Tamar Snyder writing in The Jewish Week:

The pushke, or charity box, may well be a relic of the past to many members of the younger generation of Jews. In fact, promotional materials for eCharityBox paint the small tin can as a PC in a world of Macs – not only old school, but also a barrier to giving for those who want to give on the go, with just a click of their BlackBerry or iPhone.

Launched in November, eCharityBox “adds an interactive experience to the act of giving,” says Getzy Fellig, the company’s CEO. Modeled on an actual charity box, eCharityBox is an application that can be downloaded onto an iPhone, BlackBerry or computer desktop. Users can then drop virtual coins – be it a penny, a dollar or $100 – into the eCharityBox whenever they’re in a particularly generous mood. They can also set up recurring donations (say, $36 a month or $1 a day) or set up a reminder to give on a certain date or every Friday before Shabbat.

Donors can watch as their virtual pushkes fill up to a predetermined amount. Once the pushke is “full,” the credit card on file is charged and the virtual pushke resets to zero. At any time, users can click the “empty box” button to submit a donation, even if their pushke isn’t yet full.

… Right now, the eCharityBox is branded to a particular organization, so if you download your local synagogue’s charity box, all of your money will be earmarked to that cause. This may likely turn off all but the most loyal donors who are devoted to a single cause. Anticipating this reaction, the company says that it will soon launch MyCharityBox, an open-ended virtual pushke that will allow you to choose from more than 6,000 charities. When you empty the charity box, you can decide to split the pot among your favorite causes, be it the American Red Cross, American Jewish World Service or your local Jewish federation.

For the more than 300 organizations that have already signed up, eCharityBox’s appeal lies in its ability to attract new donors who crave ease of use and the ability to give when inspiration strikes, without having to log online and fill out credit card information or dig out a checkbook from the back of the drawer.

“Quite a number of users have downloaded it, and from my inkling, this includes many new donors,” says Rabbi Yosef Jacobson, dean of TheYeshiva.net, a global classroom for Jewish thought and its contemporary applications. When Rabbi Jacobson was first contacted a few months ago, he said he loved the idea. “This sanctifies modern technology, which drives so many of us meshuga and takes it to a much higher place,” he says. While the amount donated differs by person, Rabbi Jacobson says that the average user donated between $30 and $40 a month using this application.

Others appreciate eCharityBox for its donor-management software that tracks donors and automatically sends tax receipts, cutting out a tremendous amount of back-office work for charities that sign up for the service. “We don’t have a huge staff, so having them track the 501(c)3 donations and taking care of the paperwork – that was one of the main reasons we decided to go with them,” says Jonathan Hirshon, president of the board of trustees of Beit HaMidrash of the Bay Area (HaMidrash.org), a provider of online classes featuring cross-denominational learning, ranging from Chabad to Humanism.

… Charities can sign up for the service for a couple of hundred dollars, similar to the costs of setting up a text-to-give campaign. Donors don’t encounter any transaction fees; bank and merchant fees under 5 percent are taken out of the money given to the charity. Unlike other services, eCharityBox doesn’t make charities sign a contract, so charities can test it without making a long-term commitment.

excerpted from The Pushke App; posted with permission; also check out State-of-the-Art Giving: Will Mobile Giving Take Off In The Jewish World?

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by Gil Troy

Change is easy to endorse and hard to implement – if it’s easy, it means it’s not being done right. If it’s not systematic, it’s sloppy; if it’s cosmetic, it’s fleeting. Today, new directions must be forged, tough choices must be made, and new ways of doing business must be developed.

Let’s be frank, most North American Jews that I know do not know what the Jewish Agency is or does. And a surprising number of Israelis I know say – with anger in their voices – that the Jewish Agency should become extinct like the dinosaur it is.

Moreover, while most Jewish Agency employees I meet are extraordinary – idealistic, passionate – they work for a bureaucracy with a terrible reputation, with what seems to be a toxic corporate culture. When many people pass Jewish Agency headquarters in Jerusalem, rather than seeing what I see: a building rooted in Jewish history, pulsating with the energy of the Zionist mission and like Israel itself, a key to our salvation as Jews and human beings – they imagine hearing the ticktock, ticktock of bureaucrats marking time and the clink, clink, whirl, whirl of good money flushing down the drain.

