from The Forward:

Sharansky Inherits a House Divided

One of the stranger and nastier episodes of modern Israel-Diaspora mud wrestling was laid to rest in late June in Jerusalem when Natan Sharansky, the onetime Soviet political prisoner and human rights icon, was elected chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel.

The episode was unusual because it broke new ground in the growth field of Israel-Diaspora mutual incomprehension. It was nasty because of the intense vitriol it generated. The mud was flying with a fury rarely seen in the chummy interaction between Israeli leaders and their big donors. You don’t often hear Israeli Cabinet ministers ridiculing the cream of Diaspora Jewish philanthropy. Nor do you expect to see Israel’s top Diaspora fundraisers telling the prime minister where to go.

both from the New York Jewish Week:

The Jewish Agency Has Outlived Its Current Role: A short history, and modest proposal

The key issue today is whether the organizational structure that was so necessary when Jews were in countries of distress is needed today. Should JAFI be promoting aliyah from the “free countries” in the west or can independent non-profits do a better job?  Is a large organization necessary to deal with Jewish Zionist education or can this be accomplished by a non-profit organization that can operate more effectively and efficiently?

In a standoff, the community leadership continues to raise these questions and the institutional Zionists argue for the continued existence of an out-dated organizational structure.

No Closures At HUC

After more than a month of speculation about which two of its campuses would be forced to close, the Reform movement’s Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion will keep all three, after all.

Trustees of the financially strapped institution decided last week to consolidate faculty and staff and conduct more online classes as a way to begin making $3 million to $5 million in cuts over the next five years.

from The Wall Street Journal:

Merkin Art to Be Sold as Hedge in Madoff Case

J. Ezra Merkin, the New York financier felled by the Madoff scandal, is selling a collection of Mark Rothko paintings and Alberto Giacometti sculptures to a mystery buyer for $310 million, potentially offering some payback to his defrauded investors, whose money he placed with Bernard Madoff.

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Innovation is the hot topic in the Jewish world these days and so there is no better time to point you to two articles from the current issue of the Journal of Jewish Communal Service.

On the Value and Values of Social Entrepreneurship by Yoni Gordis

Philanthropists play a key role in encouraging and supporting new developments that keep the Jewish community vibrant and relevant. Where they choose to focus their resources can make the difference between stasis and progress. Jewish communal debate in the past years has focused significantly on the role of Jewish philanthropists in funding new ideas and new organizations. To best understand the context in which the discussion is occurring, it is necessary to understand the unusual relationship of the Jewish community to the phenomena of innovation and social entrepreneurship.

Funding Innovation by Felicia Herman

…In recent years, and especially in the last decade, the Jewish community has witnessed what many have called a renaissance or revival of Jewish life, caused in large part by the creation of hundreds of new organizations devoted to adapting Jewish life to the demands of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. This flowering of new organizations was caused both by an increase in available philanthropic support and the prevailing entrepreneurial zeitgeist.

Yet in a time of decreased resources and increased need, I fear that funding for these types of organizations will become more scare - in part because of their content (most focus on Jewish identity) and in part because they have not yet had the time to establish national brands.

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All non-profit organizations want to implement successful fundraising campaigns. The problem arises when they focus on what they want to “sell” and focus less on what the donors want to “buy”. Often they know they need funds but they do not always know the best time to begin the fundraising campaign. There are any number of elements that go into planning, designing, and implementing a fundraising campaign so that the campaign not only raises funds but also  strengthens the organization.

Every agency faces a real challenge when it decides to raise money from supporters, potential supporters and the community at large. There are several different types of campaigns. There is the annual campaign to provide funds for general operating expenses and it usually aims for unrestricted funds that can be used as determined by the organization. These funds are the most desirable since there are no restrictions on the agency’s use and often they make the greatest impact since they have the most flexibility.

Included in the effort to increase the number of unrestricted gifts is a membership campaign. Many non-profits have developed a category for general support and identification with the purposes of the organization which is done through encouraging people to become members of the agency. Members may be entitled to receive publications, attend public meetings, and receive invitations to special programs or presentations. In fact, some agencies establish categories of membership and each designated membership level entitles the members to participate in unique programs or receptions with guest speakers.

Read more

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I just read one of Seth Godin’s recent blog posts titled, “Can Summer Camp Change Your Life”. Seth, for those of you have not yet discovered him, is the most popular business blogger in the world and the author of some of the most spot-on marketing and business books in print today, including his short, smart book, Tribes. His recent blog on summer camp touched a chord for its insight into how tribes work and why they are so powerful.

My now-adult daughters spent many happy years at the B’nai Brith Perlman Camp in Pennsylvania where they made dear friends, created lifelong memories and became members of their camp tribe. Today, their camp tribe connects largely through Facebook - providing its members a virtual base camp to explore memories and renew connections.

The notion that camping builds special tribal experiences may be obvious but it got me thinking about the power of tribes - Jewish tribes specifically. While Jews have often been labeled “members of the tribe,” the reality is our “Jewish tribe” is mostly non-performing. It’s just a glib description of an entire people that no longer holds much meaning or connectivity. No one today, not even Jews, are defined by one description.

Certainly, there are groups within the Jewish people who are connected to their own thriving tribes. Some of the most exciting ones are found at the margins (or shall I say, at the fertile frontier) of Jewish life. Take a look at Footsteps, Interfaithfamily.com, JDub Records, Keshet, and the Sixth and I Historic Synagogue or the Golding/Woldenberg Institute for Southern Jewish Life - all recipients of Slingshot funding - to get a sense of how these innovators are building vibrant tribes.

