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.

Respite from Shul

Too much.  When our Torah reader took ill, I overextended my skill by pitching in.  I don't think my skill really expanded from the effort.  They needed a ba-al shacharit or a haftarah done on short notice.  No problem, though that haftarah had more tongue twisters than I might have expected.  Need somebody to give a seminar at AKSE Academy?  I'll pitch in.  Too much.  I'm taking a month off, though not exactly since they got a little desperate for another Torah reading at mid-month.  I was not really the last resort but the easiest low-hanging fruit to pluck.

And we have Super Sunday which resurrects some of my worst Jewish experiences.  And two guys who I thought I could generated a learned discussion resorted to sloganeering as its surrogate.  I need a break.  I just lack the patience of a rabbi and any compensation for having that level of patience.

February almost never has five shabbatot but I lucked out this year, probably for the last time in my lifetime.  I put myself on the Gabbai's Do Not Call list.

So what might I do with four shabbatot off?  Haven't been to Chabad in ages.  Usually I worship at Beth Tfiloh one shabbos in February each year.  No real interest in driving to a shul I've never been to before, though I have done that in the past.  Or I could just say no shul in February, other than what I have already obligated.  Depends on whether it is shul that irritates me or my shul that irritates me.  Not sure yet.

Super Sunday's Defector

Last week I gave a public seminar on Jewish attrition which is really a subset of religious attrition.  It takes many forms, and unless one is among those Church Centered people that Stephen Covey, z"l, so vigorously downgraded in his 7 Habits, we all probably have some element of this.   I've been on Federation's Do Not Call List for 25 years and I do not expect a solicitation today.  Indeed, many Federations and other fundraising organizations have written off their small donors as not worth the effort or the telephone earfuls that their contributions would bring.  I've not forsaken tzedakah, quite the opposite, just fired my agent for doing this in 1995 and brought this vital initiative In House.

I think the attrition from Judaism that we see now is really Leadership Generated Attrition, the just deserts of how people see themselves as being treated, whether accurate or not.  Of course those machers told each other how wonderful their leadership efforts were.  Defectors were by definition, inferior Jews or ingrates.  Probably not true then and not true now as their leadership clones who have taken up the baton look at how to make the best of their current circumstances.

For me, the experience violated some of the most basic needs of the Animal Kingdom.  We all devote our efforts to looking for food, avoiding predators, and reproducing.  I gathered food and a good deal of professional and personal satisfaction externally to the herd, found a fair number of predators from within, and had to protect one of my offspring.  Even looking at the herd for the security and opportunity it provides, the losers of the rut who are put in subservient positions may start seeking a different herd where they can flourish more effectively.  That's me.  That's a lot of people.  It's not everyone.  They'd have real tzuris if it were.  The disaffiliation composite speaks for itself.  The rut through which the people of title emerge will just have to engage smaller herds.

Disengagement

This year marks the Chai anniversary of a seminal, oft cited sociological treatise, Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone.  I've never read it but plan to when I complete the novel that I had earmarked for the second half of 2018.  Basically, he traces the decline of participation in organized social activities over about a generation prior to its publication.  As I retire, I find myself removed from my last pageant, the daily professional adventures of endocrinology.  I pay dues to a few things, the national and Philadelphia Endocrine Societies, Adas Kodesch Shel Emeth synagogue and its men's club.  I no longer pay dues to the American College of Physicians, the Medical Society of Delaware, the American Medical Association, nor have I been a financial participant with the Jewish Federation of Delaware for over 20 years.  I register Democrat, vote Democrat more often than not, but have never been a more than a nominal donor.  I am a proud alumnus of two fine universities.  Any donation to the larger one would not move their fortunes at all and would not be sufficient in amount to get my name engraved on a flush handle anywhere on campus.  My fondness for my medical school knows no bounds and they do get some money with no hesitation, but I do not really belong to any of its organizations.

Since Woody Allen accurately recognized that 80% of life is showing up, I do not show up all that much.  There is the annual Endocrine Society Meeting, too expensive now without the hospital subsidy.  The local Endocrine Society Meeting which occurs monthly will continue, though I have not really made a lot of new friends there.  I go to shul on shabbos but I never get the sense that my intellect and energy have much value to the leadership so activities of years past have atrophied.  As soon as I retired, I volunteered for a Democratic campaign.  One candidate took interest but not much became of it.  I signed up on their web site as a willing participant but I think their executive director would prefer Beautiful People with money or yes men who will not have the candor to tell them when they might be undermining their own potential electoral support.  In summary, I look like a prototypical Bowling Alone  individual model.