We could kid ourselves and say, “well, it’s a PR problem, all this could be solved by some re-branding” but historic conditions have changed – demanding an adjustment in the Jewish Agency’s mission as well.

The modern Zionist Movement tried to solve “The Jewish Problem” of the 19th century – anti-Semitism. The Jewish Problem for Most (not all) today – is the opposite: We are being Loved to Death. Most Jews- thankfully – enjoy unprecedented freedom – and prosperity. But too many of them understand that freedom as “negative freedom” freedom from – freedom from ties, from tradition, from community, from responsibilities.

We can find salvation in more Jewish education because Jewish education is not just about learning the facts but mastering life, Jewish education is not just about thinking but doing, Jewish education is not just about understanding the world but fixing it – Tikun Olam – Jewish education is not just about skill-building but identity-building. In short Jewish education is values education – and that is the added value we need – and must provide. I agree with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: “This is not an exercise in education; it’s an exercise in survival.”

And that is where the Jewish Agency has started to come in – and must come in more – more effectively, systematically, and publicly. Natan Sharansky’s vision of the Jewish Agency as the spearhead for a global Jewish push revitalizing Jewish identity is what’s needed. If in the 20th Century, the Jewish Agency’s great accomplishment was saving Jewish lives, the 21st century must be about saving Jewish souls.

Like “change” “identity” can be an empty slogan, amorphous, lacking meat on the bones. Our vision of Jewish identity and our mission must be coherent so we know how to get traction on this important issue.

The Jewish Agency is uniquely positioned to educate for a modern Jewish identity focusing on peoplehood with Israel at its center – with the Jewish Agency carving out peoplehood platforms for identity-building throughout the Jewish world. This is a logical evolution – the elements are all there – but the branding and focus are lacking.

There is no Jewish Agency, no rationale for a Jewish Agency, without peoplehood. The Jewish Agency must be the global hothouse for nurturing those values, proud of its worldwide reach and its own roots in Eretz Yisrael the land of the Jewish people, and its commitment to the greatest collective Jewish undertaking of the last century, the State of Israel. We have to explain the idea of Peoplehood as the Jewish superglue, the sense of shared destiny uniting us, in good times and bad. We have to build on our family feeling, that insidery “MOT” – “member of the tribe” feeling that even many seemingly assimilated, alienated hipster Jews in New York have. The beauty of peoplehood – and of Zionism, the power of Israel and of our Jewish values, is that, when done right, we make our tribalism transcendent. We move from solidarity to idealism, from we are one to “ani v’atah neshanaheh et ha olam” – you and I will change the world.

Just as drug abuse counselors call marijuana the Gateway drug, opening the way for all kinds of others we, levhadeel, should look at Peoplehood as the gateway Jewish value, opening the way to many other dimensions of identity. We will only restore it as a gateway value through education.

Decades ago, when Rabbi Yitz Greenberg requested increased Federation allocations to Jewish education in New York, the leaders hesitated. “We don’t have enough money to do what you request. What should we do? Shall we close down Jewish community centers, and the Jewish hospitals, nursing homes, and homes for the aged that we subsidize?” “Yes, close them down!” Greenberg insisted. “But do you know what I’ll teach the children who will receive the Jewish education that you will sponsor? I’ll teach them to open up community centers, hospitals, nursing homes and homes for the aged!”

Change requires bold strategic vision, some signature programs as key tactics, and, most important, serious transformation in the trenches. Ronald Reagan was better at articulating a vision of change and focusing on a few signature programs, Margaret Thatcher implemented more fundamental changes from the top down – for better or worse.

In the Jewish world, we need “big bold ideas,” in the words of Jerry Silverman of UJ (oops, I mean JFNA – you see organizations do change). We’ve seen JNF go green; the American Jewish Committee go from being a sha-shtill organization of American Jewish shtadlanim to a muscular defender of the Jewish people; Boston Federation lead in the push toward identity and education for 20 years; and the Montreal Federation’s Gen J initiative focus on 5 gateways leading to better Jewish living: formal Jewish education; camps and youth programming; family and adult programming; Israel experiences; and arts and culture. The idea is to focus less on the hardware and more on updating communal software, trying to reach Jews at all stages of the life-cycle, but especially Jewish youth.

