Jewish outreach professionals complain constantly that younger Jews with two Jewish parents are bored with Judaism and are constantly wandering off to join Buddhist zendos and Hindu ashrams, conjuring up an image of disobedient and insolent young lambs scattering defiantly in all directions, proudly wearing nose rings, tattoos, and baaing defiantly at very expensive programs designed to lure them back into the Jewish communal sheep fold.

I have assured Jewish outreach workers that many adult children and grandchildren of intermarriage would be "cheap dates." We could be coaxed into the communal fold.  Many half-Jewish people would like to join the Jewish community. I have suggested that the Jewish outreach workers do simple brochures for us and start small monthly discussion groups, just as they currently do for interfaith couples and Jews By Choice (converts).

But both I and other half-Jewish people have noticed that these modest suggestions are largely ignored.  At the present time I do not know of a single Jewish institution that has created a pamphlet for us or is currently holding a discussion group for us that directly addresses our needs.  Most Jewish outreach workers have even been unwilling to include the words "adult children of intermarriage" in website welcoming statements that comprehensively welcome every other Jewish minority on the planet, including interfaith couples and Jewish gay frogs (just kidding about the rainbow-colored, Star of David-bespangled frogs, OK?).

Now, in a previous post, I discussed how some of this rejection and neglect is partially rooted in a disastrous "lost generation" policy instituted by the tiny Jewish outreach networks of the 1980s, in which a tacit policy decision was made to abandon all teen and adult children of intermarriage raised outside of Judaism and focus on the much smaller group of half-Jewish people "raised" as Jews by interfaith couples who were able to find welcoming Jewish groups.

But it is 2010 - can't we drop the failed policies of the past? Short answer: apparently not yet. The members of the Half-Jewish Network (www.half-jewish.net) complain to me in large numbers that they are repeatedly rebuffed or ignored by Jewish outreach workers. Why? We brush our teeth regularly and are often employed. We don't even bite!

Why Are Jewish Outreach Workers Ignoring Half-Jewish People?

Last year, I realized that I was operating from logic -- Judaism needs more Jews, therefore, we should welcome half-Jewish people -- but Jewish opposition to reaching out to half-Jewish people is tenacious, deeply-rooted, and emotional -- even among some Jewish outreach professionals!

These feelings that many Jewish outreach workers have about us are deeply buried and often confided to me privately.  

Jewish outreach workers are frequently overworked and underpaid, charged with outreaching not only to interfaith families, but all kinds of Jewish groups that need special outreach, including disaffiliated Jews with two Jewish parents.

Jewish outreach workers are generally very nice people -- they care about interfaith couples and Jews by Choice -- they often go an extra mile to help an interfaith couple find a rabbi to marry them -- or locate a conversion class for a potential Jew by Choice.

Here is what is preventing some of them from showing the same kindnesses to half-Jewish people, in a list of reasons confided to me over the last two decades:

Continue reading...

Read the first half of this post here.

Atkins, a board member for the past six years, assumed the chairmanship last summer in a leadership shuffle that included Gordis’s early retirement, part of a move to bring more business acumen to the oversight of the College.  He acknowledged being a dissenting voice during the period of rampant expansion.

“I was not in support of running a deficit,” he said, “but I was in the minority.  The idea that we would build it and they would come always seemed to me like a long shot, like trying to win the lottery. I’ve always advocated a more commercial model—operating according to the bottom line.” 

The College, he said, is exploring a number of strategies for containing its financial hemorrhage and also trying to re-establish trust with its traditional constituency--the Boston Jewish community.  Philanthropic support has stalled, he suggested, as would-be donors wait for the articulation of an effective rehabilitation plan.  

Though relations between the College and CJP, in particular, were badly frayed during Gordis's expansion, federation president Barry Shrage expressed measured support for the new leadership.  

"Hebrew College is an institution with extraordinary accomplishments that's made some missteps on the financial side," said Shrage.  "We observed with great concerns, and we conveyed our concern to them.  We feel the new leadership is trying to take the challenges seriously." 

But though he spoke highly of the College's offerings in the area of community education, in particular its initiatives for adult and teenage learners, he questioned the relevance of holding on to more advanced programming and infrastructure.

