When it comes to improving the lot of Palestinians, it’s clear from following the money that politicians and do-gooders alike believe that the future rests on the education of Palestinian youth.

In March, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced the Middle East Partnership Initiative, a million-dollar scholarship program to help Palestinian students enroll at Palestinian and American universities.

A related initiative, The U.S.-Palestinian Partnership, began in 2007 with the goal of preparing Palestinian youth for the responsibilities of citizenship.

The Ramallah-based PalTel Group Foundation, however, is unique in that it is the first self-financed and indigenous charitable organization seeking to transform daily life for Palestinian youth living in the West Bank and Gaza.

The PalTel Group is a telecommunications giant providing Internet and landline phone service within the Palestinian territories, as well as 1.5 million cell phone subscriptions. The company employs 3,500 Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and makes up 50 percent of the worth of the Palestinian stock exchange.

In May, Kuwait’s largest mobile operator bought a majority stake in PalTel in a share swap, a partnership that is expected to generate $1 billion in annual revenues.

The foundation grew out of the PalTel Group’s Corporate Social Responsibility fund, which invested $6 million in Palestinian community development programs during the past four years, as well as another $2.5 million in a food stamps campaign when civil employees’ salaries stopped being paid in 2006.

Last month, PalTel Group Vice-Chair Abdul Malik Al-Jaber visited New York, where he met with Jewish business leaders and philanthropists, policy makers, community leaders and journalists, with the goal of enlisting the support of American Jews.

“There are Palestinians who are more than ready and willing to partner with Jewish philanthropists in the States,” said the 44-year-old, who also serves as chairman of the PalTel Group Foundation. “I’m calling for Jewish business leaders to accept the hand that’s coming to them to partner for building a better future for Israel and Palestine.”

Last year, PalTel established The PalTel Group Foundation with a $50 million endowment and a mission of empowering Palestinian youth, primarily through education. PalTel promises to contribute 2 percent of pre-tax profit (approximately $4 million) on an annual basis to the foundation.

Unlike America with its aging baby boomers, the Palestinian population is predominantly youthful. In fact, more than 50 percent of those Palestinians are between the ages of 15 and 29. And while illiteracy rates among Palestinians 65 and older is 58 percent, the rate plummets to less than 1 percent for those 15 to 24.

While 43 percent of Palestinian adolescents and young adults have cell phones and 67 percent use the computer, they are growing up in an environment devoid of hope, Al-Jaber says.

Al-Jaber blames soaring unemployment (approaching 20 percent in the West Bank and significantly worse in Gaza) as well as restrictions on mobility and movement often caused by Israeli checkpoints. “Job creation is the name of the game; otherwise, they lose hope,” he says.

A graduate of Jordan University of Science and Technology, Al-Jaber holds an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Business Administration, as well as a doctorate in engineering from McGill University. In 1993, at 28, Al-Jaber returned to the West Bank.

“When you live in the West and come back to a troubled area like Palestine, you look at the situation from a different angle,” he says.  The culture of win-win is a commodity, he says. “Palestinians don’t think that way. A victory is only if my opponent loses.”

One of Al-Jaber’s goals now is to stop the brain drain in Palestinian society. Palestinian youth “look for the first opportunity to leave,” he says. The Student Loan Program — a partnership between the PalTel Group Foundation’s Palestine Education Fund and the Bank of Palestine and IFC, a member of the World Bank Group — aims to provide $10 million in loans with low interest rates to about 8,000 Palestinian undergraduates each year for nine years.

PalTel has committed $4 million over the next four years to this program. Students in four-year programs will receive loans of up to $565 per semester (approximately the cost of tuition).

PalTel’s Scholarship Program encourages graduate students to study in the Palestinian territories by providing two-year grants of up to $2,500 to between 40 and 100 students.

Al-Jaber strongly believes that an economically vibrant Palestinian society is crucial to achieving a lasting peace. “You can’t build a state totally dependent on donations,” he says. He’d like to see wealthy Palestinians and Jews in the diaspora contribute toward major infrastructure construction in the Palestinian territories.

