The American Jewish Philanthropic Complex

The first comprehensive history of American Jewish philanthropy and its influence on democracy and capitalism For years, American Jewish philanthropy has been celebrated as the proudest product of Jewish endeavors in the United States, its virtues extending from the local to the global, the Jewish to the non-Jewish, and modest donations to vast endowments. Yet, as Lila Corwin Berman illuminates in The American Jewish Philanthropic Complex, the history of American Jewish philanthropy reveals the far more complicated reality of changing and uneasy relationships among philanthropy, democracy, and capitalism. With a fresh eye and lucid prose, and relying on previously untapped sources, Berman shows that from its nineteenth-century roots to its apex in the late twentieth century, the American Jewish philanthropic complex tied Jewish institutions to the American state. The government’s regulatory efforts—most importantly, tax policies—situated philanthropy at the core of its experiments to maintain the public good without trammeling on the private freedoms of individuals. Jewish philanthropic institutions and leaders gained financial strength, political influence, and state protections within this framework. However, over time, the vast inequalities in resource distribution that marked American state policy became inseparable from philanthropic practice. By the turn of the millennium, Jewish philanthropic institutions reflected the state’s growing investment in capitalism against democratic interests. But well before that, Jewish philanthropy had already entered into a tight relationship with the governing forces of American life, reinforcing and even transforming the nation’s laws and policies. The American Jewish Philanthropic Complex uncovers how capitalism and private interests came to command authority over the public good, in Jewish life and beyond.

The first comprehensive history of American Jewish philanthropy and its influence on democracy and capitalism For years, American Jewish philanthropy has been celebrated as the proudest product of Jewish endeavors in the United States, its virtues extending from the local to the global, the Jewish to the non-Jewish, and modest donations to vast endowments. Yet, as Lila Corwin Berman illuminates in The American Jewish Philanthropic Complex, the history of American Jewish philanthropy reveals the far more complicated reality of changing and uneasy relationships among philanthropy, democracy, and capitalism. With a fresh eye and lucid prose, and relying on previously untapped sources, Berman shows that from its nineteenth-century roots to its apex in the late twentieth century, the American Jewish philanthropic complex tied Jewish institutions to the American state. The government’s regulatory efforts—most importantly, tax policies—situated philanthropy at the core of its experiments to maintain the public good without trammeling on the private freedoms of individuals. Jewish philanthropic institutions and leaders gained financial strength, political influence, and state protections within this framework. However, over time, the vast inequalities in resource distribution that marked American state policy became inseparable from philanthropic practice. By the turn of the millennium, Jewish philanthropic institutions reflected the state’s growing investment in capitalism against democratic interests. But well before that, Jewish philanthropy had already entered into a tight relationship with the governing forces of American life, reinforcing and even transforming the nation’s laws and policies. The American Jewish Philanthropic Complex uncovers how capitalism and private interests came to command authority over the public good, in Jewish life and beyond.

Lila Corwin Berman asks why, over the course of the twentieth century, American Jews became increasingly fascinated, even obsessed, with explaining themselves to their non-Jewish neighbors. What she discovers is that language itself became a crucial tool for Jewish group survival and integration into American life. Berman investigates a wide range of sources—radio and television broadcasts, bestselling books, sociological studies, debates about Jewish marriage and intermarriage, Jewish missionary work, and more—to reveal how rabbis, intellectuals, and others created a seemingly endless array of explanations about why Jews were indispensable to American life. Even as the content of these explanations developed and shifted over time, the very project of self-explanation would become a core element of Jewishness in the twentieth century.

While the role the United States played in France's liberation from Nazi Germany is widely celebrated, it is less well known that American Jewish individuals and organizations mobilized to reconstruct Jewish life in France after the Holocaust. In A "Jewish Marshall Plan," Laura Hobson Faure explores how American Jews committed themselves and hundreds of millions of dollars to bring much needed aid to their French coreligionists. Hobson Faure sheds light on American Jewish chaplains, members of the Armed Forces, and those involved with Jewish philanthropic organizations who sought out Jewish survivors and became deeply entangled with the communities they helped to rebuild. While well intentioned, their actions did not always meet the needs and desires of the French Jews. A "Jewish Marshall Plan" examines the complex interactions, exchanges, and solidarities created between American and French Jews following the Holocaust. Challenging the assumption that French Jews were passive recipients of aid, this work reveals their work as active partners who negotiated their own role in the reconstruction process.

Examines the relationship between alcohol and the Jewish community throughout the nineteenth century and the period of Prohibition, describing the role of Jews in the liquor industry and the relationship between the anti-alcohol movement and anti-Semitism.

