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Philanthropy and Jewish Peoplehood the Peoplehood Papers Are Celebrating Bar Mitzvah The Peoplehood Papers 27 March 2020 | Adar 5780 Philanthropy and Jewish Peoplehood The Peoplehood Papers are Celebrating Bar Mitzvah Celebrating thirteen years of facilitating 13 a Jewish Peoplehood conversation that yielded: 27 issues (and two more on the way). Over 350 individual articles representing the breadth of Jewish voices geographically, generationally, and across the diversity of engagement and practice. Thousands of readers across the Jewish world A deeper appreciation and understanding of Jewish Peoplehood concepts and language. We invite you to collaborate with us as we advance a new and fresh conversation and envision together the Jewish future. At this time, we are seeking: Potential Partners Special Issue Initiatives Supporters If you want to join us and enrich the conversation contact Shlomi Ravid at [email protected] המרכז לחינוך לעמיות יהודית The Center for Jewish Peoplehood Education The Peoplehood Papers 27 March 2020 | Adar 5780 Philanthropy and Jewish Peoplehood Editor: Shlomi Ravid Design and Production: Stephanie & Ruti Design Published by the Center for Jewish Peoplehood Education [email protected] ©2020 Center for Jewish Peoplehood Education. All rights reserved From the Editor In 2012 the Center for Jewish Peoplehood Education published Peoplehood Papers 7 on Reinvigorating Jewish Peoplehood - the Philanthropic Perspective. We decided, together with Taube Philanthropies and the Jewish Funders Network, that in 2020 it may be worth turning the topic on its head and dedicating an issue to the topic of Reinvigorating Jewish Philanthropy - the Peoplehood Perspective. In other words, we wanted to explore the impact of the growing awareness to Peoplehood and its challenges on Jewish Philanthropy. In the decade that transpired since our previous publication on this topic, Peoplehood became a common concept in the Jewish professional jargon and a cornerstone in framing the Jewish conceptual and practical conversation on Jewish identity and the Jewish collective enterprise. We were partly inspired to initiate this publication by an article recently published by Tad Taube and Shana Penn (see below), that highlights the way Peoplehood framed their philanthropic approach. We wanted to expand that conversation and explore how framing through a Peoplehood perspective can enrich and strengthen our philanthropic work, both in terms of its overall context as well as the nature of collaboration with the other players in the field. In general, some of the topics we were interested in pursuing were: • What makes Jewish Philanthropy unique? • How does it connect conceptually to Jewish Peoplehood? • How does embracing a peoplehood perspective influence our specific vision and mode of operation? What does it entail in terms of our relationship with other Jewish philanthropies and with communal bodies, like Federations or national agencies? • What are the key challenges the Jewish people is facing today and how do they impact our specific work? • What are some possible responses to today's challenges? • How can philanthropy (which is becoming mostly an individual activity rather than a communal one) be a way of strengthening a sense of peoplehood? in that sense what is the interplay between individual and collective in philanthropy – and in the Jewish Community writ large? • What is philanthropy’s role in ensuring the cohesion of the Jewish People and even in defining what the Jewish People is? • What are the issues/factors that threaten the strength of the peoplehood and how can philanthropy address them? This publication does not attempt to exhaust the subject but rather to begin exploring the relationship between Peoplehood and Philanthropy. We recruited a diverse group of writers representing both individual and collective philanthropies. Some are veterans in the field and others bring a younger voice to the table. Ultimately, the Jewish people in the 21st century is still wrestling with the challenges of modernity. What will the Jewish community look like locally and what will our Jewish collectivity mean globally? We believe that Philanthropy can play a key role in envisioning and shaping the Jewish future. We hope that this diverse collection of essays will indeed advance this conversation. Special thanks to Taube Philanthropies for co-initiating this publication and funding it. To Andres Spokoiny for helping shape the questions of the call for papers. To Sharon Dwek, from JFN Israel, for helping recruit the writers on the Israeli side. To all the thoughtful writers who contributed to this conversation. We decided to lead with Andres Spokoiny’s article in order to frame some of the questions and challenges to be addressed. The rest of the articles appear in the alphabetic order of their writers’ names. We hope they will enrich your deliberations and thinking about the Jewish future. Shlomi Ravid Table of Contents How Philanthropy Can Strengthen Peoplehood in Polarized Times 6 Andrés Spokoiny The Power of Small Acts of ‘Chessed’ 9 Haim Emil Dahan Philanthropy as a Vehicle for Peoplehood 12 Elizabeth Fisher Where Personhood, Peoplehood, and Philanthropy Meet 15 Gideon Herscher You, Me and Us at our Passover Table 19 Michael Lawrence Calibrating the Collective 22 Arie Levy Philanthropy and Peoplehood - Giving with Jewish Wisdom 25 Seth Linden The Global Jewish Philanthropic Collective – Where Next? 29 David Mallach More and Less: Jewish Peoplehood, Jewish Philanthropy 32 Reuven Marko Philanthropy – the Bridge to Future Peoplehood 35 Shlomi Ravid Adapting Jewish Peoplehood to Jewish Equity 38 Charlene Seidle Jewish Peoplehood and Jewish Philanthropy: Opportunities for New Partnerships 41 Jeffrey Solomon and Alon Friedman Today’s Challenges Demand a More Collaborative Jewish Philanthropy 44 Tad Taube and Shana Penn The Peoplehood Papers 27 How Philanthropy Can Strengthen Peoplehood in Polarized Times Andrés Spokoiny Funders have an enormous role to play in this area. On the one hand, they need to provide funds for dialogue and encounter between Jews of different ideological persuasions; on the other, they need to stop funding organizations that promote division and incivility. There has always been an inextricable link between philanthropy and Jewish peoplehood. One of the first projects the Jewish people embark on after the Exodus is building the mishkan, the portable sanctuary in the desert, using the voluntary contributions of individual Israelites “from the generosity of their hearts.” Philanthropy is also a way of expressing our interconnectedness: one is supposed to give to the poor because they are “achicha” (your brother), and the well-known principle of “kol Israel arevim ze baze” (Jews are responsible for one another) gets expressed mainly through philanthropy, generosity and justice. Naturally, the word “philanthropy” doesn’t appear in the Bible, but the action of giving is intrinsic to what makes us a people: a shared project and a network of internal solidarity towards one another. Philanthropy is not an addition, or a post-datum to our peoplehood idea; not an afterthought that came to correct some mistakes in the original design but a critical feature of how we understand “the art of being a people.” In the Diasporic experience – including the American Jewish community – philanthropy was the bedrock of the community. Giving, especially in America, became a bond that contributed to a sense of shared destiny; or being part of the same people. When religious practices became less prevalent, philanthropic rituals took over. Even for those who did not keep kosher or go to synagogue, the attachment to the Jewish People could be expressed through a philanthropic engagement. Philanthropy became both an 6 Philanthropy and Jewish Peoplehood identity building experience but also a substitute for other, more time-consuming ways, of expressing one’s identity. But the individualism of the last few decades has upended this traditional view of philanthropy, and therefore, the relationship between philanthropy and peoplehood. The 21st century is a time of hyper-empowered individuals, and any attachment to a collective is seen and felt as a restriction of one’s freedom and power. Individuals are not expected to submit themselves to a collective social project; rather the opposite, the main role of society is to guarantee the empowerment and the expression of all the individual’s potential. Furthermore, the blurring of identity boundaries makes the ancient definition of “people” complicated to start with - more difficult. Who is today “my people”? Is there such a thing, or am I just a member of human race, with solidarity towards all? In this world of hyper-empowered individuals, philanthropy ceases being a collective endeavor to and is instead a tool that the individual uses to express herself, to ”leave a unique mark” or to “change the world.” It’s no surprise then that individual or private philanthropy grows geometrically while communal philanthropy is stagnant. Communal philanthropy has a very difficult task: convince people to restrict their own individual freedom on behalf of a shared project. Individualism, and its impact on both identity and philanthropy, creates a vicious cycle: the less we feel part of a people, the less we are motivated to donate collectively with our communal institutions. And since donating collectively enhances our feeling of belonging and peoplehood, less communal giving means less feeling part of a people. So, what can funders that care about peoplehood do about this state
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