My uncle, who was in the advertising business for 50 years says the one constant in his career was change. My father-in-law, who’s in real estate, keeps a running list of all the rock-solid tenants like Canada’s legendary Eaton’s department store or Eastern Airlines that would never go out of business, but did. I have a Lubavitch friend who is a savvy internet marketer. He changed from his PC to an Apple – because, he said, change is good, it shakes you up. To effect change, the leaders of the Jewish Agency, this College of Cardinals of the Jewish people, will need the discipline of the Congress during Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, the fluidity of the British parliament under Thatcher, the courage of Ben Gurion and this very agency on the eve of independence in 1948 and the wisdom of our ancient Sanhedrin.

Gil Troy is Professor of History at McGill University and a Shalom Hartman Research Fellow in Jerusalem. The author of “Why I Am a Zionist: Israel, Jewish Identity and the Challenges of Today,” the views expressed here are his own.

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by Mayer Brezis and Sara Singer

Hadassah’s Board of Directors will not renew the contract of hospital CEO, professor Mor-Yosef. No one knows why. As owner, Hadassah Women’s Zionist Organization of America (HWZOA) can do what it sees as right, and confidentiality in sensitive discussions can be necessary. Meanwhile, however, a sense of unfairness and bewilderment raise mistrust among hospital staff.

Hadassah is not a private company with trade secrets like Coca Cola: as a public hospital serving over a half-million patients every year, largely through taxpayer funds, it bears greater accountability for transparency. Transparent governance is especially important in healthcare organizations from which the public demands accountability for quality and safety. People expect openness from nurses and physicians about performance and mistakes. Creating a culture of transparency requires leading by example. By keeping silent, what message does the hospital’s governing body send to staff?

Leading a shift in strategy requires transparency, so that frontline workers understand (even if they don’t agree with) their leaders’ decisions. In Hadassah’s case, this might be particularly important because of the geographic and cultural gulf between the hospital and US-based HWZOA. Leaders who have successfully managed difficult change, such as Paul Levy at Harvard-affiliated Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, have employed high levels of communication about their rationale for decisions.

Transparency has characterized Hadassah under Mor-Yosef’s leadership. One of his first moves as CEO was to assign two professors to a new field of clinical quality and safety: Yoel Donchin, an anesthesiologist expert on human errors, and one of us. Mor-Yosef said: “it is time we put a mirror in front of ourselves. If we are good, let’s show it. If not, let’s improve”. This courageous motto enabled various initiatives that have contributed to patient welfare, such as using checklists before surgery to reduce mistakes and before insertion of a central line to reduce infections.

The challenge of balancing high quality care with financial pressure demands more transparency and accountability about decision-making. A substantial limitation to improving safety and outcomes is, as in other industries, production pressure. Managers perceive that they are being measured by their ability to balance budgets. Messages to increase bed occupancy rate or reduce workforce are heard more frequently than discussions on how to prevent medication error or misdiagnosis. The current remunerative system pays for quantity, not quality. In the face of competing incentives and difficult decisions, transparency helps to maintain shared understanding and trust.

HWZOA has a prestigious tradition of promoting public health, education and social action with remarkable generosity towards Israel. Disagreement about funding priorities, for instance if benefactors value social over medical targets, presents an opportunity for discussing social determinants of health – increasingly recognized as the best predictors of disease. If benefactors prefer American over Israeli goals, that is also a legitimate dispute that will profit from public discourse. Israel always benefits from financial help. Israel can benefit no less from exchange of culture, values and knowledge.

HWZOA was founded 98 years ago on Purim. It was named for Hadassah, the original name of Esther, the central heroine of Purim. Esther means in Hebrew secrecy, as hiding Esther’s nationality was pivotal in her winning stratagem to save her people. The Talmud says: “blessing is found only in what is hidden from the eye”. Yet, at the right time, Esther revealed her secret. Similarly in public policy, secrecy can be key to transient success but, it will eventually undermine stakeholders’ own interests. In healthcare, making difficult decisions with limited resources requires transparent governance.

Hadassah is Esther but it should stay Hadassah.

Mayer Brezis, MD MPH, is Professor of Medicine and Director of the Center for Clinical Quality and Safety at Hadassah Hebrew University Medical Center in Jerusalem, Israel.

Sara Singer, MBA PhD, is Assistant Professor of Health Care Management and Policy at the Harvard School of Public Health and Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School/Mongan Institute for Health Policy, Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, MA, USA.