Despite not having been a meaningful Federation donor since 1994, though supportive of some of their constituent agencies generous with funding of Jewish projects elsewhere that would likely have gone to them were the experience better, for some reason I found myself back on the mailing list of Federation's monthly, used to be biweekly, publication.  It is kept on a display rack at shul, where I have browsed titles, clenching my teeth perhaps when I come across something that praises one of my travails of decades past, but never read any of the articles.  I recognize some authors, sometimes written by people of laudable presence, sometimes by people I found venal, but mostly not known to me, with expected turnover of participants expected over my twenty odd years of avoidance or maybe more active shunning, while I become a part of a larger trend of Jewish participatory entropy.

Two articles appeared in print recently, one from a globally distributed publication The Forward and the other a locally distributed Jewish Voice, the periodical of the Jewish Federation near my home.  They look at the Holy Days and at Judaism's trends in America very differently.

https://forward.com/opinion/407183/so-called-jews-of-no-religion-are-the-impetus-for-a-jewish-revolution/   "So Called Jews of No Religion are the Impetus for a Jewish Revolution"

Has the significance of the High Holy Days changed for you across the years?http://www.omagdigital.com/publication/?i=521893&p=&pn=#{%22issue_id%22:521893,%22page%22:36}

Has the significance of the Holy Days changed?  For the Rabbis responding to the question in The Jewish Voice, they are the anchors of tradition, at least in their homes, where families gather.  It's a form of keva, familiar people not seen in a while, familiar recipes on the table, familiar tunes that get brought out once yearly.  There are some elements of that for me, though very different from what it once was.  My attachment to the Yomim Noraim probably ended in college.  In high school teens were isolated by my synagogue to sit for a reduced fee in the mezzanine of a local movie theater that was rented for the occasion.  The people with me I knew from school, yet for those days we were separate from school.  While afforded unimportant status, we had the best seats and always air conditioned.  In college, the Holy Days were always a mixture of new people, the freshmen, and old friends not seen since the year before. There was community, even if limited to showing up there while the rest of the students threw frisbees in the quad.  We wore ties, something that would not happen again for a lot of us until next Rosh Hashana.  There were no longer familiar foods,  We separated from our families to be with other students.  I could sit anywhere in the auditorium I wanted, or at least on my side of the mechitza.  We had students conduct the service.  It was ours.  Graduations came and that was all gone, never to be recaptured.  Returning to a suburban synagogue, something just shy of a cathedral, with lots of people there who would never be seen again, not at work, in class, or in synagogue until next year prodded my cynical yetzer, neither tov nor ra but probably accurate.  I stopped focusing on the Holy Days as central, looked at those services as maybe a civilization reversal from the core of Judaism which is how you live on all the other days.  The respect for institution took a hit and it never recovered.

From the perspective of the Forward, in the article written by their editor in chief, I may have been a generation ahead of my time.  Attachment to the institutions and even to the practices did not sustain itself.  We can argue whether I helped bring it down as part of my generation or simply watched others do the things that made participation in the institutions unattractive, but there really are Jews, very valuable ones, who have departed not only the institutions but the beliefs that those institutions were designed to promote.  They have no compelling reason to recapture the recipes their grandparents made or to fly back to their hometowns, something their great-grandparents could not have done even if they wanted to.  While assembly of family for the Holy Days re-establishes this as sacred time for some, in the greater reality of Jewish history and American Jewish history in particular, there is a bit of myth to this.  People changed towns frequently, which is why the various desciples of the Ba-al Shem Tov are all known by their name and by the place they established their community.  In America, the reassembling of families only goes back about three generations though may be a central attribute for that middle generation, which is mine.

Rather, Bowling Alone, the hesitance to affiliate, affects Judaism as much as it affects political participation, attendance at PTA meetings, or enrollment in bowling leagues.  While the Holy Days offer a focus, a set time or keva to declare Jewishness if only for a few days, they do not really reverse what seem to be mega-trends, and alas, probably for cause.

