JNF Breakfast

A worthwhile morning.  Each year the Jewish National Fund sponsors a communal breakfast to support its many projects.  I have been a minor contributor since childhood.  At the time, the JNF provided blue metal collection boxes for coins.  Kids like me would plant trees in Israel for birthdays and Mother's Days, for which the JNF would issue a certificate.  When I visited Israel in 1999, I asked the tour guide why all the buildings were made of brick or masonry.  Despite these many trees of goodwill, our Jewish homeland never generated much lumber.  Even Solomon had to get the Temple's cedar from elsewhere, but he conscripted his citizens to harvest it.  Their tzedakah boxes now have a more aesthetically pleasing artistic surface, with rounded corners, but they still have a slot and do not have a lock.

The needs of Israel today differ dramatically from that pre-1967 era.  Hostility among regional neighbors remains, though not with every neighbor.  Land purchased from funds collected to create a nascent Jewish state has enabled ownership, much like our ancestor Avraham insisted on paying Efron the Hittite to establish his ownership of at least a small plot of the land that God had promised him.  Their citizens deal with episodic lethal terror, but they also have an effective military force, educational system, modern medical care, and successful commerce.  This breakfast, and last year's, addressed an obligation of Americans to make the reality of wartime Israel less of an ordeal for the people who must engage in combat while enduring global antipathy as they try to make their lives more secure.  

Last year, the JNF became my largest single charitable donation.  While the organizers of this annual breakfast plan the program around dollars, they will have to wait until later in the year for mine.  My age requires me to withdraw from my IRA each year.  Transferring charitable funds from that account directly to non-profits eases my tax bite, so no pledges from me at this gathering.  Instead, this event has an important social function, one a little different this year than last.

Who attends?  The JNF sponsors this breakfast at no charge to those in attendance, other than we pay our own parking at a nearby garage.  They rent a room in the town's most iconic hotel, some might also say most pretentious hotel.  All JNF events are Kosher.  Since they would likely get permission to Kasher the Vatican kitchen before the hotel will allow this, the organization prepares its food in a mobile facility off-site and transports it to the suite where their meetings occur.  Last year the hotel rented the JNF a larger room, one with ample room to allow people to pour themselves some coffee.  Last year being an election year, candidates also came in support of our Jewish community.  This year the alloted room had less space in a more obscure location in the middle of a lengthy corridor.  A registration table greeted us, taking only minutes.  Literature about JNF projects seemed sparse at an adjacent table outside the meeting room.  To compensate, each place setting not only had high end disposable dishes, but three informational handouts describing the organization's work.  A small table with coffee service had been placed in the back.  But the room being smaller and the larger attendance pretty much eliminated people circulating around the room and greeting each other.  The tighter space compelled people to choose their tables quickly.  Each table had food:  a bowl of bagels, trays of rounded scoops of cream cheese, lox, fruit, pastry, veggies.  A bowl of whitefish.  The centerpiece in the middle had JNF branding.  It was too tall to allow either exchange with people across the table and too wide to easily access trays of food of all types.  My chair kept bagels, lox, and the cream cheese scoops within sight and reach.  Other items were not readily accessible to add to my plate.  The bagel, slice of lox, and vegetable cream cheese made a satisfying breakfast, supplemented with the coffee I had poured when I entered.

People self-segregate into tables.  One had only members of my congregation, others people who go to other shuls.  In my working years, I could count on meeting more than five people for the first time every work day.  I miss that in retirement.  At these events, I make an effort to select a table with people I do not know.  The person next to me turned out to be an interesting chap.  We attended the same university, graduating seven years apart.  He went into finance.  He now matches private funding with Jewish organizations, mostly legacy agencies like the JNF.  He seemed reassured when I told him this non-profit stands at the top of my list.  He pressed me about other agencies, but I would not offer him a list of my also-rans.  He had an interest in our regional Jewish community.  I conveyed to him a census and analysis done by the state's Jewish Federation a year ago which outlined more entropy among our Jews over a few decades.  Population centers, once determined by the best school districts, have given way to retirement communities in places that previously had few Jews, and a shift of people whose ships had come in to some of the toniest addresses.  We agreed on some things, disagreed about the face of local and university anti-Semitism.  I think I gave him a different perspective as a small donor who practices traditional observant Judaism that differed from the machers that he usually encounters.

The speeches.  Two on what the JNF does.  As a legacy agency, its tentacles in Israel reach many places.  Our local role in the grander enterprise seems to be a focus on population shift that needs to happen within Israel for it to retain its prosperity.  The people live in metro areas there, much like Jews do in America.  Unlike America, where Jewish institutions become unavailable in the heartland, Israel's Jewish population can spread out and retain the synagogues, schools, and medical facilities that everyone needs as the Jewish presence would continue most anywhere within the country's borders, and some would take objection when a Jewish presence emerges beyond those borders.  Speeches from senior level financial and legal machers.  Worthy cause for sure.  Impression that I am being manipulated in some way?  Hard to escape the reputation these people acquire.

Guest speaker.  An Israeli-American journalist, many experiences.  Israeli Government spokesperson.  News anchor for Christian Zionist broadcasting.  Person with immediate ties to the tragedy of the October 7 attacks and its response.  Not reticent about calling the underpinnings of Hamas evil for what it is.  Credible.  Articulate. Time better allotted to her usurped by our fundraising machers with canned, rehearsed remarks.  Would have liked more question opportunities for the audience.

By the time I needed to return to the parking garage to avoid a surcharge, I had experienced a satisfying morning.  It was a little early, but I suspect the organizers in expensive suits had to return to their law firms for a work day.  Like me, people in that room had an identity to protect.  Judaism and Israel are linked, something exploited by anti-Semites who have pried the manhole covers off a subject once taboo but always present in dark spaces.  We have a successful Jewish sovereign state, strong, independent, productive.  Americans with JNF boxes helped bring that about.  I would have like to see the morning's format a little different, the hotel surroundings more conducive to mingling, perhaps even considering assigned tables so that congregations have their members sitting among different people.  Later in the calendar year, people of my age will take a day or two to allocate portions of our IRA's for noble causes, including gifts to the JNF.