[eJP note: The JTA's Fundermentalist blog is reporting that Mor-Yosef has been summoned to New York to meet today with Hadassah's president, Nancy Falchuk: "It is not clear what will happen when Mor Yosef meets with Falchuk... and there seems to be real suspense on both sides.

According to one Hadassah Women insider there are three options: "He gets fired effective immediately. He gets layered and stays till early 2012. Hadassah caves and he stays forever."

"This ends very badly, no matter what," the insider said.]

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The Israeli Field Hospital in Haiti – Ethical Dilemmas in Early Disaster Response
by Ofer Merin, M.D., Nachman Ash, M.D., Gad Levy, M.D., Mitchell J. Schwaber, M.D., and Yitshak Kreiss, M.D., M.H.A., M.P.A.

Within 48 hours after the massive earthquake that struck Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on January 12, the government of Israel dispatched a military task force consisting of 230 people: 109 support and rescue personnel from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Home Front Command and 121 medical personnel from the IDF Medical Corps Field Hospital. The force’s primary mission was to establish a field hospital in Haiti.

We landed in Port-au-Prince 15 hours after leaving Tel Aviv and began to deploy immediately. The first patients arrived at our gates and were admitted even before the hospital was fully built, within 8 hours after our equipment arrived. In its 10 days of operation, the field hospital treated more than 1100 patients.

Our mission was to extend lifesaving medical help to as many people as possible. The need to manage limited resources that fell far short of the demands continuously presented us with complex ethical issues. Every mass-casualty event raises ethical issues concerning the priorities of treatment, but the Haiti disaster was exceptional in several ways. Haiti is a poor country with minimal civil facilities, and the earthquake’s destruction of infrastructure left millions of people homeless and hundreds of thousands in need of medical assistance. When we arrived, there was no functioning authority coordinating the distribution of the available medical resources. We were faced with the challenge of establishing an ethical and practical system of medical priorities in a setting of chaos.

… To deal with the ethical aspects of decisions regarding patient placement and treatment options, we created a system of ad hoc ethics committees. The physician who was directly in charge of caring for a certain patient would present the case to a panel of three senior physicians, who would decide how to proceed – a system that relieved individual physicians of the burden of determining a given person’s fate. Decisions that were reached by the committee were recorded and became part of the patient’s file.

… From the outset, our hospital functioned at full capacity. With the exception of patients requiring urgent care, we operated on the basis of a one-to-one exchange between discharges and admissions. Given this policy and the level of activity, in order to function effectively, we also adopted a policy of very early discharge. … This policy, while necessary, clearly did not allow us to provide in-house medical care for the duration for which we are accustomed to providing it in a non-disaster setting.

… Our guidelines for triage, management, and discharge were subject to continuous reevaluation and revision, but throughout our deployment, we were guided by our objective of providing lifesaving medical care to as many people as possible.

The complete article is available in The New England Journal of Medicine.

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A new emphasis on ‘Peoplehood’ reflects both the economic reality and Russian roots of The Jewish Agency.

by Gal Beckerman

Natan Sharansky knows he’s disturbing the status quo. Days before the most recent meeting of the Board of Governors, the body that oversees the Jewish Agency for Israel, Sharansky, its relatively new chairman, declared that the agency’s traditional mission had outlived its usefulness.

“It’s not enough to speak about aliyah,” Sharansky said, talking in front of a delegation of American Jewish leaders. “It’s almost prohibited for the head of the Jewish Agency to say so, but it can’t be our goal [just] to bring more Jewish people [to Israel].”

With these words – and the recent appointment to key positions of people who share his views – Sharansky has signaled his intent to bring about radical change to the financially strapped Jewish Agency, shifting its focus away from Israel and toward strengthening the secular identity of Diaspora Jews.

At the center of Sharansky’s plan is the notion of peoplehood. He and a tight group of ideological allies – mostly other Russian Jews – believe that the Jewish Agency must now become a global promoter of Jewish identity, particularly among the young. Peoplehood, according to its proponents, is defined as a sense of connectivity between Jews who share a common history and fate. It is still an amorphous concept for some critics. Others wonder if it is too weak a foundation on which to base educational programs – especially since this vision of peoplehood is not predicated on having any kind of religious or spiritual identity.