"For the rest of it," he said, "the old model doesn't work.  Trying to be a full-scale academic institution?  What's the point?" 

Rabbi Daniel Lehmann, the College's new president, spoke of maintaining the core of current programming, and also reaching out to new audiences through the arts and the Internet.  But he also acknowledged the need for a more sober business model.

"We have to recalibrate the percentage of our operating income that comes from hard sources," he said. “That's a fairly significant institutional change—not launching programs without having first secured grants or funding."

He has already overseen a round of layoffs, in addition to the third of the staff let go the winter before his arrival, most of them support personnel rather than academic faculty.  He has also put a portion of the College’s rare book collection up for auction.  But the budget still stands at close to $15 million, and with bond interest on the building still fluctuating wildly, it is difficult to calculate a balance.

“The building does play into the financial crisis in a significant way,” Lehmann admitted.  "There are a number of different possibilities as to what will free us from the current debt structure. Not all of them require leaving the building, and not all of them are in our control.  We have to be smart about planning for different contingencies.”

All contingency plans, however, now seem to center on some form of partnership with another regional institution. The College already sponsors limited joint programming with the Andover Newton Theological Seminary and Northeastern University, and is looking to deepen both of those relationships.  Early stage talks with Northeastern, in particular, are now proceeding “at the highest level.”

“I wouldn’t say discussions are far along,” Lehmann said.  “They’re progressing.  In some ways, we’re really just getting our heads around what kind of affiliation it would be.”

He stressed that, at least for now, he does not anticipate the kind of full merger that Baltimore Hebrew University has negotiated with Towson. 

“Our discussions,” he said, "are based on the premise that Hebrew College would retain its own board and organizational structure.  But it’s clear to me that we’re going to have to adopt a different model than the stand-alone institution that does some joint programming.”

Jonathan Sarna, for his part, saw an overestimation of national donors in the failure of David Gordis’s vision of a revitalized and independent institution.

"There were high hopes that this would become an educational center for the Boston Jewish community," he said. “In a lot of ways, at its peak, that’s what it was.  But they never could make ends meet. David did not demonstrate that if you build it they will come.”

He also saw, in the chastening of the Boston Hebrew College, an object lesson for Jewish institutions in the new economy.

“I suspect,” he said, “the idea that we’ll give a great deal for free—that rich people will pay—will be replaced by hardnosed pay-as-you-go models."

After 88 years of autonomy, money problems are forcing the Boston Hebrew College to consider a merger, a development that speaks volumes about changing patterns in American Jewish life.

The Federation-sponsored College was founded in 1921 to train Hebrew teachers for a supplementary school system run by the local Bureau of Jewish Education.  Along with sister schools in Philadelphia, Chicago, Cleveland, and Baltimore, it has also served as an important address for advanced Jewish study--especially when quotas limited Jewish attendance of American universities--counting historian Jonathan Sarna among its graduates, and David Starr, Nehemia Polen, and Arthur Green among its faculty.

But over the last half century, the College has struggled to keep pace with rapid changes.  Suburbanization precipitated a move from the inner-city Roxbury neighborhood to Brookline in 1951, and then to Newton earlier this decade.  When the BJE's school network collapsed in the late-60s, the result of a fragmenting community, the declining demand for professionally trained teachers cut into enrollment.  And the mushrooming of Judaic studies departments on American campuses led to a brain drain, with scholars opting for the resources and prestige of secular universities over affiliation with what has been dismissively termed a "Jewish junior college."

All five regional schools have suffered a comparable decline, and have responded either by seeking new paths to relevance or by drastically reducing their overhead.  Chicago's Spertus Institute, recognizing an increased interest in Jewish fine arts, last year launched a cultural museum in its elegant new building on Michigan Avenue.  The Baltimore Hebrew University, by contrast, after a protracted conflict with its federation sponsors over mission and funding, recently announced a merger with Towson University.

