Good Tuesday morning!

Despite data showing a decline in religious affiliation among young people, participants in a philanthropy conference last week said they were confident that young people would continue to give through religious channels at the same levels as earlier generations.

The discussion took place on Friday during a panel at the Yale University Philanthropy Conference, a two-day event that explored the state of philanthropy in the wake of the pandemic and the social and political upheavals of 2020. The conference included sessions on the labor market, environmental protection, democracy and effective altruism, in addition to religion.

The panel explored parallels between the organized giving traditions of different American religious communities, andcovered topics ranging from political polarization to generational differences in religious philanthropy. It featured Eric Goldstein, CEO of UJA-Federation of New York, along with Tanise Chung-Hoon, the managing director for philanthropies at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS), and Elise Westhoff, the president and CEO of the Philanthropy Roundtable, which advises conservative donors.

“Typically, people give more when they have more income, when they’re more established in their lives and careers,” Westhoff said. “From a philanthropic perspective, the signals are there that we are not going to see a major decline in young people engaging.”

Goldstein said Jewish federations have seen a generational shift because, more than half a century ago, many prestigious charities effectively excluded Jews, which ended up directing Jewish dollars to federations — so much so that giving to federation was called “the Jewish tax.” Now, more Jewish charitable donations are distributed via family foundations.

“Once upon a time, federation was almost the only game in town if you wanted to be philanthropically engaged, and now there are many ways to do it, which is a blessing,” he said, adding that today, “it’s much more [that] we want to do it ourselves. We’re a generation of ‘me’ as opposed to ‘we.’”

To keep Jewish charity flowing through federations, Goldstein said UJA tries to emphasize the value of creating community via philanthropy by having a central address for Jewish giving, even if people aren’t donating to Jewish causes. UJA-Federation tells philanthropists, “do what you want individually, but don’t put all your marbles into your own [foundation]. Keep some in the community.”

Chung-Hoon said the philanthropic operation of the LDS church emphasizes clear red lines when it comes to donors earmarking their gifts to specific causes and is ”very overt” about its priorities. “If that makes sense for you and you are desirous of joining us in this effort then we’d love to have you,” she said. “Part of being a faith-based organization [is] you have to be able to know when to decline a gift that may not align.”

CULTURAL CONNECTIONS

A new arts program hopes to showcase Israel’s diversity

Courtesy of Studio Mela

The Bible relates that when the Jewish people wandered in the desert, they were fed by manna. Somewhat more recently, a group of people at an art show looked up to see potato flakes floating through the air — then listened to, smelled and tasted them. The program was one of many sensory immersions produced by a team of artists known as Studio Mela. And it’s exactly the kind of program that the people behind Bamah, a new nonprofit founded to spread Israeli arts and culture, want to cultivate, reports eJewishPhilanthropy’s Esther Kustanowitz. 

Visiting artists: Bamah, which is bringing three Israeli artists to the U.S. this coming academic year, is a successor to the Israel Institute’s Visiting Artists Program, which has brought more than 100 Israeli artists in film, TV, theater, dance, music, visual arts and literature to North America over the last 12 years. Now, Bamah intends for the program to reach beyond campus and serve the broader Jewish community. Visiting artists will still teach on campus, but they will be in residence in, hosted by and contributing to the community, Flo Low, Bamah’s founding director, explained. 

Fostering student input: Bamah is also centered on “dialogue and exchange” between students and Israeli artists. This coming academic year, in addition to Studio Mela in the Boston area, details are being finalized for an Israeli choreographer to be in San Jose, Calif. Israeli Ethiopian filmmaker Aalam-Warqe Davidian, whose 2018 film “Fig Tree” was nominated for Best Picture in Israel’s version of the Oscars, will be in Atlanta.

A different way to connect: “There are world-class artists that are creating work in Israel,” Low told eJP. “We want to provide a different way to learn about, connect with, and engage with Israel… Bamah’s mission is to design meaningful experiences that harness the power of Israeli culture to inspire and connect people.”

Read more here.

our responsibility

Transforming fate into destiny: Israelis, Arabs and American Jews

YouTube

“There are times when extraordinary events provide an opportunity — perhaps a fleeting opportunity — for people, and the institutions they created, to change the course of history. This is one of those rare times, and there is an opportunity for American Jews to play a significant role in achieving peace and advancing human rights by supporting the NGOs with the scale and commitment to improve the lives of Israeli Arabs, and to assure their full and equal participation in Israeli society,” writes Barry Shrage, former president of CJP, Greater Boston’s Jewish federation, in an opinion piece foreJewishPhilanthropy. 

The emergence of hope: “I was born in 1947. There has never been a time in my life when there wasn’t conflict between Arabs and Jews… But hope emerges at first slowly, and over time with greater power. I’m now part of the faculty at Brandeis University’s Hornstein Program and two years ago, our Kraft Seminar in Israel featured meetings with Israel’s Arab population — including an extended visit at Sakhnin, an Arab town near Tzipori in Israel’s north, and a briefing with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee on its job-development programs and its expanding work in dozens of Arab villages and towns throughout Israel. The Israeli Arab families who hosted our students were warm, friendly and welcoming, and they told unexpected stories. The older generation of town residents told painful stories of homes lost in 1948 and a long process of rebuilding leading to lives within, but not completely part of, Israeli society as shopkeepers and tradespeople. A younger woman, an emerging leader in her community, told a different story about the hopes of her generation — a generation slowly making its way into the medical field and other professions that open the door to greater inclusion and upward mobility in society.”

The Abraham Accords: “More hope followed the signing of the Abraham Accords, normalizing relations between Israel and four Sunni Arab countries, in addition to the prior peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan. While complete peace remains a dream and the Palestinian conflict still clouds the future, it’s no longer accurate to talk about an ongoing war between Israel and her regional Arab neighbors.”

Read the full piece here.

Worthy Reads

Yale’s ‘Best Kept Secret’: Friday nights at Yale’s Chabad are a highlight of the week for Jewish and non-Jewish students, writes Paloma Vigil in the Yale News. “The general sense of community that Shabbat dinner and Chabad house as a whole generates is one that ‘has a secondary benefit of combatting certain forms of hatred, specifically antisemitism,’ Rabbi [Meir Chaim] Posner said… ‘What I have seen is that these students have come to Shabbat dinners and had discussions with the Rabbis and the Jewish community, and they have come out with a completely different view of what it means to be Jewish and, more importantly, that Jews don’t live up to the stereotypes that they came in with,’ Rabbi Posner said. ‘It starts at a very micro level and has ripple effects.’” [YaleNews]

Retiring Resumes?: Removing resumes from the hiring process may result in an increase in staff diversity, Naomi Nix writes in Bloomberg, citing the case of public-health research firm Health Data Research UK, which removed resumes from the equation. “Instead of looking at educational or professional experience to choose finalists from the 159 applicants for its program for Black people in health data science positions, the group created a short questionnaire that asked candidates to explain what artificial intelligence was or to talk about a recent piece of technology they were studying. The result was that more female candidates applied than men. In the end, 30 of the 48 interns that Health Data Research hired were women. The organization is now using the same skills-based recruiting to make full-time hires. ‘We know that we’ve got this huge untapped talent out there,” says Tammy Palmer, its head of people. “We’re trying to break down that sense that you have to be a certain kind of person, that you have to have been to a certain kind of university, to become a scientist.’” [Bloomberg]

Pic of the Day

KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV/AFP via Getty Images

American-born Israeli figure skater Hailey Kops and Israel’s Evgeni Krasnopolski competed Friday in the pairs free skate event during the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games at the Capital Indoor Stadium.