Nonetheless, this new role for the Jewish Agency is one that Sharansky, by all accounts, seems to be pursuing with great passion. It also comes out of necessity. Ever since the establishment of Israel in 1948, the agency has been financed through a combination of Israeli government funds and money from the Diaspora. In the Agency’s heyday, North American Jewish federations regularly contributed between 50% and 70% of the money they raised every year to fund it. But as the large-scale immigration to Israel began to ebb, so, too, did this source of money. By 2004, the last year for which the Jewish Agency provided this statistic, only 23% of combined Jewish federation money was being sent overseas, to be split by the agency, which received 75%, and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, which got the remaining 25%.

By now it is clear that this source of money has long since dried up. Whereas in 1989, the Jewish Agency received $275 million from the North American federations, last year it received only $130 million, and the projected intake for 2010 is $110 million. Given that Diaspora money makes up one-third of the agency’s budget, the drop has been catastrophic for the large bureaucracy.

“The Diaspora institutions, from the 1970s on, began to cut allocations and put pressure for cuts,” said Irving “Yitz” Greenberg, a prominent Modern Orthodox rabbi who was the founding president of the Jewish Life Network, an organization focused on revitalizing American Jewish life through educational and cultural initiatives. “And the agency, instead of giving up some of its functions and making a real transformation, suffered a slow death by a thousand cuts. It’s been cumulative, and by now they see that they can’t just do less of all of the things they are doing currently.”

Immigration to Israel is also not the giant task that it once was. In recent years, private organizations like Nefesh B’Nefesh, which helps North American Jews make aliyah, have been praised for providing better, more efficient services than the Jewish Agency. And though immigration is still a large budget category, this year it will account for barely more than the education department ($100.59 million, as opposed to $94.29 million for education, out of a budget of $321.71 million).

Two recent appointments to high posts in the agency are further indication of a change in direction.

A new senior position has been created for Misha Galperin, the current executive vice president and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington. He will be based in New York, and provisionally be in charge of, what the Agency is calling “Global Public Affairs and Financial Resource Develoment.”

Galperin, the most prominent Russian Jew filling a leadership position in the American Jewish organizational world, is one of the main conceptual architects of peoplehood and recently authored a book on the subject.

A few days before the official confirmation of his appointment, which came on March 3, the Jewish Agency announced that Alan Hoffmann, currently the director general of the agency’s education department, will become the director general of the entire agency, elevating someone whose orientation is promoting Jewish education. Of Hoffmann’s appointment, Galperin said that he knows “I have a partner in Israel who is exactly the kind of person that I was hoping would be my partner on that side.”

With these new positions filled, all that remains is to define exactly what peoplehood is and how a sprawling institution promotes it.

Steven M. Cohen, who is a sociologist of American Jewry director of New York University’s Berman Jewish Policy Archive, and has conducted research around the concept, said that rather than being a vague idea, peoplehood can actually be reduced to a very distinct set of values and corresponding commitments.

“There are obligations,” Cohen said. “When Jews are in trouble, you are expected to go help them. When you do tikkun olam [repairing the world], you have to balance tikkun olam for the larger world with tikkun olam for Jews in particular. You are supposed to follow the news about Jews. You are supposed to be involved in community affairs. There are a lot of peoplehood obligations that are real. Things you should do. You should be involved in your community, either religiously or socially. You should be engaged with other Jews doing things that are Jewish. That’s a peoplehood commitment.”

Galperin’s succinct definition of peoplehood is “an extended family with a mission,” and to promote it, one must engender a feeling of belonging, of community. Advocates say that young Jews must be given experiences – like Jewish summer camp or the Taglit-Birthright Israel program – that allow them to see their connection to other Jews and identify with the Jewish story.

Galperin says that contrary to what most people think about the Jewish Agency, it is already engaged in many projects that could fall under this rubric.

“Most donors have no idea that the Jewish Agency puts a significant amount of money into Birthright or that one of its subsidiaries provides an enormous amount of services for Israel experience, for all kinds of trips,” Galperin said. “Or that there are today 400 emissaries of the agency in the United States providing Jewish-identity education through a variety of ways. It’s just not something that is known. So some of what we have to do is positioning and marketing and communication, and some of it is substance.”