Hebrew College began to chart a new course in 1993 when David Gordis, formerly executive vice president of the American Jewish Committee, as well as one-time vice president at both the Jewish Theological Seminary and the University of Judaism, took over the presidency. Responding to the 1990 National Jewish Population Study, which had for the first time reported an intermarriage rate topping 50 percent, Gordis partnered with Combined Jewish Philanthropies--the Boston federation--in a plan to combat attrition with literacy.  He felt that strengthening Jewish identity through sophisticated communal learning initiatives would also provide the College with a renewed sense of mission.

"I suggested," said Gordis, "that what Hebrew College was all about was serving as a bridge between scholarship and community."

But Gordis also harbored ambitions for transforming Hebrew College into a national institution.  This entailed the rapid development of a flurry of far-reaching programs, including a Ph.D. track in Jewish education, and a transdenominational rabbinical school.  He also moved the College into a brand new, $34 million dollar campus, designed by Israeli architect Moshe Safdie.

Gordis believed this expansion could be funded, initially, out of the College's available capital,  with increased philanthropy eventually picking up the slack.  An annual budget of $1.5 million at the start of his tenure, over half of it coming from a CJP allocation, had ballooned by 2006 to $16.2 million.  But with no significant increase either in federation dollars or direct giving, financial holdings plummeted.  Between 2003 and 2006, the most intense period of growth, net assets declined approximately from $25 million to $14.5 million.

"I expected," said Gordis, "both a greater involvement by the locally significant funders and by some of the national people."

The consequences of this failed development plan have worsened considerably since the global economic downturn began last fall.  The bond-financing of its building campaign has exposed the College to skyrocketing interest rates, meaning unanticipated monthly expenditures in the hundreds of thousands.  If the College cannot meet its obligations to bondholders, it risks foreclosure.

Unsubstantiated claims have also circulated in the Boston community that money raised to pay for the building was channeled instead into program development, exacerbating the current debt load, a charge of misappropriation disputed by current board chair Mark Atkins.

"There are a lot of rumors," he said. "That was one of them.  But to my knowledge, I have not seen anything relative to misappropriation.  People can question the tactics and their execution, but these things were done in the interest of perpetuating the college by offering superior products."

To be continued... 

As you may have heard, I had a really disappointing time at the LimmudNY conference this past weekend. Although I was excited about the weekend's slate of activities, the whole thing ultimately went bust, and my coworker and I ended up heading home several hours after arriving to the venue because the hotel lacked heat and didn't have enough rooms to go around. In that same post, I included a statement from a Limmud staffer about whether they were going to issue refunds: "I would hope that no one would do that to Limmud, which is a fundraising organization."

So, Limmud expects me - and a lot of other people whose weekends were ruined and who had to either share a single room with four other people or break Shabbat in order to leave and go home - to eat the cost of the conference simply because they're "a fundraising organization"? No way. But we can get to that later. There's one other problem that's even more pressing.

My coworker, Hayley, and I were attending Limmud in part so that we could participate in the "Shuk," an onsite space in the hotel where we could sell Jewcy merchandise to conference attendees. We were each charged $50 for the privilege. Because there were a lot of items we wanted to sell and not a lot of space in our suitcases, we arranged to have all of our products shipped to the Nevele a few days before Limmud started. However, we have been entirely unsuccessful having our stuff sent back to us, even though we've offered to pay the cost of shipping ourselves (you see, we're a fundraising organization here at Jewcy, and one way we raise those funds is by selling the T-shirts that are now lost in the Nevele netherworld). No one at the Nevele claims to know anything about where our stuff is, even though they confirmed the boxes' arrival last week. And it's next to impossible to get in touch with anyone from Limmud, as the mostly volunteer organization is in the process of moving their office from the Nevele back to their Manhattan headquarters. 

Today, an email entitled "Thank You for Being Part of Limmud 2009" appeared in my inbox. Here's a particularly interesting excerpt:

Of course, that's not to say that we would have chosen the challenges that the Nevele's boiler breakdown presented for all of the cold, crowded participants, and for the conference volunteers who had to revise plans for rooming, programming, and other affected areas. Please know that the health and safety of our participants were our paramount consideration.