Judaism's Gospel of Wealth

As a high schooler, I received an assignment in history class to read and report on Andrew Carnegie's Gospel of Wealth.  He took the position that certain projects of public benefit needed concentrations of money to be effective.  To distribute small amounts to everyone would leave everyone unserved but investment in a large project could be accessed by everyone.  The Jewish World has taken that position, creating a very effective network of social services and advocacy that is highly dependent on a few large donors.  In exchange they acquire a certain amount of influence and can hire talent of lesser personal means to implement programs.  The price, though, may be resentment by the nobodies, some of whom become somebodies, unwelcome without wealth and disinclined to sign on when they now have wealth.

Jay Ruderman, scion of the Meditech fortune that makes my hospital function and director of the Foundation that received the proceeds, issued a blog in the Times of Israel expressing legitimate concern for how these institutions will continue their good work as the top talent begins to retire and as the next generation turns interest to hospitals and museums instead of Federations and synagogues.

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/a-once-in-a-generation-chance-to-transform-judaism-from-the-top-down/

As I retire from clinical practice soon, having spent about half my career in the Catholic health system, I'm haunted a little by how much better they treated me from one institution to the next than the Jewish organizations did.  Even as a nobody, my Jesuit medical school and Catholic residency hospital instilled some importance.  They wanted me.  Jewish Federation wanted my possessions, be it my treasure or the medical degree that would be parlayed into treasure later.  I felt convenient at times, troublesome at times, but never unconditionally important the way I was in my medical environments.  Undoubtedly my assessment of my experience gets played out many times over in the form of attrition and a desire to leave Judaism to their and my betters while I pick and choose those Jewish menu items attractive to me at the time with no serious instilled loyalty.

Yes, Andrew Carnegie imparted an important lesson that was adopted by the Jewish people of means to be generous in community needs.  Where they may diverge, though, is the expectation that anybody could go to a Carnegie library or a Carnegie Hall to derive benefit.  He made sure there was no aristocracy.  That does not seem to be true of Jewish wealth which seems far more inbred with a current uncertainty of succession and a participation that seems a fraction of what it could have been.  Money will only get you so far.  I've been a member of two synagogues that were highly endowed but eventually did not have people for a minyan to read Torah on shabbos.  Money to sustain programming and initiatives matters but talent and loyalty makes the organizations vibrant.  We seem to have sacrificed that.  It may be hard to recapture, especially if leadership takes on the form of a cloning experiment.  I agree with Jay Ruderman that the face of Judaism is a lot different now than when the original benefactors took charge.  I would be a bit skeptical though to think that the generosity to social nobodies is any different.

Money Talks

This nicely written essay appeared in The Forward as an opinion piece by Jay Ruderman, head of his family's charitable foundation.  As a young physician more than thirty years ago, new to town and to synagogue, word got out that a new couple of young professionals with obvious dedication to Jewish life and with traditional observance had latched on to the Conservative shul. Invitations to join the Federation's Young Leadership program followed shortly.  It did not take too many sessions of attendance to realize that the local leaders who addressed us valued our potential future income a lot more than they valued the intellect and dedication that had gotten us to our entry point with them.  Attrition from the program was high, respect for leadership of that type a lot less than it could have been, and ability to withstand strains that inevitably arise over decades, basically non-existent.  They went for the money over the people and got what they sought but at an enormous and likely irreversible consequence. 

Jay Ruderman in The Forward.  Me  

 I don’t presume to know all the positive attributes that define true leadership in our age, but I can confidently tell you what does not, by itself, constitute a good Jewish leader: money.

Reb Tevye on Broadway challenged this "If I were a Rich Man" lyrics when he observed, "if you're rich they thing you really know."

Financial capacity to donate to an organization or a cause is not the same as leadership — and yet, all too frequently, Jewish organizations treat their funders as leaders. As a result, they end up with a lack of authentic visionaries.

It’s not hard to see why such a “leadership” culture has emerged in the Jewish community. Every organization is looking to expand funding in a fickle marketplace. In order to raise dollars, organizations identify the wealthiest people in the community, recruit them and cultivate their giving over time.

Not content just to give money to a good cause, many donors demand an outsized role in decision making, and organizations that want to keep them happy comply, fawningly.

They cultivate more than their giving.  In effect, they are often made proportionate share holders much like a corporation would, with elements of authority that go with it.  For self-made wealth, experience with assembling professional teams to carry out articulated missions may be part of what these people already do successfully.  For inherited wealth it is probably not.