The substance, Galperin says, has yet to be clearly defined. There are certain successful programs that already exist. Others will have to be invented. The key for him, and Sharansky, is that the core mission no longer be immigration.

Galperin also contends that such a move will be good for the financial situation of the Jewish Agency, enabling it to find new sources of funding and to draw more from federations. John Ruskay, head of New York’s UJA-Federation, agrees. He, too, has been working on a peoplehood-related project for years and sees it as the critical element for increasing both commitment and funds.

“I see this as a reframing to respond to a new context,” Ruskay said, referring to the agency’s new stated mission. “Sharansky has said repeatedly, whenever there is a Jew that needs to be rescued, the Jewish Agency will be there. But he recognizes that identity is the critical driver. If you’re not identified positively as a Jew, who is going to consider making aliyah? Who will be committed to helping hungry Jews whether in the former Soviet Union or New York? Who will be concerned with securing the Jewish state? In my view, the Jewish Agency, born in 1919, finds itself in a new context.”

Another prominent Russian Jew, Leonid Nevzlin, a former oligarch who now lives in Israel and has become a major philanthropist, has also had a hand in promoting the concept of peoplehood. Through his foundation, Nadav, he has given funds to projects that contribute to this idea. At this year’s General Assembly, for example, Nadav sponsored a series of sessions dealing with different aspects of Jewish-identity building. Nevzlin also sits on the Jewish Agency board and is a strong ally of Sharansky and Galperin.

In an op-ed that ran in Haaretz just before Sharansky became chairman, Nevzlin wrote that the “key to the future success” of the agency was “the realizing of Jewish Peoplehood.” He posited that the organization needed “to change its structure and relinquish its current divisions (education, aliyah, partnerships) – a vestige of past assignments or political considerations.” Instead, he wrote, “it must establish two main operational frameworks: the first for the Jewish communities around the world, the second for Israel.” Although neither Galperin nor Sharansky will confirm that such a planned restructuring is in the works, Nevzlin is a close collaborator with the two, and his ideas have reflected theirs in the past.

It is fitting that Russian Jews should be the ones pushing this particular approach to identity building. Jews who lived in the Soviet Union – the parents of Sharansky, Galperin and Nevzlin – survived decades of communism with their sense of peoplehood intact, even as they lost their religious connection. As Cohen put it, it makes sense that Russian Jews, given their history, should be “predisposed to a secular, national definition of what it means to be Jewish.”

There are those, however, who worry that peoplehood is too vacuous or superficial a concept to be the basis of Jewish identity. Absent the threat of antisemitism, the critics say, it is hard to see what will bind Jews as one “global family.” Others argue that the Jewish faith has done a good job of inspiring a sense of peoplehood, but that the programming envisioned by the Jewish Agency makes no room for religion.

“I think that the agency in the end will not succeed in the educational, cultural, peoplehood mission unless it is able to make a contribution in the development of Jewish religion,” Greenberg said. “That’s going to be a real challenge.”

But that’s a minor worry compared to the larger concern if the agency doesn’t change. “I think the logic is overwhelming and inescapable, and it’s probably the last chance,” Greenberg said. “If this doesn’t work, then the agency will die.”

This article originally appeared in The Jewish Daily Forward; reprinted with permission.

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On-the-ground reports from Chile:

from Masorti-Olami:

How about damage ?

In Concepcion, close to the epicenter of the earthquake, Rabbi Angel Kreiman told us that he went to the Synagogue, and “it was like the hurban habayit (destruction of the temple), the walls were all cracked and the roof had fallen down. I couldn’t stay there, so I got the sifrei Torah and left.”

Rabbi Shmuel Szteinhendler in Santiago told us, “we have some damage to our home, but its not too severe … . we will try and replace things and try to go on, while also assisting our kehillah members and at the same time supporting the local community at large who have suffered so much.”

The Rabbis, along with leaders of the Jewish community have come together to form a Crisis Committee. They are the ones best placed to decide where funds raised will go. Rabbi Alejandro Bloch of Santiago told us on Monday, “we have invited all of the community to Ma’ariv, and will make sure that all their basic needs are taken care of.”

from Marcelo Lewkow, National Director of ORT Chile writing from Santiago de Chile:

1 March, 2010

Our life:

Just three days ago, the earth moved violently in a phenomenon we felt would be a life changing event. National televised broadcasts have opened our eyes to the desperate situation in the south, the tsunami, the destruction, the vulnerability, the inability of the state to cope with such a tragedy, and to the military forces, feared so much in the past, being called upon by the populations of damaged areas to protect its citizens. After witnessing all of this, we understand that we, as a country, are experiencing a larger than life moment that will impact us as individuals and as a society for as long as we live.