How do we take the learning from these Jewish innovators and the venerable Jewish camp experience and apply their successes to the more established organized community? What is it about a tribe that works better than any traditional marketing effort?

As Seth Godin explains, it is simple. A tribe needs a platform and a leader to “motivate, connect, and leverage.” That is it. The leader needs to work from the bottom up, to inspire with powerful ideas rather to be the “authority”, to connect people, and to help the tribe find ways to leverage its power. Tribe members are the real leaders. You just need to get one started and allow it to grow. Larger organizations have buried within their ranks, leaders and tribes ready to surface. Read Godin’s book. There are clear examples of how to create a passionate tribe of empowered followers for even the largest, most bureaucratic organizations.

Gail Hyman is a marketing and communications professional, with deep experience in both the public and private sectors. She currently focuses her practice, Gail Hyman Consulting, on assisting Jewish nonprofit organizations increase their ranks of supporters and better leverage their communications in the Web 2.0 environment. Gail is a regular contributor to eJewish Philanthropy.

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Schusterman Family Foundation president and communal leader Sandy Cardin spoke last week at Jerusalem’s PresenTense Institute on his view on where philanthropy is and is going.

Here’s Sandy live - including his 2009 adaption of The Wizard of Oz for the philanthropic world.

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Over a century ago, the Jewish Publication Society was formed to “provide the children of Jewish immigrants to America with books about their heritage in the language of the New World.” During it’s long life-cycle, the JPS became the standard bearer for Jewish wisdom literature, its most popular item - and cash cow - being the JPS Tanakh, the Bible many if not most young Jews in America received when they were given the Good Book.

Recently, however, the JPS realized that the printed book, even the Good one, was under siege - and with it the existence of the JPS itself. Seeing online content grow all around it, the JPS had two general choices: cut back, cut down and hope for the best offline, or develop new directions and revenue generating products that can live in the world beyond print.

They chose the later, hiring an internet-abled educational entrepreneur, JT Waldman (full-disclosure, a PresenTense 2008 Fellow), to lead up their Interactive division.

End of story? Not really. As the JPS understood, you can’t solve a problem by simply hiring great talent; without managing that talent, the new direction and the organization’s direction will only diverge.

But how can the existing management of an organization effectively manage an employee driving changes in a field that existing management has no experience in?

Read more

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Tomorrow, 700 Russian-speaking Jews from around Israel will gather at Jerusalem’s Beit Avi Chai for three days of education, engagement and community building. Using the occasion of Shalom Aleichem’s 150th birthday to celebrate and explore their Jewish connections, they will be joined by representatives of government, business, the arts, media, philanthropy and the entertainment world.

Dynamic events, seminars, lectures, workshops and discussions will focus on a wide range of topics within Jewish communities and around the world with a program that runs the gambit from discussions on Israel’s political scene to Jewish cooking; from traditional texts to Jewish theater.

Timed to the conference, a new, independent survey finds that 64 percent of immigrants from the countries of the former Soviet Union prefer life in Israel to that in their country of origin. This majority [of those surveyed] said they want to continue living in Israel even if they could immigrate to another country, in contrast to 28 percent who said they would like to live in the United States, Western Europe or Russia.

The survey also reveals strong ties among respondents to the culture of their native countries. Sixty-two percent of those originally from the FSU are convinced that the standard of Russian culture is higher than Israeli culture, compared to 6 percent who consider Israeli culture preferable.

“Results of the survey prove that there is a need for a project that gives the young generation of expatriates from the FSU an independent framework that allows them to feel connected to Israel and to Judaism, without giving up on the culture and values on which they were raised,” said Chaim Chesler, founder of The Limmud Institute for the FSU and chairman and co-founder of Limmud FSU.

Stay tuned; we’ll have more on Limmud FSU in Jerusalem once they are under way.

about: Limmud FSU brings together and empowers young Russian-speaking Jewish adults who are reviving and revitalizing Jewish community and culture and restoring and maintaining the tradition of lifelong Jewish learning and a strong Jewish identity. This successful and unique model of learning, volunteerism, pluralism, networking, empowerment and leadership development is ensuring a vibrant and sustainable Jewish future.

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We came across this article yesterday morning; with all the pre-occupation with Madoff’s sentence we held it for today so as not to be relegated to the back burner. The author, an attorney and law professor, raises questions worthy of discussion.

from The New York Times:

Should Charities Repay Their Madoff Money?

…And another troubling aspect of the Madoff fraud has emerged in the past few weeks. It is now being alleged that certain charitable foundations and individuals on the whole reaped profits in the millions, if not billions of dollars, from Mr. Madoff’s misdeeds.

And much of this money may have been subsequently donated to innocent charities. This situation raises some of the most troubling questions about Bernie’s legacy. First, did charities on the whole benefit from Mr. Madoff’s crime? And second, do these innocent charities have a moral or legal obligation to return the money?

…The bottom line is that there were net winners in the Bernie Madoff scandal, and many charities received money that was at best tainted by Mr. Madoff, and at worst directly attributable to his crime. In the coming months, many of the people who benefited from Mr. Madoff, inappropriately or otherwise, are going to be sued or otherwise asked to return the mon