by Dr. Misha Galperin
What happens when an idea is really important and needs our full financial support, but just isn’t sexy? Many philanthropies face this funding question every day. It’s a lot easier to get someone to pay for an ambulance than to pay for salary raises for medics. It’s a lot easier to get people to pay for a room in a building than to cover the cost of doing business. But what happens if we ignore medic salaries or the cost of rent and utilities? These expenses do not go away. Peoplehood is not sexy. But funding a peoplehood agenda is becoming increasingly urgent in the Jewish community today.
Abundant research has let us know that the way to most significantly impact Jewish identity and the bonds of peoplehood is by providing people with immersive, meaningful experiences. For the past few years, the organized Jewish community worldwide has recognized that the next major task facing us is strengthening Jewish identity, which we’ve come to call “the price of peoplehood.” Prominent Jewish sociologists have identified the declining bonds of peoplehood as one of the most significant challenges posed by modernity and by a culture of universalism. Having been raised in a world of pluralism and tolerance, Jews younger than 45 do not necessarily privilege their Jewish brothers and sisters above others when it comes to friendship, marriage, volunteerism and charitable giving.
As a result of this research, my friend and colleague John Ruskay, head of UJA-Federation of New York, says that supporting the peoplehood agenda is no longer a question – it’s a mandate.
They – we – need to educate our constituencies to make this paradigm shift by exposing them to the research and by pointing them to the simple realities of Jewish living through anecdotal experience. Look at our kids. Look at ourselves. What does Jewish identity mean when there are so many alternative identities we wear at the same time? If we don’t make the connection soon between authentic Jewish living and generous Jewish giving, we won’t need to discuss fundraising, because there won’t be Jewish institutions to fund. In plain terms, we used to have a people without a state, and now we are in danger of having a state without a people.
Where does that leave us? It leaves the organized Jewish community with one huge homework assignment. We have to fund a peoplehood agenda together. In the past century, we invested vast resources into the concrete project of the Jewish people: building a State of Israel. This overarching goal brought together many disparate streams of Jewish life to focus on a big, audacious goal. Today, our big projects – Birthright, MASA, day schools, Jewish camping – aim at creating a sense of belonging and community, but they lack one major ingredient for success: a collective goal.
Ask anyone who works for a federation, a Jewish community center or a Jewish school across the country, and he’ll say, “Sure, we fund peoplehood projects.” And they do. We are engaged in building the Jewish future, but we’re not doing it together, nor are we compelling others to be involved. Our organizations compete for limited resources even though they often have the same underlying objective. Our oars are rowing not in one direction but in multiple directions. Many of us who have had transformative experiences of Jewish life through education, camping and missions to Israel and elsewhere have not sufficiently re-created those moments for others with a coordinated approach. We need a “Peoplehood pay it forward” approach.
The seemingly endless splintering in Jewish organizational life has had immense consequences for fundraising. It is near impossible to create awareness of a pervasive communal problem when we are all trying to solve it in our own small ways rather than join forces in solving it together in a big way. I believe we can raise enough money to strengthen Jewish identity globally, but it will require a long, hard look in the mirror at the way we organize ourselves as a community. All our institutional splintering means that we are getting in our own way.
I believe it is time to get the major institutions and philanthropists who work on the peoplehood agenda in a room for several days of creative brainstorming on how we can make this work together. Jewish leaders understand that Jewish giving today will have to be based less on urgency and more on the subtleties and complexities of modern Jewish life. We just haven’t figured out a collective approach. We have no choice but to seize this historical imperative. It’s about time.
Dr. Misha Galperin is President and CEO of the Jewish Agency International Development. Published courtesy of the author.
Ask the average Jew on the street what’s a day school or a summer camp and you’ll get a reasonably informed opinion. Ask the same person to articulate the “peoplehood” agenda and you’ll get a blank stare. Even this finely written article skirts around definitions let alone the substance of the challenge, let alone operational solutions. Bundling every good program under one rubric does not in itself make a marketable Jewish product. Articulated need, urgency and the promise of results all wrapped in specificity does.
Dr. Galprin is on the right track with the Peoplehood agenda–now, he ought to work on reform from within the Jewish Agency. Indeed, if the Jewish Agency ceased to exist tomorrow, who would notice and who would care?
Before we can start to work on the “peoplehood” agenda, we must come to a communal conclusion on the “Who is a Jew” issue. When members of the Israel Knesset and leading “Rabbis” contend that I am not a Jew or I am a bad Jew, then I am cast out of the “peoplehood” that you suggest should be a priority for me. To paraphrase Groucho Marx, I will not support a Peoplehood who will not have me as a member.
I applaud the leadership that the Jewish Agency is taking on the “who is a Jew” issue. But, that issue must be resolved first so those who identify as a Jew know that they and their family are included in peoplehood who you and other communal leaders seek to sustain.