Even when donors do not initially demand a leadership role, organizations often seek to empower them because they know they are more likely to clinch the donors’ gifts, turn them into loyal supporters and raise more funds from their friends. In effect, Jewish organizations have developed a wealthy cheerleader system that is optimally designed for raising money but not necessarily for accomplishing their mission.

But accomplishing the mission goes more easily when the funds are secure.

It’s understandable that wealthy people have a voice — even a disproportionate voice — in organizational life. The problem arises when that voice drowns out everyone else’s, completely obscuring the democratic ethos of Jewish civic life.

I'm not sure Jewish civic life was traditionally democratic.  Tanach is replete with hierarchy, mostly merit based until you get to Kings when the inherited nature of the position makes worthiness more hit and miss.  While Moshe was sensitive to the kvetch's of the rank and file, later on others would sell vulnerable people down the river for a pair of shoes.  In more modern times it would not be the Rabbi's son selected from the community to serve in the Czar's Army but an orphan who was deemed expendable.  The idea of everybody being a contributor, one man-one vote, is a very Western one that had infused itself into American life in all its facets, including Judaism.  Thus the great outcry in my former congregation when three machers got together, pooled their ample funds and took it upon themselves to overcompensate the Rabbi with a deal he could not refuse so that the rest of us would not have the opportunity to engage in a divisive discussion over contract renewal.  This is very real, and for those who are not nurtured into the organization, it invites attrition Pew Research style.

This dynamic undoubtedly exists in secular philanthropic circles as well, but it is decidedly more pronounced in the Jewish community. My experience is that in secular philanthropy there is often a much brighter line between giving and leadership. There is frequently an active group of donors who finance the organization’s work, and a set of leaders who provide vision, direction and insight. Sometimes there is overlap and sometimes there isn’t.

Much depends on the organization.  If you have a university, symphony or humanitarian organization, nothing would happen without relatively scarce talent being offered a chance to perform.  I could probably say the same about JTS or the Joint Distribution Community in the Jewish world where use of the funds is defined and Rabbis or humanitarian professionals need the freedom to implement what the organization does.  Not so for Federations whose purpose is to raise money or even synagogues, or churches for that matter, where the professional talent is not as scarce and does not need to be quite in the upper tier.

So the conflation of leadership with fundraising is not inevitable. What’s more, this perverse concept of leadership hurts the Jewish community in several ways.

First, it hands the keys to people who may have little leadership ability or insight, at least in the sphere of Jewish organizational life. Being a good businessperson does not necessarily make you an effective lay leader.

Second, it blinds organizations to highly talented people in our community who may possess tremendous leadership qualities but not deep pockets. With the need to raise more money, many organizations fill all the seats with big donors and overlook genuinely capable leaders.

Third, it makes us look like an elitist community catering to the few, and pushes away younger Jews who don’t find a donor-dominated establishment the least bit appealing.

And it affects how the upper tier views the others.  An anecdote serves well.  As a young physician in a congregation that did not have that many congregants with serious bimah skills, the one where three guys driving their Jew Canoe took it upon themselves to dispatch the Rabbi, I would read Torah on one of the Yomim Noraim days each year.  Since I could do any day, and did over the course of about a dozen years there, a who's who of the shul's law firm partners, retail moguls and the like would pay a handsome some for their reserved Aliyah each year, virtually all men slightly my senior, though the congregation had been egalitarian for some time.  As the  Olim came and went, they greeted each other with a generous handshake or hug but there were rather few handshakes to me as the Reader or the Gabbaim.  My yasher koach came as I returned to my seat from people who knew that these readings took some effort.  While I did my portion as a service to the shul with no expectation of a reward, the identification of not being one of THEM has remained long after my exit from that shul.  I am the reader again at my current shul, less of an annual Aliyah Recycling Center for big donors, and am greeted very differently by the Olim.  It is notice in ways big and small.

This confusion about leadership can produce abysmal results. Time and again, ideologically driven funders demand that their organizations shun left-of-center voices on Israel that criticize Israeli government policy. Numerous synagogues have invited and then disinvited speakers, such as Peter Beinart, simply because a small group or even a single donor has threatened to cut off financial support. These funders do a disservice to the organizations they support, which end up alienating younger Jews and appearing closed-minded and weak. In the end, the funders unwittingly strengthen the very groups and voices they try to weaken.  

