Your charitable dollars at work: UJA-Federation (New York) donates $6 million to radical Leftist New Israel Fund
I have never been a big fan of donating money to Jewish Federations in the United States. Perhaps this story will convince some of you - at least in New York - that you need more ability to control your charitable donations than donating to Federation gives you: JCC Watch reports that the New York Jewish Federation (UJA) has donated nearly $6 million to the radical Leftist New Israel Fund over the last 13 years. And UJA-JCF has kept it secret until now.
A fully-owned subsidiary of the
UJA-Federation has sent $5,836,856 to the New Israel Fund since 2002,
according to IRS form 990 filings examined by JCCWatch, with donations
of between $258,000 and $802,000, made each year for the past dozen
years.
The revelation
contradicts the public statements from the UJA-Federation chair Alisa
Doctoroff, past CEO John Ruskay and current CEO Eric Goldstein who have
misled New Yorkers to believe that the umbrella charity has no financial
connection to the New Israel Fund.
The New Israel Fund,
in turn, is the financial banker for a network of organizations that
demonize the Israeli government and the Israel Defense Forces, promote
boycotts of Israeli products and call for international criminal
proceedings against our very own Jewish state.
The findings come on the back of a JCCWatch investigation on
Tuesday that showed that UJA-Federation leadership have been
pressuring former Israeli diplomats, and the office of the
current Consul-General in New York, to give cover for their support of
the New Israel Fund to participate in this weekend's Israel Day Parade.
In 2014, the UJA-Federation reported
on the IRS form 990 that it had assets of $1.382 billion, generating
$76 million in investment income, in addition to the $167 million in new
donations it received from the Jewish community.
Buried on page 7 of its audited financial statements,
under "Additional Notes," the UJA-Federation listed an entity called
the Jewish Communal Fund, of which it is the "sole member" and has
"controlling financial interest," meaning the UJA-Federation owns the
Jewish Communal Fund, "lock, stock, and barrel."
...
Jewish Communal Fund has 25 board members
drawn mainly from the parent board of the UJA-Federation, including its
president, Alisa Doctoroff. As for supervision of the donations, from their annual report:
"All qualified grant recommendations are submitted to the Charitable
Distribution Committee of the Jewish Communal Fund’s Board of Trustees
for approval."
Reading the detail of
their grant-making guidelines, the board has two responsibilities: to
be "committed to supporting causes that promote the welfare and security
of the Jewish community here and abroad" and to "deny any grant request
where the purposes and activities of the recommended charitable
organization are deemed to be adverse to the interests of the Jewish
community."
Sickening: Israel's 'charitable' Left taking election loss out on poor
Reeling from its election loss last week, Israel's 'charitable' Left has identified the enemy: Israel's poor. The Left has decided that since the poor vote for the Likud anyway, the Left will no longer donate to charity.
The latest trend among leftists who were shocked by their defeat at
the polls Tuesday is an apparently spontaneous campaign called “Don't
Give,” which calls on people to stop donating to the poorer Israelis and
the socio-economically weaker regions known as “the periphery,” because
these Israelis insist on voting for Likud, in election after election.
The campaign's name in Hebrew, Lo Latet, is a reference to Latet (“To
Give”), a major charity group that collects donations for the needy.
The campaign started as a Facebook trend, which gathered steam after
it was reported about in the news, and has turned into a Facebook page
with over 3,000 likes.
"As the holiday of Pesach approaches, I would like to remind you that
there are hundreds of people who have no way of celebrating,” wrote one
Lo Latet poster. “It's important that you do not give them a single
shekel.”
He added sarcastically: “After all, elected a government that will
change their situation, so why interfere and ruin things? Happy
holiday!”
"From now on, I want peace of mind,” wrote another poster. “From now
on, it's every one for himself. Don't tell me about minimum wages and
people whose salary doesn't carry them through the month. I don't want
to hear about hungry children or single mothers in distress, about
distressed contract workers, or eroded pensions. Don't preach to me
about 'the people's choice and majority rule', I understand what
democracy is, but from now on, let every person take care of himself.”
Maybe the poor figured out that raising the minimum wage (which was part of Labor's platform) would put more of them out of work. Maybe they figured out that a nuclear Iran and a rocket-laden 'Palestinian state' within firing range of the center of the country would kill all our investments. And maybe - definitely - the Left has shown its true colors as the 'beautiful people' (yefei ha'nefesh in Hebrew) who couldn't care less about anyone but themselves.
Israel's poor benefit from Google's acquisition of Waze
The benefits from Google's acquisition of Waze aren't just going to Waze's shareholders. Or rather, Waze's shareholders may include some people you didn't expect. Through a charity that asks early-stage companies to contribute shares, many of Israel's poor will benefit from the Waze acquisition.
Waze contributed options to Tmura, an Israeli public service venture
that receives grants of stock from companies and uses the proceeds from
successful “exits” – a public offering, acquisition or sale of shares
on the market – to fund charities for education and youth-related causes
in Israel. In 2011, Tmura cashed out of its Waze options to the tune of
$1.385 million.
