Noam Neusner writing in The Forward:
Of all the shocks of the Bernie Madoff heist, perhaps none was more stunning than the list of victims. Among them were several Jewish foundations and many of our community’s most prominent nonprofits. The losses were staggering, and in some cases crippling.
Yet the real Madoff scandal isn’t the losses; it’s that our community was sitting on vast pools of accumulated wealth, much of it used to little effect. Madoff had his secrets to keep, but so, in fact, did many foundations and endowments. They had money to spend, and they didn’t spend it. Now it’s gone.
Everywhere in the Jewish community we hear of crises — in Jewish literacy and continuity, in a lack of social action and awareness, in a failure of the synagogue and the rabbinate, and so on. Yet all this time, there were individual donors and philanthropy executives sitting on large pools of money that could theoretically have been used to help address many of our biggest concerns. As a community, we now live so much for perpetuity that we fail to deal with the present.
I used to think that the rise of Jewish endowments and foundations represented the pinnacle of our life here in America — financial success, combined with organizational stability and careful foresight. Now, it appears, we are simply incompetent as a community, having so badly matched what we have with what we need. Either we refuse to deploy our assets to our needs, or our needs, as we define them, are in fact not that pressing. Either way, it is a stunning indictment.
I do not understand why you are so quick to generalize and paint the entire philanthropic Jewish community as a failure. You state with certainty:”Now, it appears, we are simply incompetent as a community, having so badly matched what we have with what we need. Either we refuse to deploy our assets to our needs, or our needs, as we define them, are in fact not that pressing. Either way, it is a stunning indictment.” Not all wealthy Jews were using Madoff, not all of the foundations were so careless, and not all of them have gone under or ignored their crucial role in Jewish life. Almost everyone, private people as well as foundations, have felt the fire of the major economic upheaval now taking place in the worldwide economy. You might take just a little time to write about the Jewish philanthropists, foundations and nonprofit organization hero’s who have planned well and are weathering and working hard to cope with the storm. Don’t blindly character assassinate the whole “community”.
After all, Jewish philanthropy is still very much alive and many thousands of good people are still around doing their work as best they can. Give them some credit, and tell their stories.
Prof. Eliezer D. Jaffe
Chairman, The Israel Free Loan Association (IFLA)
Co-Chairman, The Center for the Study of Philanthropy, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem