The Charlotte Jewish News - October, 1995 - Page 3
Charity Continued from page 1
dominate and compete for limited
dollars; care for the elderly and
Jewish education. With 19 percent
of the American Jewish commu
nity above the age of 65 in 1995,
that number is expected to rise
significantly with projected
longer life-spans. Furthermore,
according to U.O. Schmelz and
Sergio Della Pergola, in a study
for the American Jewish Commit
tee, “When the large cohorts bom
during the baby boom reach the
65-plus age range in the second
decade of the next century, the
proportion of elderly will receive
a powerful boost.”
On the opposite side of the
age spectrum, Jewish educational
efforts for young people —day
care, day schools, camps, youth
in 1985 to over $800 million to-
oay—is that it gives the parent
generation a way to have their
Jewish concerns addressed after
they pass away” because they do
not trust the Jewish sensibilities
of their children and grandchil
dren. Federation endowments
provided a whopping $355 mil
lion in allocations in 1994, and
endowment campaigns represent
a larger and larger potion of the
annual campaign, like in Detroit
where it brings in a third of what
is raised annually.
Charles Click, as a Wexner
Fellow at Harvard University’s
Kennedy School of Government
in 1994, prepared a 60-page re
port with an original and power
ful idea that could transform the
relationship between Israel and
American Jewry and alter the
mained steady at 40 percent over
the past 40 years, despite the in
crease in interfaith marriage.
“Synagogues have been around
for 2,000 years and they will con
tinue to play a central role into the
future,” says Jerome Epstein,
head of the congregational arm of
the Conservative movement,
which boasts 800 affiliated syna
gogues. “There will still be a quest
for reUgious life and religious
meaning and synagogues will
have a function but the synagogue
itself will change and adapt. The
days of the synagogues offering
only one type of service for ev
eryone will be gone. There will
be more market segmentation to
meet the needs of younger people,
empty nesters, elderly, etc. But the
synagogue will be the place that
brings in people at a grassroots
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movements, retreat centers, Israel
programs, specialized programs
— might finally be coordinated
and well-funded says Rabbi Art
Vernon, director of educational
development of the Jewish Edu
cational Service of North
America. “Otherwise there will be
few Jews left in America.”
With likely U.S. government
cut-backs in social services to
Jewish agencies in the hundreds
of millions of dollars and sus
tained pressure for balanced fed
eral budgets into the next century,
who is going to foot the bill for
Jewish life in 50 years? The next
generation of American Jewry is
going to inherit $2.8 trillion from
their parents, but their giving pat
terns are dramatically different
and starkly non-Jewish. That’s the
bad news. The good news is that
mechanisms are being put into
place now for long-term giving to
Jewish causes. “Within 20 years,
my guess is that 20 to 30 Jewish
privately held foundations will
throw off more money than our
entire UJA/Federation system,”
predicts Rabbi Brian Lurie, ex
ecutive vice president of national
UJA. He goes on to list three bil
lionaires who have established
foundations with Jewish interests
as a hopeful sign.
According to Donald Kent,
CJF director of planned giving
and foundation relations, ther^ is
$8 billion in the basket of federa
tion endowments, with the fast
est growing component coming
from older Jews who are “look
ing for a tool to deal with their
generation’s philanthropic values
into the far future. The main sell
ing point of this specialized en
dowment (a ‘federation support
foundation’)—which has grown
from having assets of $40 million
structure of American Jewish fund
raising.
The Click Plan, being quietly
passed around to federation ex
ecutives, is to have donors invest
via the federation system into Is
raeli industry and the profits will
be used to underwrite local com
munity needs back at home. This
has several advantages over the
current system; it creates jobs in
Israel, helping Israelis and mak
ing Israel a more attractive option
for the hundreds of thousands of
Jews in Russia who hold permis
sions but have not yet emigrated;
it gives a deeper and more direct
connection for donors to specific
projects where they can also give
of their business expertise; it cre
ates a community-stake in the
economic and political well-being
of the Jewish state; and it provides
an additional source of on-going
revenue that can be used for local
needs
While annual campaigns are
not keeping pace with inflation
and federations are forced to di
versify their income streams,
synagogue membership has re
level into Jewish life.”
The other institution likely to
survive, perhaps even flourish in
the 21st century is the revamped,
re-Judaized Jewish community
center. “As Jews become more
spread out, we will need a place
to congregate and associate. JCCs
will be the Jewish neighborhoods
of the future,” says Leonard
Rubin, assistant executive direc
tor of the Jewish Community
Centers Association. “We have
also finally understood that we
need to make the centers places
where you not only give your
body a work-out, but also your
soul.”
The other breakthrough in
Jewish organizational life will be
a one-stop membership, modeled
on an experiment in Chicago for
young adults. For a single subsi
dized fee, people become mem
bers of the local synagogues,
Jewish community center and
other Jewish institutions.
Next month: "Politics,
The Presidency and Israel
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