Life in Santiago reflects the image you may be seeing internationally – most of us now have electricity and water, and after our initial fear and paralysis, we know that our loved ones, community, and city are safe and normalcy is returning to our lives. There are, of course, minor problems such as a shortage of gasoline (this means we only travel if absolutely necessary), electronic methods of payment (we keep cash available and keep all expenses to a minimum), and some minor damages and rioting in the poorer areas that television footage made to appear widespread and destructive, but which were actually short lived and easily controlled. Yet, just 200 kilometres away, the scenario differs greatly and is still not fully understood.

The Jewish schools in Santiago and Vinda del Mar are okay for the most part. Classes will resume next Monday, March 8th, and the Jewish community is quickly organizing itself to coordinate a nationwide campaign to help those who have been less fortunate. Among the less fortunate are a small, but significant, Jewish community in Concepcion, one of the areas which suffered greatly in the earthquake’s aftermath.

The country:

The area which suffered the greatest damage spreads from 150 kilometers south of Santiago and all the way to the city of Temuco, 600 kilometers from Santiago. As the epicentre was under the Pacific Ocean, right next to Chile’s coastline, damage was felt closer to the coast and less so in the mountains. It was the earthquake that destroyed properties, roads, and left people homeless with no basic supplies, waiting for help. Worse than the actual earthquake, a tsunami struck which wiped out entire towns, leaving in its aftermath death and destruction difficult to understand or comprehend.

This part of our country was a place with a major fishing industry and agricultural wealth. The earthquake struck just as the fruits, grapes for fine wine, and wood, were ready to be harvested.

A myriad of small towns throughout the region, as well as a few big cities (Concepcion is the 3rd largest city in Chile) suffered extensive destruction. Entire industries, farm lands, houses, government facilities, and schools were wiped out or severely damaged. An intensive and large scaled effort will be necessary to help this region regain its life and economy to what it was just a few days ago. The impact of what has been lost will be felt throughout the entire Chilean economy and will be severe.

To add further complications to the situation, in a week’s time the newly elected right wing government will be taking control as new state leaders and officers are selected and put into positions of responsibility. We can only imagine the confusion and desperation of both the old government, which will soon be leaving, and the new one, coming into office during the most upsetting of circumstances. There is no denying that there are many urgent needs, and the best thing for Chile to do right now is to continue with normalcy and production to support the reconstruction effort.

ORT in Chile:

ORT has been active in Chile since 1943 and aside from being closely linked to the Jewish community and schools, it is also widely known as an agent for bringing about quality changes in education throughout the country.

ORT Chile has worked with at least thirteen of the schools in the area which suffered the greatest from the earthquake. This work was funded by the government and private supporters, such as Coca Cola and Telefonica Corporation. Computer and science labs, early literacy projects, and technology for the disabled population are among the many projects which have been executed in recent years in the towns which have now been completely wiped away. An ORT professional had been due to travel to Talcahuano this Sunday to train teachers on computer science methodology through a project funded by Coca Cola. Today, Tacahuano hardly exists.

We are fortunate to have on-the-ground reports from both Masorti-Olami (The World Council of Conservative Synagogues) and ORT. As in the aftermath of all natural disasters, the situation in Chile is constantly changing; the information above was posted to eJewish Philanthropy early in the morning [IST], Wednesday, March 3rd, and was the most current available at that time.

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The Jewish Community Foundation of Los Angeles has awarded relief grants totaling $100,000 to five general community organizations that directly serve those most in need.

In the past five years, The Foundation, through its General Community Grants initiative, has dispensed nearly $750,000 to 60 L.A. based community organizations to facilitate the betterment and address a broad swath of societal needs in Los Angeles.

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Marcelo Lewkow is the National Director of ORT Chile. This is his update:

At 3:40 am on the last Shabbat of our summer holiday, just a few short days away from the first day of classes in schools throughout Chile, the earth moved.

I was home asleep and my bed moved so violently that it took me seconds to get down the stairs and outside my house in an open and safe space.

I was working for ORT Mexico in 1985, and vividly remember that catastrophic earthquake. Based on my memory and perception, this latest earthquake was both stronger and longer.

The communication system was very fragile – cell phones were off and sending MSM messages was the only way people could be in contact. I was able to communicate with my family and friends in Chile to make sure everyone was okay, as well as contact my family in Argentina. In complete darkness (lights were, and still are, off) I waited sleeplessly for the early morning light to dawn while listening to the radio.

Soon, it became clear that this was one of the strongest earthquakes in Chilean history, centered in Cauquenes, a couple of hundred kilometers south west of Santiago.

It was felt strongly and caused casualties around the center of the earthquake and also in modern Santiago and surrounding urban areas.

Lights are still off in 60% of the city, public transportation is suspended, and the government has requested everyone to remain at home if possible. Shops are closed and electronic payment systems are shut down throughout most of the city. So far, the population is remaining calm while waiting for a wider evaluation of the situation and official announcements.

The Jewish community in Chile, composed of an estimated 16,000 inhabitants, most of who live in Santiago, to my knowledge have not suffered any losses or casualties. Synagogues and schools are okay, pending a deeper evaluation by professionals, but there is no visible damage to the buildings or hydraulic systems.

ORT in Chile has two headquarters which both seem to be alright, and all personnel are safe and sound.

image: courtesy Jaime Pérez Peñaloza

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from The Boston Globe:

1 quiet donor, 2 million books

Harold Grinspoon, a lanky 80-year-old who made a fortune in real estate, starts every morning with pilates, dance aerobics, and a brisk walk. Then he charges into his office by 10, where he drops his parka on the floor near a bookcase crammed with binders.

Each one is stamped with a place name – Iowa City, Silicon Valley, Hoboken, Gainesville – but the binders have nothing to do with Grinspoon’s real estate portfolio. Instead, they are guides to the 125 communities where each month he sends Jewish-themed children’s books to Jewish families, at no cost to the recipients. In four years, he has given away 2 million books.

The PJ Library, as he calls it, is the signature effort in a flurry of charitable giving by Grinspoon and his wife that has exceeded $100 million in recent years, mostly to Jewish causes. They plan to give away a few hundred million more, willing their estate to their foundation to endow PJ Library forever. Grinspoon envisions a day when nearly all Jewish children in North America will have his books in their bedtime rotation.

He is a singular character: a real estate titan with little formal Jewish education who has made it his cause to strengthen the religious and cultural identity of Jews everywhere, in particular those who are children of mixed marriages, who are hesitant about setting foot in synagogue, or who live beyond traditional Jewish hubs.

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Hadassah’s problems here in Israel keep getting worse by the day. Now, in addition to board resignations, comes public acknowledgment of the women’s organization refusal to allow the hospital to set-up an additional, and independent, fund-raising arm.

from The Jerusalem Post:

Most Israelis on Hadassah board resign

All but one of the Israeli members of the Hadassah Medical Organization board of directors have resigned over its decision last month not to renew the contract of HMO director-general Prof. Shlomo Mor-Yosef beyond the end of 2010. This decision is being maintained at the insistence of its owner, the Hadassah Women’s Zionist Organization of America and its national president Nancy Falchuk, despite Mor-Yosef’s formal statement earlier this week that he would be willing to stay on for another two years.

… In a letter to Falchuk, the three newly resigned members wrote: “After a great deal of soul searching and numerous attempts to influence the board of directors to consider anew the decision not to continue the directorship of Prof. Mor-Yosef after the current contract at the end of 2010, we … wish to make very clear that both HWZOA and HMO are dear to our hearts… Nevertheless, recently we have faced time and again a large measure of lack of faith on the part of HWZOA vis-a-vis the HMO management including accusations regarding work- related issues without these things having been discussed thoroughly by the board of HMO. In addition, we feel that the lines that separate between the interest of HMO and the interest of HWZOA are not always clear. As a result there is a tendency to confuse them – something that we cannot abide by.”

… The resigning members also complained that with less money being donated by HWZOA, they had proposed the establishment of a friends’ organization in Israel that would donate funds directly to HMO, but this was opposed by the American members of the board, who preferred to continue to have its monopoly over fundraising.

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