According to yesterday’s JTA philanthropy newsletter,

“Hadassah laid off another 17 employees this week, amounting to another 5 percent of its work force. The organization laid off a quarter of its staff last winter.

It isn’t clear where the cuts were made, but Hadassah is still insisting that they are part of a long-planned restructuring process that while pushed forward by the recession, was not caused by the recession.

… It’s certainly been a rough year for Hadassah. First it was a major victim of Bernard Madoff. Then the woman who helped manage the organization’s relations with Madoff wrote a tell-all book describing her affair with the swindler. And a couple of weeks ago, the Chronicle of Philanthropy reported in its annual Philanthropy 400 that the organization’s fund raising was down 50 percent last year.

Hadassah officials are disputing the chronicle’s numbers as wrong, saying they aren’t sure where or how the Chronicle came up with them.”