JustASC

My column this week is an interview with Ruth Messinger, the president of AJWS, who had asked to see me about the previous column I had written about her speech to graduates of the Jewish Theological Seminary. In the speech, Messinger, whose organization provides humanitarian assistance to the developing world, urged the seminary graduates to apply their Jewish learning “to help those most in need, both at home and abroad.” My column, I thought, was mostly admiring of her call to action, although toward the end I suggested she had gone too far in favoring universal (okay, non-Jewish) causes over challenges closer to home.

It was the last point that she thought needed clarification. We spoke in the midtown offices of AJWS for over an hour, throughout most of which Messinger held the floor and emphasized the points she felt I had either overlooked or mischaracterized in her JTS speech.

Below is a transcript of most of our conversation, conducted in the presence of Joshua Berkman of the organization’s press department.

Read the transcript after the jump.

ASC: What’s the current mission of AJWS?

RM: It is two-fold. Help to alleviate poverty, hunger and disease in the world, and to educate the Jewish community about global responsibility.

I think it is of interest when we do our work we are constantly experienced by people on the ground in 36 different countries as Jews. And because — she said immodestly — we do really good work, and we are by design humble in how we do our work. We are creating a positive image of Jews in the minds of people, some of whom have simply never met a Jew or have met a Jew and have all kinds of anti-Semitic assumptions.

(Messinger segued to a discussion about how AJWS uses Jewish text and study in its work, referring to the graduation speech she had given at the Jewish Theological Seminary.)

In the speech, I wasn’t going to talk about text to people who were studying it for seven years. But we do study it. All of our service volunteers study it. Read the title of that curriculum ["Expanding the Universe of Oblgiation: Judaism, Justice and Global Responsibility"]. Because it is the expanding notion that I feel didn’t get respected in your commentary. This is circles of obligation. I was an elected official in New York City for 20 years. I know more about poverty in New York City than most of my staff. I worked with a huge number of groups in New York, including the Met Council [on Jewish Poverty]. I don’t think there is a Jew in New York who isn’t reminded of the increase in Jewish poverty as a subset of the increase in urban poverty in NY, as a subset of the increase in domestic poverty, as a subset of the increase in global poverty.

Our job here is to talk about expanding that universe of obligation.

(Later, she spoke about the multi-denominational appeal of AJWS):

There are not very many multi-denominational programs – and I could probably stop the sentence right there — there are not very many multi-denominational programs that are working doing the kind of work we do that are considered highly attractive to people in the modern Orthodox community. But ask the people at Stern College, at Hovevei Torah — and we have a relationship with Yeshiva University. We’ve had an alternative spring break group for Stern and YU – a couple of them – and they came back raring to go to work on these issues as an expression of their Judaism.

So again, you are correct, as your column referenced, that this is attractive to a community of young Jews. But most of them, Andrew, and I talk to a lot of them, it’s not so much that they are looking for something totally different, but something to make their Judaism have more meaning to them. Stern and Hovevei students are determinedly Jewish, so are a lot of [our] other Jewish students and staff, but — again, this is an area to clear up – but they understand this as fundamental to Judaism for all time. I went out of my way in the speech, in which you always pick your words carefully, to include the Akiba quote: Prayer and study are important because they lead to action.

ASC: Was your speech in any way a comment on what you feel was happening in federations and other Jewish philanthropies, which because of the economic crisis may be pulling back on universal causes and focusing on exclusive Jewish giving?

RM: No, I did talk about – I referenced briefly in the speech that in hard times keep your focus on everything, not just one thing. But first of all, I think we are equally challenged as are most of our organizations, most of the federations, and most of the other organizations in the international development community – there isn’t a non-for-profit that isn’t feeling this squeeze.

But we have, I’m happy to say, a strong audience of Jewish donors and supporters. Some were whacked by Bernie Madoff. Some are not able to give as much because their resources are squeezed. I have one Jewish donor who told me basically, “We’re not funding our widest circle right now. We’re definitely funding you because of the extraordinary work you do with young Jews and giving Jews a good name in the developing world.”

Meanwhile at the United Jewish Communities board meeting last week they said they are going to embark on supporting service. They were saying to federations or planning to say to federations that this is really an exciting initiative. Why is it exciting? It is sort of Judaism on the ground. Some of the service programs are going to be like the longtime and spectacular programs run by the Joint [Distribution Committee], which I am happy to say has grown [to offer] young Jews post-college to work in Diaspora communities in short-term service. Their work is with Jews in the Diaspora, and Otzma’s work is with Jews in Israel. And we round out this picture – Avodah has placements in some Jewish organizations, some other poverty agencies in the city. The NY federation supports service programs. Without the NY federation we would not have been able to expand our alternative Hillel program to Brooklyn and Queens Colleges because the students don’t have the money.

ASC: I thought I heard in your talk – you knew who your audience was, people fresh out of rabbinical school, freshly minted PhDs, Jewish communal service workers. I heard you offer a bit of a challenge to them: “You’ve been trained toward the narrow, and I am here to remind you about the wide.” Is that a fair assessment?

RM: I don’t think it is fair to put it that way. I’ll come back to that in one minute

First of all, I am going to trot out my yichus . My grandfather was the first executive director of the federation of New York. I have been raised on this for forever. My mother did the [public relations] work at the [Jewish Theological Seminary] for 55 yeas, but between my mother and my father and my maternal grandparents I promise you there was 100 years of lay work for federation organizations and boards. I am part of the fifth generation in support of Surprise Lake Camp. My grandfather walked the land as a member of YMHA to find land for disadvantaged Jewish — I think it was just boys at the time. He was the first chair of the board of Surprise Lake. My mother was on the board virtually all her life and was the first woman chair. I was president of this board for three years, probably ‘03-‘06. My daughter is now on the board and two of my children went to Surprise Lake and two of my grandchildren are now there.