Winner of the National Jewish Book Award in American Jewish Studies—an engaging firsthand portrait of American Judaism today American Judaism has been buffeted by massive social upheavals in recent decades. Like other religions in the United States, it has witnessed a decline in the number of participants over the past forty years, and many who remain active struggle to reconcile their hallowed traditions with new perspectives—from feminism and the LGBTQ movement to "do-it-yourself religion" and personally defined spirituality. Taking a fresh look at American Judaism today, Jack Wertheimer, a leading authority on the subject, sets out to discover how Jews of various orientations practice their religion in this radically altered landscape. Which observances still resonate, and which ones have been given new meaning? What options are available for seekers or those dissatisfied with conventional forms of Judaism? And how are synagogues responding? Offering new and often-surprising answers to these questions, Wertheimer reveals an American Jewish landscape that combines rash disruption and creative reinvention, religious illiteracy and dynamic experimentation.

In this provocative urban history, Lila Corwin Berman considers the role that Detroit s Jews have played in the city s well-known narratives of migration and decline. Like other Detroiters in the 1960s and 1970s, Jews left the city for the suburbs in large numbers. But Berman makes the case that they nevertheless constituted themselves as urban people, and she shows how complex spatial and political relationships existed within the greater metropolitan region. By insisting on the existence and influence of a metropolitan consciousness, Berman reveals the complexity and contingency of what did and didn t change as regions expanded in the postwar era."

How to turn personal passion into an organization with impact For anyone setting out to change the world, launching a nonprofit venture can be a powerful way to enact change. Whether bringing donated eyeglasses to children who have never seen clearly, revamping inner city schools, or bringing solar cookers to refugee camps, the act of doing good can be life-changing. Yet starting a nonprofit?and running it well?can also pose challenges. The Art of Doing Good is an essential companion for anyone looking to start an organization that makes a real difference. Drawing from their own leadership roles in the nonprofit world, as well as interviews with 18 celebrated social innovators, the authors prepare would-be social entrepreneurs with guidance and real-world advice for sustaining the spirit, ambition, and ingenuity to keep their vision alive and thriving. Features real-life stories of 18 notable social entrepreneurs and the organizations they run, including Geoffrey Canada (Harlem Children?s Zone), Darell Hammond (KaBOOM!), and Michael Brown (City Year) Reveals what particular issues nonprofit leaders can expect to face throughout the lifespan of their organization and shares strategies for meeting challenges Written by world-renowned philanthropists Bronfman and Solomon, respectively cofounder and CEO of the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies and coauthors of The Art of Giving With thoughtful and comprehensive insight on how the most effective social ventures do good well,The Art of Doing Good is essential reading for both new and experienced nonprofit leaders.

"This book concerns a cohort of ultra-orthodox Jews based in the greater New York area who, while retaining membership and close familial and other ties with their strictly observant communities, seek out secular knowledge about the world on the down low (so to speak), both online and via in-person encounters. Ayala Fader conducted her ethnographic research in these rarified social circles for years, developing relationships of trust with the mostly young married men and women who have taken to clandestine methods to find alternative social spaces in which to question what it means to be ethical and what a life of self-fulfillment looks like. Fader's book reveals the stresses and strains that such "double-lifers" experience, including the difficulty these life choices inject into relationships with wives, husbands, and one's children. Not all of these "double-lifers" become atheists. Fader's interlocutors can be placed on a broad spectrum ranging from religiously observant but open-minded at one end to atheism on the other. The rabbinical leadership of these ultra-orthodox communities are well aware of this phenomenon and of how unfiltered internet access makes such alternative forms of seeking an ever-present temptation. (Some ultra-orthodox rabbis have been sounding the alarm for years, claiming that the internet represents more of a threat to community survival today than the Holocaust did in the last century.) Fader's book examines the institutional responses of ultra-orthodox communities to the double-lifers. These include what is typically referred to as a Torah-based type of "religious therapy" conducted by trained members of these communities who as therapists and "life coaches" blend elements of modern psychiatry with ultra-orthodoxy and "treat" troubling, potentially life-altering doubt and skepticism as symptoms of underlying emotional pathology"--

What Jewish tradition can teach us about human dignity in a scientific age This book explores one of the great questions of our time: How can we preserve our sense of what it means to be a person while at the same time accepting what science tells us to be true—namely, that human nature is continuous with the rest of nature? What, in other words, does it mean to be a person in a world of things? Alan Mittleman shows how the Jewish tradition provides rich ways of understanding human nature and personhood that preserve human dignity and distinction in a world of neuroscience, evolutionary biology, biotechnology, and pervasive scientism. These ancient resources can speak to Jewish, non-Jewish, and secular readers alike. Science may tell us what we are, Mittleman says, but it cannot tell us who we are, how we should live, or why we matter. Traditional Jewish thought, in open-minded dialogue with contemporary scientific perspectives, can help us answer these questions. Mittleman shows how, using sources ranging across the Jewish tradition, from the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud to more than a millennium of Jewish philosophy. Among the many subjects the book addresses are sexuality, birth and death, violence and evil, moral agency, and politics and economics. Throughout, Mittleman demonstrates how Jewish tradition brings new perspectives to—and challenges many current assumptions about—these central aspects of human nature. A study of human nature in Jewish thought and an original contribution to Jewish philosophy, this is a book for anyone interested in what it means to be human in a scientific age.