Making Service Matter an editorial from the Jewish Daily Forward Volunteerism comes in all shapes, sizes and outcomes. There are the one-day service projects that can galvanize those who participate, but may not always have the kind of oomph that leads to lasting change. There are long-term commitments like Teach for America and the Peace Corps that are out of reach for most workaday people. Then there are the increasingly popular short-term programs: a week in New Orleans, a spring break in Nicaragua, a month in Ghana. Participants inevitably return from these experiences moved and even transformed, but do these quick interventions do anything for the communities they are supposed to serve? Well, if done right, they can. That’s the conclusion of a study commissioned by Repair the World, … Continue Reading
New Study: The Worth of What They Do
Repair the World Announces Results of a Study Examining the Effects of Alternative Breaks and Other Short-Term Volunteer Projects on Communities in Need in the U.S. and Abroad Repair the World today released The Worth of What They Do: The Impact of Short-Term Jewish Service-Learning on Host Communities. The study, prepared by BTW: Informing Change (BTW), examines the positive, long-term effects of short-term service projects - often called alternative breaks - on communities-in-need both in the United States and overseas. To date, a number of studies have been conducted on the impact of service projects on individual participants, such as a sense of accomplishment and first-hand experience of global problems such as poverty and food insecurity. However, relatively little research has … Continue Reading
The Madoff Saga: Two Years Later
It's been two years since the Madoff House of Cards collapsed. And, as the past few days have demonstrated, we are nowhere near seeing the end of the drama. Yesterday morning, Madoff's son Mark was found hung in his Manhattan apartment - the victim of an apparent suicide. No note was found. Roughly a year ago, Mark, and his brother Andrew, were sued by Irving Picard, the court-appointed representative for Madoff creditors. At the time, it was said Mark had deposited a total of $745,482 into seven customer accounts he and his family held, but withdrew $18.1 million. Just this past week, Picard also sued numerous Madoff family members, including Mark's children, for return of monies transferred by their grandparents. No criminal charges have been filed against either Mark or Andrew. On … Continue Reading
Avi Chai Awards $1.6m Grant to Yeshiva U. to Help Improve Day School Finances
In support of the necessary goal of achieving financial stability and sustainability of the Jewish day school movement, the Avi Chai Foundation has made a $1.6 million grant to the Institute for University-School Partnership at Yeshiva University (YU) to support YU’s comparative financial benchmarking work with 30 Jewish day schools in five communities across the country. The goal is to greatly improve their financial operations and planning and help make them more affordable without sacrificing quality. The three-year capacity building grant, which is designed to match an equivalent amount of funding from local sources, including local foundations and federations, establishes a comprehensive program that involves comparative financial benchmarking, long-term financial planning, and extensive … Continue Reading
Promoting an Honest and Open Modern Orthodoxy
excerpted from an opinion piece by Ben Sales in New Voices (National Jewish Student Magazine): Keep YU Discourse Open Yeshiva University is no longer a place for open conversation about Judaism, despite its being the largest Jewish college in the country. According to an article in the Jewish Star, four YU senior officers canceled a student-organized lecture last month because it featured Rabbi Ethan Tucker, one of the heads of the egalitarian Yeshivat Hadar in New York and an active proponent of gender equality in Judaism - stances that conflict with YU’s policies. According to the Star, YU's administration opposed the event on the grounds that the school is "Centrist Orthodox" and would not host clergy from different denominations. Leaders of the student group Torah Exploration of Ideas, … Continue Reading
The Future of Jewish Scholarship
Jewish Studies Rises, but We Pay the Price an opinion piece by Jacob Neusner The flourishing of Jewish studies at secular American universities in recent decades is a remarkable and profoundly important development. As students return to their campuses, it is not only those who attend Yeshiva University, Hebrew Union College or the Jewish Theological Seminary who will have access to high-level teaching and scholarship on Jewish topics. Secular academic institutions have gained unprecedented endowments for their professorships and programs in Jewish studies. The tens of millions of dollars that have supported the new professorships, programs and post-doctoral study centers in Jewish studies have bought a place in academia for anything Jewish, with the priorities set by the secular … Continue Reading
New Rabbis Face Employment Challenges
Newly Ordained Find the 2010 Spiritual Job Market a Tough Place To Sell Their Wares by Larry Yudelson Last fall, Rabbi Lennard Thal gave an uncharacteristic warning to senior rabbinical students at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, the seminary that trains Reform rabbis: Consider options other than the pulpit for your rabbinic career. Thal heads the Reform movement’s Joint Commission on Rabbinic Placement. His advice reflected the failure of an unprecedented number of graduates of the rabbinic class of 2009 to find pulpits. In the wake of the financial crisis of 2008 and the resulting decline in synagogue dues and donations, senior rabbis postponed retirement, junior positions were eliminated, and cutbacks at the umbrella group Union for Reform Judaism sent many older … Continue Reading
The Limits of Cross-Denominational Partnership
from Tablet Magazine: Teachable Moment Last week, each of the three universities associated with the major American Jewish denominations received an $11 million grant from the Jim Joseph Foundation, a San Francisco-based Jewish philanthropy. ... But the relative ease with which this arrangement was made may less reflect a burst of newfound harmony among disparate monoliths as much as a loss of power experienced by each. During the period in which relations have improved, major Jewish community donors have eschewed giving to the denominations at all, often contributing instead to robust nondenominational organizations like Birthright and Hillel that target often-unaffiliated youth - and where such “megadonors” also have more control. What the Jim Joseph Foundation may have done is found … Continue Reading
What Jewish Educators Should Teach
from The Jerusalem Post: Rosner's Domain: Al Levitt on what Jewish educators should teach You've probably heard about the "big news coming out of The Jim Joseph Foundation": $33 million is being given to The Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS), Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC), and Yeshiva University (YU) to increase the number of future Jewish educators and to improve the quality of professional preparation they receive. ... And - Al Levitt, president of Jim Joseph Foundation, had agreed to answer my nugging questions. Here we go: 1. Wow, that's a lot of money? Why so much for this cause? The grants are part of a $45 million grant commitment that JJF has made to these 3 institutions. The initial $12 million dollars (divided almost equally among the three … Continue Reading
Jim Joseph Announces $33m. to Train Educators
As part of a continued concentrated effort to increase the number of credentialed future Jewish educators and to improve the quality of professional preparation and Jewish education they receive, the Jim Joseph Foundation (JJF) has announced that $33 million in grants have been awarded to the three leading training institutions for Jewish educators. With these grants, JJF has now gifted a total of nearly a quarter of a billion dollars to Jewish education and Jewish youth causes since it was established in 2006 as a private foundation. The $33 million in grants JJF awarded will support The Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS), Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC), and Yeshiva University (YU). JJF gave the three institutions an initial $12 million of this funding in September 2009, … Continue Reading
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