“We are excited by this opportunity to make a real difference in the
community,” said Waze CEO Noam Bardin. “Tmura’s model enabled us to
involve Waze employees in the allocation process and this has truly been
an inspiring experience for the entire company.”
Amos Gaver, chairman of Tmura’s Grants Committee, was equally as
ecstatic. “Non-profits are continually faced with fundraising
challenges, making it difficult to plan from year to year,” he said.
“With these grants, we hope to alleviate at least some of this burden
and help these organizations with their planning for the coming years.”
This is a bit off the normal fare for this blog, but I think a lot of you will find it interesting.
The Jewish people has survived for thousands of years, including nearly two thousand since the destruction of the Second Temple. How have the Jewish people survived as a people when every other ancient people has disappeared? Good question, no?
So what preserves Israel if not her military and political leaders? God, of course.
You don't have to be religious to draw this conclusion, because no secular explanation makes any sense given the location of this minuscule and dysfunctional state in a hostile Arab sea. In fact, God has given Israel the Best Enemies! After all, Israel secular leaders are tripping over each other trying to make peace with Arabs who can't even make peace with themselves—and this has preserved what is left of Eretz Israel!
Consider Israel's intelligent and mellifluous Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. He has gone so far as to endorse the creation of an Arab state in Judea and Samaria, Israel's heartland. All he wants is the impossible, that Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian authority, recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people. Abbas refuses.
But for this we must thank God, for if you look at what the Torah tells us about Ishmael and his descendants, of course they won't recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people. Netanyahu might as well ask Abbas to renounce the Quran! But do you know that the Quran, with its racist maledictions about infidels, is helping to preserve Israel as a Jewish state?
Of course, the Quran is only a negative reason for Israel's preservation. There are two positive factors working to sustain Israel—and for this we must also credit Israeli governments, notwithstanding their secular intentions.
One factor is the burgeoning number of Israel's yeshivas—unprecedented in Jewish history. These Jewish academies of learning are sanctifying the Name of God, and God is rewarding Israel by making it fruitful. While Muslims exalt death and want to destroy Israel, Israel exalts life and has become the greatest source of life-preserving discoveries in medical science and life-giving water technology.
The second positive factor that preserves Israel is that it is the most charitable nation on earth. Look how Israel has absorbed millions of refugees—and not all are Jewish! Consider its charitable organizations. Do you know that Israel has a group of people that is on call 24/7 to go to any place in the world that has suffered some catastrophe such as an earthquake or a flood? Israel set up clinics in earthquake shattered Haiti and even sent help even to unfriendly Turkey when that Islamist regime was recently struck by an earthquake.
So, what preserves Israel is its charity and sanctifying God's Name. This is why countless righteous Gentiles love Israel and rally to her support. They love Israel because Israel loves God and helps God's children, be they Jew or Gentile.
And by the way: the only way to bring peace to the Middle East is for Israel to become a light unto the nations.
Okay, I agree with all that. But how did we survive in the diaspora for all those years when most of us were there? And by what merit does God continue to Preserve us? We don't really know for sure why God does what He does, but this seems like a good guess even if it comes from (would you believe) academia.
Anthropologist Melvin Konner of Emory University, Atlanta, attributes the Jewish people's survival to their devotion to some of the mitzvot of the Torah, which he says were specifically suited to guarantee the continued existence of the children of Abraham.
According to Prof. Konner, circumcision and practicing family purity (Niddah) are mitzvot which allowed and encouraged the birth of a greater number of offspring, contributing to the people's continued existence.
He adds that the model of prolific mothers matches Darwin's Natural Selection theory, according to which many offspring improve the chances of survival. In other words, "be fruitful and multiply" is a winning formula.
Konner presented his theory last week at the conference on "Judaism in Evolutionary Perspective" at the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem.
"The existence of the Jewish people throughout history, in light of the exiles and persecution, is a real challenge," says Konner. "Religious people see this as divine intervention.
"There is no doubt that their commitment to religious texts helped, but if we look at certain Jewish traditions, we can definitely examine their influence on the reproductive system."
...
Konner was born into an Orthodox family, but according to Israeli terms he is a former religious today. And yet, he view Torah and mitzvot as an essential asset for Jewish existence.
"I don't think we would have survived as a people without the Torah," he says. "Even though every generation has people like me, who draw away from observing the Torah's mitzvot, it remains the core of the Jewish people.
"Like most Israelis, I don't approve of religious extremism either and view it as a potential threat, but like Ben-Gurion realized – the Jewish people need religious people.
"In Israel today you can be completely secular without affecting your Jewish identity. In the Diaspora there is no such thing. In recent generations, secular Judaism has been a way out of Judaism. But three things have allowed the existence of the Jewish people in the past, and in the future: The people, Torah and God."
I heard from one of my rabbis that someone asked Ben Gurion why he permitted the Haredim to establish religious schools during the State's founding years. His response was "in another generation, they won't need them anyway, so let them have them for now.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