We are grateful to the dozens of volunteers who worked around the clock, to address the physical plant issues and resulting problems, as well as to the overwhelming numbers of you who also pitched in - in true Limmud spirit - offering to share your extra sweaters, and even your hotel rooms, with total strangers.

To those LimmudNYks who did not come to the conference, or chose to leave early, we understand and share your frustration and disappointment. We are now in the process of identifying the recourse we have against the hotel for failing to provide the accommodations, facilities, and services we contracted for. 

This is such a non-apology apology. I'm glad they admitted the boiler/heating issues caused a lot of problems for people, but I don't really think anyone was offering to share their hotel rooms so much as being forced to.  However, getting the Nevele to reimburse attendees' money is a good start but certainly not the only course of action. The $750 that I paid to attend the conference covered a lot more than the price of a hotel room. And because of the lack of accommodations, I wasn't able to eat any of the food, attend any of the seminars, or participate in the Shuk - all things I paid for. A partial reimbursement from the hotel is a nice start. But it's not enough.

We can talk about full refunds later. For the time being, though, Limmud, I'd like my stuff back. Or at least an actual human being on the phone who can tell me where it is and what I can do about it.

It's Monday, January 19, 2009. Right now, I should be on a bus on my way back from a rewarding, interesting three-day-long conference, LimmudNY, held at the Nevele Grande Resort in bucolic Ellenville, New York. However, I am not on a bus. I am on my couch in my apartment in Brooklyn. And instead of doing what I was assigned to do - writing a recap of my experiences at LimmudNY and reporting back on how many interesting seminars I went to and how many hot Jew couples hooked up - I'm writing another kind of post.

At 7:00 AM on Friday, January 17, the day I was scheduled to leave for Limmud, I woke up to the sound of my cell phone ringing.When I answered it, I was treated to an automated voicemail message letting me know that the Nevele had a problem with their boiler and the resort was currently without heat or hot water. They promised to make an official announcement by 11 AM regarding whether the boiler was repaired and if the conference would go on as scheduled. However, the bus schedule (mine was departing from the Manhattan JCC at noon) would not change. I live about an hour via subway away from the JCC, so there was no way I could sit home and wait for the 11:00 announcement. I grabbed my suitcase and headed for the train.

By the time my colleague Hayley Kaufman and I made it to the JCC, the lobby was full of people - those, mostly families with young children - who had been scheduled for a 9:00 bus and had been waiting at the JCC all morning, as well as the newcomers who were slated to leave at noon. At noon, someone - I'm not clear whether she was a Limmud volunteer or a JCC employee, although I suspect she was the former - announced that the boiler had, indeed, been repaired, but it would take half an hour 'for the heat to reach the building.' At 12:30, she announced that everything was just fine at the hotel and we had gotten permission to leave. Hayley and I, frustrated by the lack of information, had considered leaving at noon when no one had clear answers, but against our better judgment we hopped on the bus. Two and a half hours later, our bus pulled up in front of the Nevele, and perky volunteers from Limmud hopped onto the bus to make announcements. We were told that the hotel was 'still a little cold' and 'taking awhile to totally heat up,' so we were advised to keep our coats on while we waited in the lobby to check in. The volunteers were correct - it was a little cold. So cold, in fact, that while we stood in the hour-plus-long line to get our room assignments I couldn't feel my toes. When it came our turn to check in, a Nevele front desk clerk informed us that our room was in the section of the hotel that had been closed off due to the lack of heat, and they'd 'work on' trying to find us a room. We were dispatched to another line, full of fellow roomless travelers, to await our fate. Four hours later, not any warmer, and with no room assignment in sight, I went up to the front desk and started asking about the closest MetroNorth or bus station. The employee claimed not to know anything about transit options and suggested I warm my hands over the Shabbat candles [side note: Shabbat began while we were all in line hoping to get room keys. Many observant Jews were forced to choose between holding a spot in line for a room assignment or attending one of the Shabbat services in the hotel].

Continue reading...

