upon proof over time of a softness, a willingness to bend to the demands of others. In fact, a ready pliancy has too often become all some organizations look to in their lay leadership. And, every organization that has turned to the pliant has suffered as a result -- suffered from a lay leadership unworthy of organizational respect or trust. And the impacts on the organization that demands pliancy of its leaders...devastating. 

I and others from other eras — lay and professional alike — must take the lions’ share of the blame for producing a surfeit of Burrs and a paucity of Hamiltons. Back in the late 1980s I was engaged with both the CJF and UJA, working with other great communal leaders on the challenges of the “New Jewish Poverty,” and the explosion of intermarriage, and the challenges facing Jewish Federations in a deep recession; while UJA leaders were advocating for greater funds for our partners and both organizations were advocating for freedom for our extended mishpacha locked behind an Iron Curtain.  

I felt no pressure from the leaders I venerated to toe a line, watch my words, to “go along to get along.” These were women and men confident in themselves unthreatened by competing ideas — Shoshana Cardin, z’l, Max Fisher, z’l, Marvin Lender, Joel Tauber, Richie Pearlstone, Bill Berman, z’l, Alan Jaffe, Alex Grass, z'l, Jane Sherman and, later, Carole Solomon and Bob Schrayer, z’l, among so many others. After my service as Chair of the National Conference on Soviet Jewry during the Exodus and then the Exodus Campaign itself, I had neither pretensions about nor expectations of being asked to serve as National Chair of the UJA — others were more deserving, perhaps more willing to go along, but it was the strength of UJA’s lay leadership to take a chance on he whom Max Fisher once described (and no doubt would today) as “a bull in a china shop.” I also have to believe (though we never discussed it) that I had the enthusiastic support Of UJA’s maverick CEO, Brian Lurie, who may have seen in me a kindred spirit...still am.

Some/many of you may be asking: ok, Wex, what's the point of this nice history lesson? Simply this: I happened to be in the right place at the right time. Today, even a decade ago, maybe longer, irreverence, standing up for what one believes, speaking out -- all, and more, are traits, behavior no longer tolerated  by too many of those in power in too many places. I am reminded of being acosted by a long-time brilliant friend who had gained a place in JFNA leadership and told me in no uncertain terms that if I disagreed with a decision made “at the top” then I "should resign." (An evermore popular view.) 

I look at so many philanthropists who have and had so much to contribute in terms of institutional memory, in terms of leadership qualities, whose leadership have been rejected over the years for expressing a simple, eternal thought and insight: The Emperor Has No Clothes. We...WE...have more often than not stood by in silence while organizational leadership ranks decided they had to cleanse themselves of those who pushed back or spoke out or dissented — in public or private, it has made no difference. And I, like you, have watched as others have matriculated to positions for which they proved unsuitable — as conformity, pliancy, too often rules the day.

Chevre. look around as I have. I see one organizational leader whom I did not know before he/she assumed a critical chairship. I was told by those who knew him best as a "no nonsense" person "who will not suffer fools for long" -- and, then that person did exactly that, suffered fools, drank the Kool-Aid and grew irate with any...any...suggestion that his/her path was not the right, the only, one. 

Or, others who have wandered from one organizational lay leadership role to the next, leaving not an accomplishment in their wake -- they have served, continue to serve, without leaving even a modicum of their DNA to show for their service.  Those whom I know are women and men who used to assert themselves, privately and publicly...no more. They will tell you that they have determined that the only path to effect change is the quiet, behind-the-scenes path. Yet, there is no evidence...zero...that they have even, ever taken that quiet road.

So, I ask, what good is it to be in the room where it happens if there is no evidence you were there? The legacy of these "leaders" will be exactly the lack of any imprint on the entity that they leave behind.

Right now our system, constructed over the decades by so many leading to achievements thought unattainable, is challenged as never before. The system's very survival is now in your hands. You, as an organizational leader -- be it lay or pro -- can either be ready to take a risk where risk is needed or commit to principle when commitment and principle, vital. Or you can join the ranks of the pliant. While the choice, my friends, is yours, it should be ein breira.

Rwexler

COURAGE

So many have come to know that Bari Weiss, reporter, insightful social commentator and proud American Jew, is and has always been an unabashed courageous spokesperson for her generation and ours. Her colleagues and friends know her as "fearless" and "brilliant."

