Sacred Cows No More

My communal stock must be ascending.  Last year's Federation Super Sunday phone solicitation came from a pleasant functionary of no standing reading a script.  I stopped the script, bantered a bit.  He had neither the experience nor the wit to respond to my unwillingness to be part of any formal Federation Campaign since I dropped out in 1995 following an adverse experience with some of their people of title who did not make it quite to the midpoint of my patent pending Jewish Dignity Meter.  Indeed, a couple annual solicitations later, usually from some very nice people who I knew well who did not read from a script, I just opted for their Do Not Call list, which they respected for about another 25 years.  I never elaborated on my experience, which I assess at the intersection of dishonesty and cruelty even decades later, nor did anyone ever solicit the story.  One of the downfalls of Leadership Modeled secular, or perhaps even Orthodox Judaism, is the assumption among the proteges, imparted as part of formal Leadership Training, is that disgruntled people must be ingrates or in some identifiable if not obvious way, inferior and not worthy of what the Leadership offers.  And that assessment probably began in my Hebrew School years, persisting to this minute.  And attrition over those sixty or so years hints that my assessment is accurate.  There is a form of Leadership Generated Attrition, and my response to my own experience provides just one more illustration.

What I did instead, though, as my wife's hand shook from verbal threats conveyed by telephone from a titled critter with leverage over us, was to personalize my own Judaism.  By this time, The Jewish Catalog had issued all its volumes, each widely read.  Much of the population figured out that they could have shabbos without the synagogue, vacation someplace other than Grossinger's, support Soviet Jewish emigration, and learn enough Hebrew external to the darlings of the day school to acquire proficiency on the bimah.  Shabbos does not have to start with candle lighting and end with havdalah.  It could start with kiddush.  If breakfast out can only be done on Saturday morning and the camaraderie of the diner's counter exceeds any spiritual benefit of shul, then shabbos concludes that morning.  Or maybe it doesn't conclude if the activity is special to Saturday morning.  I am commanded to share my treasure as Tzedakah.  That treasure is not so large as to run any agency when donated or harm any agency when withheld.  I can walk away from the venal Rabbi's if I wish and redirect my communal allotment to a Jewish nursing home, an independent advocacy group, a school, a museum, a place from my past where I found acceptance exceeding what I experience now.  

If machers need to mistreat somebody, I'm the right person.  I can handle it.  I can walk away.  Mistreating somebody captive, whether my wife, a struggling child, a friend, or somebody who I see as vulnerable doesn't cut it.  And while I did not walk away, I took control, personalized everything.  I changed shuls.  And as the Federation solicitors learned today, I repackaged my entire tzedakah program.  As I approach thirty years of doing this, there have been very few revisions, mostly to enhance amounts and number of recipients, to move money away from my synagogue in the direction of my own Jewish past and what I think my parents would have found a more meaningful destination when their yahrtzeit's arise.  My kashrut standards have become more strict.  My shabbos more traditional.  Some Sacred Cows Schechted, primarily ones that define leadership and remind me of a USY clique.  Those memories are long past, some of the hurt of exclusion remembered then and felt now.  But opportunities for engagement as technology has enabled niches and interaction not previously available to me.

Ironically, last year and this, Federation solicited me because I had resumed making a donation to the communal umbrella once again.  A three digit figure, not the four digit amount somebody anticipating a move to a higher leadership title would donate, or shake somebody else down to donate.  They mistakenly thought I was back in their whirl.  Last year's call came from a functionary, this year's from a very experienced participant guiding a newer participant.  I made it clear, that my tzedakah initiatives, which now include their agency as a beneficiary, is still my creation functioning successfully for nearly thirty years.  Make a pledge?  No.  Need a reminder a year after my last credit card authorization?  No, my process works just fine.  Back on Do Not Call list?  One less call to make, one less disheartening rejection for the caller.

In good times and strained times, I've known virtually all the people who have had me on their Super Sunday call list.  A shabbos or two before each designated Sunday, Rabbi's announce the event from their bimahs, sometimes with a reminder to their congregants, that if a kid calls avoid being harsh with them.  I've never been strident, even in those horrible years of the early 1990s when I opted out.  I simply asked for my pledge card, which their operatives were instructed by their Fundraising Chairmen not to send, but always relented when told it would be no money unless I filled out the amount myself.  Then it arrived in the mail shortly thereafter and was returned with a check, whose decreasing amount reflected more my irritation than my prosperity.

I've never been called by a teenager.  Some are angling for acceptance by their group, others for something assertive to put on their college applications.  I do get called by students of my two alma maters, part of their obligation to obtain financial assistance to attend.  I do not pledge money over the phone.  Send me a note and they will get something.  And I fulfill my end.  How would I handle a teen who is being told that soliciting funds for a worthy cause is part of one's worthiness of Jewish leadership?  I would never tell my tale of woe.  I would tell what I what told the very experienced solicitor, who is himself often a personal irritant, though in a different way.  Giving money to Jewish causes is a Divine commandment that I fulfill.  I have a successful way of assessing amounts, destinations, and times.  Creating that process, tweaking it periodically, and moving on from unhappy experiences is also part of being a successful Jew.  The ability to do that and maintain it for thirty years has value to me far in excess of any title the community might offer.  The Leadership curriculum may hint that people licking their wounds are inferior and deserved those wounds if they were real at all, not just perceived, are defective in some way.  I'm not defective.  Just deprived of kindness when my family was vulnerable.  I learned not to do that.  And while that teen will go away without the pledge she seeks, her rabbi need not warn me to be cordial when the call arrives.