This phenomenon is not necessarily money driven, but sometimes a reflection of authority as in the case of an Orthodox Rabbi who evicted a congregant on shabbat for following the Torah reading in his personal Etz Chaim Chumash.  We have some of that in our congregation where some of our congregants will openly disparage some regional college students at a Board Meeting for taking a lenient position on Middle Eastern affairs.  The irony is that these same guys would probably give their right gonad to have those highly educated, young Jews with good future financial prospects show any interest whatever in becoming part of our congregation as paying members, or even non-paying new courtesy members, especially men with bimah skills.

While it may not be easy, it is possible to say no to these donors. The leadership of the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington, for example, publicly declared that they would not give in to the pressure of outside agitators demanding that the federation defund a local Jewish community center for showing a controversial play about Israel. In an open letter to the community, federation leaders stated, “It is our job to live up to the ideals of Abraham, to create an open tent for all Jews, to demonstrate our love of Israel and the Jewish people everywhere.” That’s rare, but true, leadership.

At other moments, I’ve been struck at how weak-kneed Jewish philanthropists have been in the face of serious challenges. When Israel’s religious affairs minister, David Azoulay, declared that he “cannot allow” himself to say that a Reform Jew is a Jew, there was hardly a peep from anyone but the leaders of the denominations. Where were all the voices of courage, I wondered, to challenge this obvious affront to the interests of the American Jewish community, not to mention Israeli society?

Would it be too much to expect Orthodox Jewish philanthropists or organizational leaders who otherwise dedicate themselves to advancing bilateral ties to speak out against the attack on Reform Judaism?

Sometimes silence says a lot.  I'm sure that organizational leaders promote pluralism within their organizations.  In my relatively small community, interdependence of the denominations is essential though in larger communities the denominations are often more secure and insular.

The sad fact is that our donor-leader class often remains silent when it shouldn’t, and speaks out when it shouldn’t.

Unfortunately, except in blatant situations, it is not always obvious which situations merit the most vigorous response, nor is it possible to assess consequences of silence or in your face comments accurately.  Again, this is a leadership challenge, hardly unique to large donors.

By handing power to people with money irrespective of their leadership capacity or insight, we are cheating our community of what we all deserve. We can do better.

I'm not convinced it is being handed to them as much as they are assessing their own entitlement and taking the authority that they assess their generosity offers them.  

Lest we think this is unique to Jewish organizations, it is now well ingrained in other aspects of our lives including who we elect to represent us politically with parallel underperformance of public institutions.

My thanks to Mr. Ruderman, who I assume is a member of the donor class, for enabling some feedback from the peasant class.

Disbursing My Treasure

When I put myself of Federation's Do Not Call list fifteen years ago after some experiences that justified my becoming one of the Pew Research Center Study drop-outs, I did not pocket the donations but distributed them myself, first bi-monthly for a couple of years, then monthly until last year, and now quarterly, though monthly was better.  Quarterly allows me to spend too much time on my figurative High Horse from which I tease out relative worthiness and themes.  So last quarter I sent checks to support Israel's security and Jewish camping to the neglect of people in my community whose lives are currently a little more precarious than mine.  So this quarter it looks like the checks will go to forms of outreach, some religious, some social.  I think randomness of support, or really inclusivity of support, better reflects the concept of Tzedakah, so I think I will return to the previous format next month

.

Disconnected

Somebody needed to say Kaddish and I have a male phenotype.  Seemed like a good match, particularly with a personal invitation asking me if I could attend, so I went to minyan for the transition of Yom Tov Pesach into chol hamoed.  Pesach can often leave me tired, between the preparation, lateness of Sedarim, and patient obligations during the daylight hours which can be considerable, though on yontiff I try to limit this activity to immediate patient care and maybe some scholarship that I might not otherwise accomplish, leaving the more marginal tasks of billing and charting for another time.  I had not eaten since the second Seder, other than some coffee with breakfast and a bissel more in a travel mug that I use for Pesach.  Mincha would take place at 7:30 which would leave a twenty minute break before Maariv and Havdalah.  Duriing that interlude, I wandered the hall which contained a copy of The Jewish Voice, the newsprint periodical of our Federation and its constituent agencies, which I read, or at least passed over the large print headlines, for the first time in several years.

