The Joint

March 4, 2009

By chance, I was near the front of the rugby scrum at the door to the #480 bus for the trip to Jerusalem. Standing next to me was an elderly British couple. Anybody who has travelled to Great Britain knows that the British have perfected the practice of lining up. As the scrum started moving, the man, in a perfectly crisp British accent said, “This is not a decent queue. They are lining up all over.”

On the bus to Jerusalem to meet with Alan Gill of the American Joint Distribution Committee (the Joint), one of the primary recipients of funds from United Jewish Communities, I was thinking about the processes for allocating funds that have been contributed, whether locally or internationally. How many of you have had the privilege of serving on an allocations committee for a fundraising organization, like the Jewish Federation or the United Way? For me serving on the Allocations Committee of the Jewish Federation has been the most gratifying of the many roles I have played in the Jewish community. I think this gratification comes from four sources. First, the goal of the allocations committee is clear and compelling--the committee must make recommendations about distributing contributions and members have the opportunity to become very familiar with potential recipient organizations. Getting to know recipients means that one is very knowledgeable about where the money is going, it’s as if your own hand is directing the money. As Sydney Kimmel said at the GA in Philadelphia several years ago, Judaism is about putting one’s hand to the task. For many contributors to umbrella organizations like the Jewish Federation, the extent of their understanding of recipients is indirect, that is, they are confident that resources support many worthy projects, but they may not know exactly what. Committee members have a direct link to the recipients. Second, with the money figuratively there on the table, one is forced to examine and act on one’s values. It is morally and emotionally invigorating to articulate and act on one’s values. There is no chance to equivocate, no beating around the bush, because recommendations must be made. Third, this committee is an exhilaratingly Jewish experience because the conversations revolve around fundamental Jewish values. “Kol Yisrael areyvim ze la ze,” (all Jews are responsible, one for another) is expressed in several ways. Fundamentally, raising and allocating money is one explicit demonstration of this principle of Jewish peoplehood. There are Jews (and non-Jews) in need, so we are obliged to attend to those needs. In a narrower sense, committee members have the profound responsibility of acting on behalf of their community members, of facilitating their responsibility. Allocations are one way that we practice the mitzvah of tzedakah, the duty or obligation to attend to those in need. As it says in Deuteronomy, “If there is a needy person among you do not harden your heart and shut your hand against your needy kinsman. Rather, you must open your hand and lend him sufficient for whatever he needs…” In theological terms, we possess, but do not own the bounty of life, so we are obliged to act justly with our fellow humans. Debates, even heated debates, take place because of the respect that flows from b’tselem elohim, we are each made in the Creator’s image. The fourth reason that I am drawn to the work of allocations is that when the process works well--when the above three forces are in play—the work is fundamentally holy work. The discussions, the learning, the disagreements, arriving at consensus all weave together a holy tapestry. An outsider, a visitor from space, would look at the process and say that the Divine, the Creator, the Source is present when humans engage each other in this way.

The American Joint Distribution Committee has been an effective and influential actor in Jewish social services, since its founding in 1914, to help relieve the desperate plight of Jews of Palestine (then under Ottoman rule) and eastern Europe caught in the ravages of World War I. Ernest Eliel, of blessed memory, used to speak with love and respect for the JDC which had brought him from Germany to England, prior to the start of World War II, and then to Cuba during the war, and finally to the U.S. The lobby of the low-lying headquarters, built into a small hill directly across from the Prime Minister’s offices leaves no doubt about its mission. Arrayed along the walls, well above eye level, is a series of colorful photos of children from Ethiopia, elderly Russians, and others from the populations they serve and have served. Wrapping along the wall, under the photos, in large letters, is the Talmudic saying that “whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved the entire world.”

Alan Gill is the Executive Director of International Relations for the JDC-Israel. His family moved to Israel in 1992, from Columbus, Ohio where he had been executive director of the Jewish Federation. He is animated and passionate about the work of the Joint. There is so much to write about the Joint, but one issue that Alan helped to bring into focus was the ongoing dialogue (more accurately, dispute) between UJC and JAFI and JDC, its two primary partners in Israel. At the time of the merger in 2000 that created UJC out of the United Jewish Appeal and the Council of Jewish Federations, there was a commitment to maintain international funding for Israel and elsewhere. The Overseas Needs and Assessment and Distribution Committee (ONAD) was established to serve basically as a national allocations committee to review needs and make what can often be difficult funding decisions based on agreed upon criteria. The committee never really became functional and then Israeli politics came into play (more on that later), so the UJC ended up with a formula to fund JAFI and JDC, 75:25, from the overseas basic commitment that each community was expected to meet.

Tzedakah should not be distributed according to a “formula.” The legitimacy of the decisions made by an allocations committee in a Jewish context comes from the idea that committee members have articulated their values, at least to themselves and ideally to the group, and engaged each other in struggling to come to a recommendation. There is not one right answer when it comes to distributing funds that that have been raised communally. The contributions are never sufficient to meet all the compelling needs, needs that we are obliged to meet because all Israel is responsible one for another. The rightness of the answer comes from the struggle, both within oneself and within the group. It is the struggle that provides the fundamental legitimacy for the decisions. It is also the struggle that helps us to articulate the needs to recruit people to engage in the mitzvah of tzedakah. The UJC should not retreat from the challenging obligations of an allocations process. Instead we need to strengthen our commitment to the process. Formulas do not give adequate expression to our values.

In case you are wondering, yes, Alan and I discovered there is only one degree of separation between us. Although he had worked in Columbus, he grew up in a Cleveland suburb adjacent to where I lived and graduated from high school just 4 years after I. There’s more. One of his first summer jobs was working as an umpire under the supervison of Ed Paller, my former teacher whose son Daniel I had met on the Arava hike.