“Twice the Activism = Double the Power”: That’s the message in a push for matching-gift donations to the National Council of Jewish Women, an outfit that most of us used to know for its thrift shops. The appeal comes complete with an old photo of activists Gloria Steinem and Dorothy Pitman Hughes holding up their fists in a “black power” salute.
We know what these women have to say about feminism. But there’s nothing identifiably Jewish in their message. Which isn’t surprising if you know what the National Council of Jewish Women has been up to lately.
CEO Nancy Kaufman will tell you that NCJW hasn’t changed much since its founding. Hmm: Started in 1894, the council helped new immigrants learn English and find decent jobs and was active in the drive for women’s suffrage. And its core activities in the first half of the last century involved helping those who suffered in World War I and the Holocaust.
But since the 1960s, its work has tracked the interests of the American left, pushing for greater access to abortion and more gun control. It’s been a vocal proponent of the Affordable Care Act, a k a ObamaCare.
Kaufman particularly highlights the contraception mandate imposed under that law: “Other people,” she says, “are using religion as an excuse for why people shouldn’t have access to contraception. We as Jews don’t believe that.” Asked the difference between NCJW and Planned Parenthood, she says, “NCJW is a faith-based organization.”
Another liberal group supporting liberal causes — but what makes it Jewish?
The problem’s common. As Jack Wertheimer of the Jewish Theological Seminary wrote in Commentary a couple of years ago, “The hot trend in Jewish philanthropic and organizational circles, incredibly, is to channel ever more of their resources to nonsectarian causes. Preachers in every corner of the Jewish community are intent on urging the faithful to drop their parochial concerns for the welfare of fellow Jews and instead think globally.”
He quotes a recent commencement speaker at his own seminary, former NYC pol Ruth Messinger. “What is required, first,” of groups like her own American Jewish World Services, she declared, “is that we embrace those with whom we do not share a faith or a neighborhood, a country, a language, or a political structure. We must bend our minds and our voices, our energies and our material resources, to help those most in need, both at home and abroad.”
It’s not just Jewish groups. Messinger’s message is the same one coming from every corner of what you might call the Philanthropy-Industrial Complex, that group of elites welcomed at Davos and Aspen, whose op-eds appear each week in the Chronicle of Philanthropy and the like. Giving money to your own community, to causes that interest you in particular, to efforts that are small-scale: It’s all a waste; you should be trying to save the world.
William Schambra of the Hudson Institute sees this “pernicious trend” across the nonprofit world. “When I lived in Milwaukee,” he recalls, “I knew things had gone off the track when the local YWCA adopted the slogan ‘Eliminating racism by any means necessary.’ ” He wondered, “Whatever happened to providing housing, education and religious training for low-income women?” Just too small-scale for today’s philanthro-elite.
Over the summer, Princeton bioethicist Peter Singer argued in The New York Times that there’s never a justification for giving to things like the arts or higher education so long as there is human suffering. As if civilization would even hear the voices of people like Singer without the support of these organizations.
The pressure to turn all of our charitable efforts into one giant progressive pile of cash to be thrown at whatever cause is most fashionable is enormous. One who stood against it was Robert Wilson, a hedge-fund manager who gave to many good causes, including scholarships to private schools for poor kids.
In the wake of his suicide last week, an exchange he had with Bill Gates came to light. Wilson declined to sign on to Gates’ “Giving Pledge,” suggesting that many of those who did were just ducking responsibility by giving to their own family foundations — institutions that, he warned, would eventually be controlled by the kids and grandkids. You know, the ones hanging out at the Clinton Global Initiative.
Wilson understood that smaller efforts with real results were better than grandiose plans to save the world. In other words: More activism doesn’t always mean more power.
Note: An earlier version of this column, which also ran in print, misidentified one of the women in the National Council of Jewish Women ad.