Now, I've been on the Do Not Call list for nearly two decades, according to their own statistics leaving me among the 18% of those solicited who do not pledge a donation.  My tzedakah checks are many times greater than they were when I first walked away, but they are given directly to all sorts of agencies, about twelve a year with a note thanking the participants of each agency for their part of the Jewish mission of Tikkun Olam.  I am engaged in that, but very much put off by the Beautiful People who always seemed more interested in acquiring a share of my possessions than they were of generating a sense of purpose from my outlook on Judaism and the world.  It had a leadership of fundamentally decent people who failed part 2 of the University Honor Code.  Part 1: engage in proper conduct, pretty easy.  Part 2: Do not tolerate improper conduct, a little harder when you have to confront similarly protege Beautiful People engaging in misconduct and taking it upon themselves to sacrifice outliers in the name of Kehillah.  Not real hard to tell the phone solicitor to deactivate my phone number from her list, but in a polite way.  From the attrition that accrued, there were probably quite a lot of Me offshoots with similar adverse experience.

And for a while I was hostile, writing in my journal pages of actual experience.  But they never disconnected me from the mailing list to receive their newspaper every two weeks until a few years back when they decided to move to an online format.  The Voice would arrive before shabbos about twice a month.  I would read it selectively, mostly Obits and Nachas Nook where the other life cycle events would be announced.  Most of the time I new somebody named there.  But there was still a clear contempt for them who done me wrong or underperformed though their own herd mentality, though never publicly expressed.  Some things I would not read, generated mostly by my personal contempt for its author.  But each edition had the pages turned, shared with my wife, discussed minimally if at all, then placed in a bag for recycling.

For good reason, print gives way to words on screens, searchable formats which enable further exploration.  While I'm hardly a Luddite, having given up my slide rule and illegibly written paper medical charts with little protest, I'm still a sucker for the printed page.  My New England Journal comes every week in print and screen, but I read the print.  I wouldn't skip the Orthodox Union's Jewish Action and read the USCJ's CJ Voices, both in their print edition.  Most of the recipes I use to make special dinners still come from cookbooks.  But I'm engaged in medicine, cooking and Jewish ideas so I keep myself in the loop, which still means lying on the couch reading.  I'm not engaged in Federation, functioning quite well as an expatriate who has moved on to other variations of Kehillah and Mitzvot more in step with what I aspire to.

So here on a visible shelf in AKSE's hall, I encounter The Jewish Voice, not seen at all for a few years, which I open and glance at the large print.  No hostility or irritation this time.  Mostly indifference.  It had no emotional impact, not something that would induce me to resume participation nor anything that would resurrect adverse experience that I had long since escaped.  Articles of basically trivial people telling each other how wonderful they all are.  Synagogue advertising from congregations who had seen better days, soliciting those hungry for Kehillah to get out their checkbooks in anticipation of wonderful experiences that I did not really have when I was at those synagogues.  And Obits.  No emotional reaction one way or the other but a sense that what I was reading had a spin that misrepresented the reality that moved me along.  Indifference to what I was reading, which may bode less well than hostility.

Annual Donations

When I told the Federation solicitor to put me on their Do Not Call list for cause in 1995, it was not my intent to separate myself from the community, only to redefine what the community obligations entail.  In the ensuing years, until last year, each month I would write a check to a component of the Jewish communal labyrinth with a note of appreciation for the efforts of their staff and volunteers on the importance of the work that they do.  I would never fall seriously behind on the donations until last year when I procrastinated this task until the fall.  This year I find myself having given bupkis as we enter December, neglecting both my need to be supportive and my need to express hakaras ha-tov for the good work all these people do.  While it is mandatory that I share my good fortune to assist with beneficial projects and remain within the Jewish communal undertone, I'm also a little more separated as the Pew Research study suggests.  As my fondness for my synagogue experience becomes more marginal, it takes other components of Jewish connection with it.  I read books, I make a concerted effort to study Torah and write about Jewish subjects and the Jewish experience, but as I transition from participant to observer I seem less driven to make this communal network, more than 100 years in creation, live on in perpetuity.

That said, these twelve monthly contributions and notes of appreciation plus a little extra for WashU Hillel and Mesorah Heritage Foundation will be in the mail by shabbos.

Unworthy

Why have the mainstream Jewish organizations spiraled downward during my adult lifetime?  That's been my exploration while I put my own principal organizational attachment, the synagogue to which I pay an exorbitant fee to belong, on the back burner for the second half of this calendar year.  I've now read pretty much what I plan to read on this and take Ron Wolfson's advice to tell my story.  We each have our story.  For every patient encounter I start by soliciting theirs, either verbally of by review of records or more typically a combination.  If I am successful as a physician, the ability and the obligation to connect with those multitudes of tales has enabled that.