"I don't really get into the Tanakh," explains Naomi Rubinstein, a 24 year old American living and volunteering in Israel for the year. "Torah and Jewish texts in general don't speak to me. My family isn't religious and neither am I. I see my Judaism in a different way; for me, being Jewish is about social justice. I want to make the world a better place, and not just for Jews." Naomi's commitment to social justice is what brought her to Israel for a year, where she is volunteering at an organization that helps African refugees living in Israel, many of whom are poverty-stricken. She got in touch with this organization with some help from her progressive Jewish women's group back in New York City.

Naomi's work is important and her contributions are admirable. What she may not realize is that a commitment to social justice--for Jews and gentiles alike--isn't an idea coming solely from contemporary Jewish organizations that utilize the appeal of community service initiatives to engage young Jews. The idea of helping refugees, or 'strangers' in your land, comes straight from the Tanakh:

Leviticus 19:33/34

"And if a stranger resides in your land, you shall not do him wrong. The stranger that resides with you in your land shall be to you as one of your citizens; you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt..."

It's certainly not a new idea and its roots are in the text, not in progressive Judaism, Jewish renewal, or whatever you want to call the philosophy maintained by groups of Jews who want to do good deeds in the name of their Jewish identities while maintaining a degree of secularism.

Many Jewish organizations--both in the diaspora and in Israel--begin with a single idea stemming from Jewish text. In order to market this idea to less religious Jews, they lose the Torah language and dub it a ‘new' or 'different' way to be Jewish without being religiously observant in the modern world. The result is a misleading commitment to social justice that reinforces the notion that Jewish text is only accessible and relevant to halachically observant Jews--and that community service and global awareness are reserved for less traditional, more contemporary Jews. This is problematic because it reinforces an unnecessary rift between Jews that live different lifestyles, which prevents them from relating to each other. It furthers the lack of understanding between the religious, the secular, and everyone in between, because everyone feels like their values come from a different place and that they are, in fact, irreconcilable. The Orthodox can't understand the secular lack of reverence for the Torah and for Jewish law, and more secular Jews feel as though Torah and Jewish law are irrelevant to their ‘contemporary' Jewish values.

Whether your expression of Judaism is in the form of community service initiatives, strict adherence to Jewish law, or both--the truth is that it all comes from the same place. In that case, if you're looking for meaning and depth as a non-observant Jew, why not pick up the book itself instead of letting Hillel or the Progressive Jewish Alliance water it down for you? You can still eat bacon and intermarry, I promise.

Shifra Bronznick, Didi Goldenhar, and Marty Linsky, co-authors of Leveling the Playing Field: Advancing Women in Jewish Organizational Life, spent the past week guest blogging on Jewcy. Marty questioned the tendency of Jewish organizations to form a dysfunctional family.  Shifra and Didi followed with three posts, ranging from Norway's gender quotas, to recession advice, to exit interviews.  And all three closed out their week with some parting views on how to make change happen without compromising leadership.  Wanna learn more? Buy the book!

Marty Linsky, co-author of Leveling the Playing Field: Advancing Women in Jewish Organizational Life, is guest blogging on Jewcy this week with his co-authors Shifra Bronznick and Didi Goldenhar. The guidebook is the result of a partnership between two organizations: Advancing Women Professionals and the Jewish Community and Cambridge Leadership Associates.  Linsky is a faculty member at Harvard's Kennedy School and has been a journalist, lawyer, and politician.

Yesterday, Sunday, I was in Toronto working with a group of people, each of whom has just become or is about to become chair of the board of a Jewish communal agency.They were brought together for a year-long experience under the auspices of The Joshua Institue for Jewish Communal Leadership, a newly-created arm of the UJA Federation of Greater Toronto. 

The presenting purpose was leadership development for those new board chairs; but the not so hidden agenda was to break down the walls that keep those organizations and the dozens of others that make up Toronto's undeniably vibrant Jewish community from working together and instead often pits them against one another for attention, money, volunteers, professionals, and even clients and service recipients. 

The situation in Toronto is not much different from what I have seen in other Jewish communities in North America and, to be fair, in many non-Jewish not-for-profit worlds as well. But the commitment to autonomy  seems particuarly pronouced among Jewish organizations, right along there with the lip service paid to collaboration. The gap between the espounsed values and the current reality is not uncommon in Jewish life. When Shifra Bronznick, Didi Goldenhar and I were talking to people and doing research for Leveling the Playing Field, our new book on gender inequality in Jewish communal life, we found a similar pattern. Everyone is for it, but nothing much happens. 