This is like in my blood, which is why some of this [she points to my column] is like surprising.

In a sense I bring that perspective to AJWS.

(She then returned to a discussion of the JTS speech.)

Two things about the speech. One of which was the issue — Josh will tell you — sort of most perplexed me about your piece. I didn’t just drop into 122nd Street and say “give me 10 minutes.” I was asked by [Chancellor] Arnie Eisen who is trying to shape the next generation of rabbis and cantors and communal workers.

I would assume in my brain, Andrew, that Arnie invited me for a reason, and it was probably not to talk about my mother. He invited me because the work I do is of interest already to many people at the Seminary…. So I assume I was there to talk about with this next generation of Jewish leaders about this expanded circle of obligation. And I’ve gone over my speech since I read your piece and every single time — although it is absolutely true that I didn’t stand up and say, “let me remind you about everything I think you already learned to do” — every time it says, it says “both/and.” It never says “and/or.”

That is what troubled me the most because I say clearly there those values, those motives that were powerful in the Judaism in which I grew up – supporting the state of Israel, remembering the Holocaust , and fighting anti-Semitism – now also need a commitment to a broader universe of working for justice. And by the way, let’s drop what AJWS does…. The references every time in this speech are references the local and global. The poverty they could be working on is within Met Council. The door they could open is to the next wave of Russian Jews.

It is a question for me of putting Judaism into action, of acting on principles of tolerance, respect, connection. I don’t want 67 young people to come back [from an AJWS program] and say “Ok, I’m changing my major, I’m joining the Peace Corps and I am going to save the population of Uganda.” I hope a couple will come back with that notion. But what I want them to come back and do is say, “Judaism is my religion. Judaism is a religion that needs to be lived and practiced.”

And I want some of them to be the people who join a movement for greening synagogues. I want some them to be people who say “are we sure that we as a congregation or school or whatever are doing the most we can to support justice in the world?” What might that mean? That might mean something as simple as using fair trade coffee. But it might not be that. It might be okay, “let’s take a serious look the lack of passionate attachment to Israel among the younger generation and what can we do about that?”

ASC: What are the ways in which – implicit, explicit, formal or not – that AJWS is connected to Israel, or connects kids to Israel?

RM: We don’t do the hard work to connect kids with Israel because there are lots of organizations that do that. We try to work collaboratively with those other organizations. The primary thing we do in Israel is we recruit members of our adult volunteer corps in Israel. We don’t have a staff person over there, but it spreads by word of mouth, and every year out of 100 adult volunteers 5 or so are Israeli. I do that because I believe in klal Yisrael, and guess what, there are some Israelis with technical skills that are really needed in the developing world.
We’ve done some work with MASHAV [the Israeli foreign ministry's Center for International Cooperation]…. We do a project in Senegal using Israeli technology for water.
I was part of a very important conference at Neve Shalom a year and half ago – a small conference talking about this whole issue of whether the Israeli government should be working with the developing world, or should Israel have more non-profits doing this work? So I’ve always tried to be part of those discussions.

Okay – in terms of our young people. It comes up in discussion. So yes, there is some reference to Israel and what Israel does in the world, but I don’t consider us to be the main educator about Israel, but there is certainly discussion among our groups of participants, from those who have been to Birthright and some who haven’t…. We’ve been trying to develop a formal relationship with Birthright NEXT, which is their alumni program

(Now back to the speech.)

I want to be sure that you and I are clear and I thought this was an issue for our speech. I don’t want to pretend that I thought it was the job of a graduation speaker to wrap up everything they learned. That was Arnie’s job. It wasn’t my job to remind them what I think they are already doing well. But I know and you probably know this, I don’t know the JTS number, but I know that some of the other seminaries and grad programs there is a growing number of people who enter rabbinical school with an interest in doing not-for-profit work in the American Jewish community. That will reactivate and reenergize people about their Judaism. We’ve proven petty conclusively that service is one of those things. There is now a new organization being launched, Repair the World, which is going to be a consortium of funders supporting different kinds of Jewish service making grants to AJWS, Hillel, Avodah, Jewish Funds for Justice, and they’re hoping to spread to find new groups providing service programs and more existing groups that need help. That is all Jewish. And our biggest contribution to those efforts is that we’ve taken the efforts and service learning important from the beginning.

It is not, with all due respect, it is not a powerful Jewish program if what you do is put Jewish in the title and get young Jews together to go do service. And by the way, that’s not a powerful Jewish program even if they go work for an afternoon and work for a Jewish home for the aged. It’s what do they talk about when they are there. What do they talk about afterwards? Kids who have good Jewish educations, kids who have been to Israel, kids who have learned Hebrew, there is a point at which they are saying, what else is there for me to do?

This is 2009, the 21st century, those kids have a passel of other things to do. They can go — and I have lots of grandchildren, so I know this — they can go to horseback riding camp and soccer camp and Hebrew immersion camp, but for sure in our universe they can go join Amigas de las Americas, they can wait and do the Peace Corps. Thos people who are interested in what’s happening in the rest of the world have lots of programs.

Our position – let’s give them a Jewish program and let’s make it really Jewish.