So I'll start with two vignettes, same theme but fifty years apart.  The first took place as a camper at Ramah in Wingdale,NY the first year it was opened.  The grand poobah's of Conservative Judaism put a lot of effort into this, creating a living Jewish environment, deluding themselves into thinking our evolving language capacity will enable reasonable facility with conversational Hebrew, all to attract their most promising students, the people that their crystal balls told them would propel Conservative Judaism into the next generation as a vibrant and enduring branch of American Jewish ideology.  At the conclusion of the summer, the head counselor assembled all the campers to offer his final charge to the departing crew.  Few remarks remain with me for half a century but he indicated that the dozen or so kids who got homesick or did not have a good enough time to tough it out and left early were not real Ramah caliber campers.  They were inferior in some way, not the leaders that the camp sought to develop.  Well, it turns out that I did not have an Ace time there either but toughed it out partly for lack  of a better alternative and not wanting my parents to experience financial loss.  But I made it clear to them and to my Rabbi who was very much attached to the Ramah program, that I would not be going back.  Most of our congregational children had a similar experience and similar response.  While they tried to negotiate with me the option of waiving the camp's rules and allowing my attendance at a site other than the one determined by my home town, I would want no part of chancing that type of summer again.  And of course the assumption was that there is something wrong with me for not appreciating what was offered to me, irrespective of my assessment of the actual experience.

We fast forward to the most recent High Holiday where I encountered the same thought process transposed to a different situation.  Again, amid attrition threatening existence, the treasurer appealed to the congregation for voluntary supplement to dues, including in his remarks that the people who remained were the worthy members.  Anyone who preferred something else or even nothing had to be less worthy in some way.  Not, let's become more adaptive but let's get more money so we can do more of the same for the people who really deserve it.

In between, there have been no shortage of similar messages.  How can you snub a communal leader?   I found the experience with him or her vile, that's how.  How can you not give to Federation's SuperSunday campaign?  Like the other 18% who decline, I had an adverse experience with the leadership or the funded agencies.  There must be something inferior about me if I walk away from irritating Aliyah Sound Bites and find the congregational leadership too inbred.  It takes a while but eventually this Leadership Development Cloning Experiment yields its results.  They are left with worthy loyalists who tell each other how wonderful they all are while the human chaff floats around someplace else in the Jewish environment, adding to its entropy.

Machers

The Forward presented an intriguing post-election opinion piece:  http://blogs.forward.com/forward-thinking/165594/bad-night-for-the-jewish-echo-chamber/

Its author contends, correctly I think, that Jewish voters largely disregarded their leaders' position on which candidate best serves Israel's interests and instead voted for the other candidate who better reflected a position that American participation is not the exclusive province of Committees of Rich People.  Jewish exit polling in the election certainly reflects this reality politically but I think religiously and organizationally this has been a work in progress for some time.

For most of the 1980's and 1990's I read Torah at the USCJ affiliate one of the High Holy Days.  Without editorializing more than necessary, this place had its macher swoops and king makers and ad hoc self-appointed Committees of Rich people.  To get an aliyah those days you had to have enough funds and be generous in dispersing them to purchase an annual Hazakah.  What struck me as I completed the reading of each aliyah was that the Olim greeted each other warmly but if they shook my hand or the Gabbai's hand at all it was much more perfunctory.  There was no serious recognition of the effort that a competent reading entailed or the planning that the people running the make it or break it annual event that portends the congregation's fortunes each year put into it.  Rather this was an entitlement,a perk of philanthropy and the leadership it brings.  Everyone else is hired help.  There was nothing evil about those people, just that entitlement and less than ideal sensitivity to what others might think.  My wife headed a Rabbi Search Committee.  After inviting a candidate to speak to the congregation in an open forum, one of the kingmakers polled her friends, then came of over to my wife to inform her that "the money people don't like him."

We are obligated to have a President so people vote at the polls.  We are not mandated to have a shul or a Federation so people vote with their feet and checkbooks.  And thus over a generation we encounter a form of leader generated attrition.  The coin of the Jewish realm has been re-minted from talent and energy to money and loyalty.  The voters of America demonstrated that there are limits to what machers can do to impose their will.  In many elements of the Jewish world they have imposed their will for some time and continue to congratulate each other while they preside over a much less vibrant empires than they could have had.