In Toronto yesterday, the CEO of the Federation told a wonderful story of a meeting of the most senior lay and professionals in the Jewish community to discuss the plans for a newly-acquired parcel of 60 acres of land. Those sitting around the table thought they were there to negotiate about how to carve it up, so that each agency would get its appropriate share. But it turns out that the plan was to share the land in common, a whole new way of doing business for those folks whose identities were wrapped up in their individual agencies. It was a long sturggle to make that happen, and it is not over yet as denominational and other differences are making truly shared resources difficult to achieve.

Smells like UJAWhy is this so difficult? Think of the analogy to a vegetable stew. To make stew, you have to cook the vegetables, the potatoes and lentils and onions, enough so that each takes on a little of the coloration and smell of the others. If you don't do that, you might as well cook the vegetables in separate pots. But if you cook them too much, you get mush instead of a stew. The problem comes when the lentils have to go back to lentil-land. The first thing that will happen to them is that the other lentils will start sniffing around. "Yuck," they will say. "We sent you there to spread some lentil juice over those potatoes and carrots and onions, not to get any onion or potato juice on you! You're not one of us any more."

Real collaboration is about loss, about giving up something important in the service of the whole. The work of collaboration is difficult because is not only requires the distribution of losses, but also collaboration among the collaborators in helping each other deliver their losses to their own people. Collaboration is particularly challenging in Jewish communal life because well-intentioned people with a history of suffering and loss go into that line of work on either a professional or a volunteer basis to save lives and provide benefits, not to deliver losses and take away what people value. But without the courage and skill to do just that, no real change can occur and the silos' boundaries will continue to be relatively impermeable at the expense of the longer run interests of the community as a whole. 

Marty Linsky, co-author of Leveling the Playing Field: Advancing Women in Jewish Organizational Life, is guest blogging on Jewcy this week with his co-authors Shifra Bronznick and Didi Goldenhar.  Stay tuned.

In the glutted landscape of Jewish communal life, no institution blusters with greater pomposity than the Organization That Claims To Speak On Behalf Of The Jews (OTCSBJ). What’s most frustrating about the OTCSBJ is that it often speaks not on behalf of “the Jewish People” but of the tiny percentage of Jews who sign up for its email lists. Most notorious in this category is the Conference of Presidents (“American Jewry’s recognized address for consensus policy”), which clamored vociferously for an invasion of Iraq (see its "Daily Alerts" of cherry-picked panic from 2002 and 2003) despite the fact that a majority of American Jews opposed the invasion.

A relatively new OTCSBJ has entered the scene: The Jewish People Policy Planning Institute. Chaired by Dennis Ross, the JPPPI seeks to formulate an overarching “Jewish policy” with an eye towards strengthening the status of Israel as the “center of Jewish life.” As a sign of how it views the vitality of Diaspora Jewish life, the JPPPI has on its team the famed Israeli demographer Sergio DellaPergola, who clings to the widely-discredited National Jewish Population Survey of 2001, with its bleak outlook for Jewish life in America. After all, it's easier to promote Israel as the "center of Jewish life" if Jewish life everywhere else is falling apart.
Yehezkel Dror: Modern Day Jewish Prophet suspiciously resembles Larry "Bud" Mellman
Now the Founding President of the JPPPI, Yehezkel Dror, has written a stunning op-ed in The Forward about where he feels “the Jewish People” should head. Essentially, he argues, the "requirements of existence" must trump everything else. In light of Israel's (or "the Jewish People's") interests, Dror characterizes moral considerations as "political correctness and other thinking-repressing fashions." He singles out Jewish activism on China and on Turkey's genocide of Armenians, arguing that Jews must be supportive of China and Turkey, "or at least remain neutral," in light of Israel's strategic interests. Bewilderingly, he then takes the "end to morality" argument to the nuclear level:

Similarly, Jewish leaders should support harsh measures against terrorists who potentially endanger Jews, even at the cost of human rights and humanitarian law. And if the threat is sufficiently grave, the use of weapons of mass destruction by Israel would be justified if likely to be necessary for assuring the state’s survival, the bitter price of large number of killed innocent civilians notwithstanding.