She has resigned from the New York Times, her resignation letter both a cri de coeur and an indictment of the Times. Read it and weep:

https://www.bariweiss.com/resignation-letter

We certainly have not heard the last of Bari Weiss. May she go from strength-to-strength to a far better place.

Rwexler

A SHORT QUIZ

What do the following organizations have in common?

• Alpha Epsilon Pi
• American Friends of Likud
• American Sephardi Federation
• American Zionist Movement
• Americans for Peace Now
• Central Conference of American Rabbis
• Emunah of America
• Jewish Labor Committee
• Legacy Community Family
• NCESJ
• National Council of Young Israel
• Religious Zionists of America
• JINSA
• Women's International Zionist Organization
• Women's League for Conservative Judaism
• Workmen's Circle
• HIAS

The answer: They are all member organizations of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. Now this listing (which I admit is [1] totally subjective; and [2] to which I could have added a number of others) is not designed to deprecate the pro-Israel work of any of these entities nor the commitments and contributions their leaders have made; it is mereely to underscore that the adjective Major may have lost its meaning. Big time.

As one of you commented to an earlier Post: "There is no value to the Jewish people to have the Conference of mostly not major Jewish Organizations." I would resist the conclusion of "mostly," just as I recognize that to the Conference the addition of "non-Major" organizations as full "members" is a funding vehicle that supports the work of the Conference. 

And, it ain't cheap...by any measure.

Rwexler

STUFF

1. The Disappearing Lay Leaders. On June 11, the Government of Israel convened a Zoom teleconference with leaders of US organizations. The participants, from entities as diverse as the Conference of Presidents and JFNA to the San Francisco Community Relations Council and the Hasidic Community of Monsey, New Jersey, were each and all characterized by one common denominator -- they were all professionals. Not a single lay leader; not one. The "system" that you helped to construct was premised upon the best "lay-professional partnership" that could be built; and we succeeded in doing so. Now, that foundation, built brick-by-brick has been deconstructed brick-by-brick. The foundation of our communal system is being buried with the lay leaders leading the kaddish in silence. Maybe beyond resurrection. More on this another day...soon.

2. Priorities? Never mind. In recent Posts I've pointed to the dangers when our institutions lack focus/priorities. Wherever I look without a clear articulation of priorities, everything becomes the priority and, thereby, nothing is a priority. During this time of literal financial catastrophe for all of our organizations (yes, even for those which believe that they have some form of entitlement to commmunal dollars; those are in for the rudest of awakenings.) For too many, their's is life in the Land of Shiny Objects where everything looks great and so attractive that they turn to them adding them to an expansive list of priorities that will never be met -- not because they are not noble, because they can never be fully funded . These are illusions.

3. Making Hard Decisions...Harder. Before the birth of what would become JFNA and he its first CEO, Steven Solender served as President and CEO of the New York UJA-Federation of New York. In the late 1980's, America had suffered its worst recession before the one we are in today; and New York UJA was struggling with fewer financial resources as Steve, with his lay leadership, kept the ship afloat as the recession deepened. In one of many quiet conversations during that time, Steve told me how difficult it had become to attract and keep lay leadership "when every decision is so hard...where to cut, how deep the downsize needed to be," and the like. And, today...worse. Over the last 4 decades we have watched as in too many organizations that is all that we have done. I am sure that there are organizations -- like some federations and, certainly, the Jewish National Fund U.S.A. -- where lay leaders are fully engaged, knowledgeable and commited; but, in so many others, the lay leadership are wholly satisfied in viewing their Board and Committee service as an honorarium of some kind -- show up from time-to-time, some camaraderie, read the script and...leave it to the pros ("isn't that why we pay them?")...and never ask the hard questions. That dog won't hunt. Not today; not any more. 

4. Binary Choice? In one of the more preposterous opinion pieces in today's inflamed political environment where slavish support for Donald Trump has become, to some, the seminal litmus test of support for Israel, JNS's Jonathan Tobin has framed one of his latest on the subject as What's More Important in a President: Policy or Character? Posed as a strictly binary choice, Tobin apparently rejects even the possibility that American Jews might answer: we want, we demand, BOTH. (BTW, the column is appended to a full color shot of Bolton, Pompeo, Trump and Pence.)