Joel Simon
Reisterstown, MD
Hyim -
Perhaps you should take time to learn a bit of what they are doing. If the Jewish Agency ceased to exist today there would be no partnership programs run through Federation, there would be no long term Israel program funding for young Jewish people, no summer camps for thousands of kids in the FSU, no assistance or affordable housing for Holocaust survivors living in poverty in Israel, no assistance to Ethiopian immigrants or the children of any immmigrants, no emergency response like with war or wildfires (Federations fund, the Agency does), no aliyah or rescue aliyah……..people would notice and they would care.
I believe in the peoplehood agenda as an over arching purpose. I am not sure JAFI is the right one to lead it. Through that agency we built a Jewish state but the the internal challenges to sustain that state are many and is truly and unfinished Zionist agenda. The divide between haves and have nots, the conflicts over religion and state, the integration of alienated edot all beg for civil society solutions that JAFI can mobilize Israelis and diaspora Jews around. We have a Jewish and democratic state, now let’s keep it.
See also comments on this piece in The Forward, where first published. http://forward.com/articles/139464/
Where does Israel fit in to the peoplehood agenda? Both in terms of the solidarity of differences in Isreal and between disapora and Israel?
Sari hits the global Jewish nail on the head with her question. If peoplehood is to have any meaning then it must be premised on the assumption that both Israel and the diaspora are in an imperfect state of “becoming” and that the resources, insights and talents of each can be of service in tackling the challenges of the other. We are fated to a future of both creative tensions and collaborative success.
July 9, 2011
It appears that JAFI and much of the national Jewish community are at a loss at what to do and how to do it when it comes to the future of our People. Equally troubling is the inability to clearly and concisely say what needs to be done.
Deeply concerned about the rising rate of assimilation, the growing disconnect between Israel and the Diaspora, and the weakening of Jewish pride amongst our children, more than a decade-and-a half ago my Foundation charted a clear course of action guided by an easily understood and straightforward mission: Helping to Keep Our Children Jewish. If more Jewish communities adopted it as their guiding light, they too would discover that it works.
This mission is as relevant locally as it is globally. It is goal-oriented and action-filled. Like “building the State of Israel”, it is a mission that tells the Jewish People exactly what our goal needs to be.
It is my opinion, this is the collective approach for which JAFI and others are searching, but for reasons of political correctness, fear stating. Jewish day schools and camps, birthright israel and MASA, Federations and other Jewish organizations have failed to articulate a mission that clearly and concisely states the goal of their work. Certainly helping to keep our children Jewish is the essence of our collective future. So, why not state the obvious?
Guided by the mission helping to keep our children Jewish, my Foundation has created a plethora of programs that are successfully building Jewish pride, strengthening Jewish identity, connecting young people to Israel, and imbuing in them love and responsibility for our Jewish Family. I am aching to share them with Jewish communities across the country so they, too, can stem the tide of assimilation that is destroying our Family.
I invite philanthropists to look closely at what we are doing, and fund in their local communities a plan for success: fully-subsidized teen Israel experiences; free family-centered, home-based programs around Jewish living; free inspirational Jewish teaching courses for Jewish educators; free interfaith outreach programs; and free Jewish pride-building community events, like the Great Shofar Blowout. Packaged together, this is a holistic approach that is working. You can see a full description of my Foundation’s programs on our website at rilcf.org. JAFI can help us get the word out to Jewish communities and inform and excite philanthropists that there are wonderful, successful programs that are worth funding.
I invite philanthropists and Jewish community leaders from across the country to visit my community and talk to our Jewish teens when they return from their life-changing, fully subsidized adventure in Israel. You will have conversations about Jewish identity and Peoplehood that you never dreamed possible, talking openly and freely to them about the importance of staying Jewish, marrying Jewish, and raising their own children Jewish. This is our successful approach to building Peoplehood.
Our path is clear, and our mission is easily understood. It is doable in any Jewish community.
Sincerely,
Robert Israel Lappin
Robert Israel Lappin is the Trustee of the Robert I. Lappin Charitable Foundation, whose mission is helping to keep our children Jewish. His email is ril@shetlandpark.com.
And in today’s age of “universal-ism,” what exactly are the “simple realities of Jewish living” to which we must expose those who are under 45? Is there any set of standards to which we/they can all agree? If we are going to call institutions and philanthropists together, I would suggest the group be comprised of people who are under 45 and to whom “peoplehood” has relevance. After all, isn’t it their future about which we are concerned?
A challenge of providing fully subsidized Jewish communal experiences, especially for young adults, is that they then learn that these experiences are always free. While we all greatly appreciate the continued generosity of many devoted philanthropists, most experiences – from Shabbat dinners to independent minyans to innovative adult education events – are not free to produce. What happens when the buildings where these events are housed need new boilers? Or the funder develops new interests? Even nominal fee-for-service shows participants that there is value assigned to these experiences and prepares them to increase their own financial contributions when they’re ready for synagogue membership or other more serious affiliation. Programs should show participants that there’s a return on their investment, of their time but also of their money.