Thankfully, Dror concedes that it's hard to define what constitutes "survival" ("there is much room for debate," he assures us. Gosh, thanks, Yehezkel!). But, he insists:

When important for existence, violating the rights of others should be accepted, with regret but with determination. Support or condemnation of various countries and their policies should be decided upon primarily in light of probable consequences for the existence of the Jewish people.

In short, the imperatives of existence should be given priority over other concerns — however important they may be — including liberal and humanitarian values, support for human rights and democratization.

If nothing else, Dror's outlook -- shared, presumably, by the JPPPI -- represents a remarkable devolution. Yesterday's popular Jewish cant about Israel ran along the lines of "Israel, and everything it does, is by definition moral." How far have we progressed if we no longer even pretend it's moral, instead insisting that morality itself must be relinquished as a vestige of an earlier age? What's more, we must weigh Israel's interests not only in discussions of the Middle East, but in ethical issues that come up anywhere in the world. Whatever the situation, says Dror, we risk imperiling the Jewish People's existence by aligning ourselves purely with morality.

One wonders how the term "survival" will be defined. With the proper argument, it can include not only nuking Iran, but rounding up all non-Jewish inhabitants of the West Bank (and hell, pre-Green Line Israel too) and shipping them off to the other side of the Jordan River. Slobodan Milosevic was interested in his people's survival too. Was he the intellectual and moral forefather of the JPPPI?

It seems almost providential that just last week, Albert Einstein rose from the grave to give us a warning about Jews and power. “As far as my experience goes," he wrote about Jews, "they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power.” Dror offers evidence that sixty years into what some people call "the Jewish return to sovereignty," it might be time for some chemotherapy.

Just Say "Sleaze": The JPPPI's Foxman and Kissinger -- Judaism's Moral Compass Just as importantly, with this op-ed, the JPPPI has shown that it has scant knowledge of "the Jewish People," most of whom do not base decisions, moral or otherwise, on the exclusive basis of what David Ben Gurion would wish for. But that won't stop the JPPPI from insisting it speaks on our behalf. In his description of the mission of the organization, Dror has written that "most Israeli policy-makers and also intellectuals and opinion-shapers, suffer from a lack of understanding, as well as ignorance about and misperception of, Diaspora realities, especially concerning the mindset and feelings of the majority of the younger generation." Let's see, how can we bridge this gap in understanding, especially with the "younger generation"? Hey, how about we propose an abandonment of morality whenever Israel is in the picture? That should work beautifully!

At least the JPPPI is consistent with other Organizations That Claim To Speak On Behalf Of The Jews. It's currently enjoying Stage Two of Jewish organizational process:

Stage One: Establish an organization that claims to represent "the Jewish People."

Stage Two: Espouse ideology that the vast majority of Jews would consider to be out-of-touch or morally execrable.

Stage Three: Lament, in limitless policy papers, the fact that so few Jews choose to "affiliate" with the organized community.

Stage Four: Go to Stage One.

This Chanukah: Hook a soldier up.Connections Israel started nearly a decade ago to aid Jewish communities and schools worldwide in their support for Israel. Mostly, they focus on implementing educational programs to help support IDF soldiers with gift baskets and a sort of pen pal link-up. Mostly. But not entirely, by any means.

This Chanukah, for as little as $10, or as much as $120, you can help. Ten bucks gives a IDF soldier a gift basket, $36 donates a gift basket to either a Sderot family or a family victimized by terror and $120 sponsors an educational program for thirty students. Or, you can donate any amount and earmark if for any of Connections Israel's specific causes.

While you're hooking up our friends in the IDF, hit Pizza IDF, a website that allows you to donate anything from sufganyiot, pizza or burgers and sodas or hearty soups to soldiers from as little as three bucks! Or, check Dash Cham, an Israeli candymaker who will deliver treats to soldiers for ten bucks. Easy ways to bring a little light.