Rwexler

"MANN TRACHT, UN GOTT LACHT"

                          Man Planned; and God Laughed (or Cried)

Return with me to the hopeful days before we became a mask-wearing, quarantined People (in the main). JFNA, recognizing the physical threats to Jewish institutions and buildings and the need for more intensive and expensive security in all of its forms, spent a significant amount of time at its January Board Retreat on the explanation and approval of a $214 million Special Campaign to create a fund for a vast Security Plan -- the self-styled New JFNA Security Initiative...that would dramatically enhance the work of the system's Secure Community Network ("SCN")

Referencing the remarkable $1 Billion Operation Exodus Campaign (1990-1995) and the more recent American Jewish communal response to the Second Terrorists' War on Israel in 2006 -- yes, 2006 when a $400 million campaign that, truth be told, was a failure even without a goal which our leaders claimed as a victory -- but without reference to the incredible wealth our communities have amassed, $21.7 Billion in federation/foundation total assets, JFNA appoited one of its most respected leaders, Los Angeles's Julie Platt, to lead this Campaign, appoint a Campaign Cabinet and jumpstart what would be a Continental effort. 

Eric Fingerhut raised the banner:

"...our Federation system was built for moments like this and the time to address it is now, together."

A three year plan was unveiled the end result of which would be a greatly enhanced, well-funded SCN "as the backbone of security infrastructure" for our communities and communal infrastructure

And, then the CONVID-19 was upon us and everything stopped. JFNA apparently thought it was trapped by its own calendar -- being on a fiscal year Budget, leadership determined that it had to approve a July 1, 2020 -2021 Budget or....what exactly? The whole world had changed but for JFNA's Budget, it was to be business as usual. 

Over a succession of "business as usual" JFNA Budgets, the Secure Community Network was created and up and running. Thanks to a small group of federations, there was broad recognition that community security was the seminal issue -- it was our highest priority, all the more so after Tree of Life. At the meeting at which the SCN (as is the norm in Jewish communla life, all things begin or evolve into acronyms) was created and most of its Budget provided by the federations, the exemplary John Ruskay, then the New York-UJA President, demanded that JFNA, after the SCN start-up year, absorb the SCN Budget within its own. JFNA's leaders readily agreed. 

And, then...they didn't.

It didn't take long for JFNA to forget its commitment to this "highest priority." JFNA soon was seeking funding from federations like Chicago, Cleveland and others, full funding would come from...them. JFNA would provide an annual $250,000 to the SCN Budget...and that's been it. Highest priority? Really? So the SCN's budget must have as its main support, security grants from the federal and State governments.

Just so you are aware, JFNA is partners in the SCN with the Conference of Presidents and the American Jewish Committee, the former an organization that raises its own funds for its existence from its own membership dues; the latter raising close to $70 million in 2017-18 and sitting on an $80 million endowment. The AJC may make a grant to the SCN but I did not find any in its IRS 990s.

And here's the deal. There is no lay Board for the SCN. While it had a succession of excellent lay Chairs from the outset, right now the SCN lay Chair is the ubiquitous Harold Gernsbacher, who has built a remarkable list of titles at JFNA with little success to show for any or all of them* unless "success" is measured by a willingness to just swallow the Kool-Aid and demonstrate an absolute willingness to read the scripts. While the SCN has had superb professional leadership, it operates as a more or less professional division of JFNA/AJC/CofP. While I and others urged JFNA to appoint a Board of federation lay and professional leaders if for no other reason than to raise more community funds, we were ignored as were attempts to demand the JFNA live up to its initial promise -- fund the SCN out of its Budget at a level reflective of security as JFNA's and the federations' highest priority. 

Never happened. In fact, the JFNA FY2020-2021 Budget not only continued the quarter-million SCN allocation but identified not a single FTE assigned to the SCN. Compare and contrast that void -- 0 FTE -- with the 25+ JFNA FTE assigned in the Budget to Financial Resource Development at a budgeted expense of almost $3.3 million and try and identify who those 25+ FTE and just what they do. 

So, we ask once again, at this time in the dire circumstances of today, just where are JFNA's priorities; where is its focus?

We are all crying.




Rwexler

*It has been reported to me that Harold now has taken to calling me a "lunatic" when my name may come up in hallway conversations. He isn't the first...and won't be the last. Easier calling names than raising funds.