“I’m not asking supporters of Israel to stop supporting Israel,” he told The Jewish Week. “Having a prosperous state of Palestine is in the best interest of the state of Israel. And American Jews are the most relevant stakeholders in this whole process.”

Bobby Sager, founder of the Sager Family Traveling Foundation and Roadshow, met Al-Jaber several years ago as members of the Young Presidents’ Organization, a group of 20,000 business leaders from more than 100 countries. “We don’t agree about everything,” Sager says of his relationship with Al-Jaber, “but I know that he listens and that he will approach something in a practical way not burdened by dogma.

He’s asking the same question that so many of my forward-thinking Israeli friends are asking: ‘How am I going to have a better life for my kids?’”

Sager’s foundation recently built and rehabilitated four soccer fields in Palestinian areas. “The real deliverable is to teach coaches to act as mentors, kind of big brother-ish. The idea is to have facilities that people can escape to, feel good about, and be valued as human beings. “I believe that the stronger the Palestinians are, the more likely they are to make peace.”

During Al-Jaber’s visit to New York, Gally Meyer hosted a reception in Al-Jaber’s honor at her Lower Manhattan apartment. “I was very impressed,” says the Israeli who was a longtime investor on Wall Street and is now involved in a number of philanthropic causes. I asked him very difficult questions. He wasn’t defensive, but replied, ‘I need your help; let’s figure it out together.’”

Email: tamar@jewishweek.org

As soon as my husband and I announced our engagement, we immediately became the beneficiaries of a truckload of advice on all things wedding-related. Everyone, it seemed, had an opinion on where I should look for a wedding gown, who was the most-talked-about florist, and how I should have my hair styled.

Despite my thriftiness — I rented my wedding gown at a gemach (communal co-op), we got our dining room breakfront off of Craigslist, and my little brother won us four wooden chairs in a raffle to complement the dining room table my in-laws graciously loaned us — a constant chorus of “buy, buy, buy” streamed in the background. I began to wonder whether I really needed the $350 brocade linen, the $2,000 sheitel, and the $500 professional pots and pans. Wouldn’t the $100 set of pots suffice? (Several Shabbat meals later, I can honestly vouch that they do!)

But it was the $300 negligee in a Brooklyn store that stopped me in my tracks. “It’s an Italian designer,” the saleslady told me, surprised by the shocked look on my face. Clearly, she had customers willing to pay hundreds of dollars for a slip of fabric.

It’s no wonder, then, that Jewish newlyweds have little idea how to manage their finances. Few pre-marital classes or officiating rabbis offer anything in the way of financial advice. And cultural norms encourage young Jewish brides and grooms to register to their heart’s delight — no need to peek at the price tags.

But as the economy remains at a standstill and the costs of leading a Jewish lifestyle (including day school tuition and membership at a synagogue, temple, or JCC) continue to rise, it’s more important than ever for newlyweds to establish a firm financial foundation on which to build their life together. Often the financial decisions made early on in a marriage will forever impact a couple’s ability to afford to lead a lifestyle in line with their Jewish values. And research indicates that an ability to frankly discuss finances and money habits with one’s spouse is a key indicator of relationship satisfaction.

That’s one of the reasons why I launched Pazit (www.pazit.org), a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering Jewish women (and the men they love) to take control of their financial futures. Pazit, Hebrew for “pure gold,” offers financial education events for Jewish singles and young couples in their 20s and 30s in the tri-state area, as well as a Money Club, which provides a safe space for groups of a dozen or so Jewish women to talk about their challenges and insecurities when it comes to managing money.

It’s important to “get a sense of each other’s financial habits ahead of time,” preferably before marrying, says Bard Malovany, a financial adviser with Sagemark Consulting in Annandale, Va. This includes discussing student loans and significant credit card debt, as well as plans for paying it off. “If one spouse brings significant debt to the marriage, it can cause significant friction. And if you’re really thrifty and uncomfortable spending money, that can be as much of a burden on a relationship if you’re marrying someone who’s completely the opposite.”

Before deciding where to rent or buy a home, the engaged couple should establish a budget, also known as a spending plan. Calculate your after-tax monthly income and deduct expenses (rent, utilities, renter’s or home insurance, food, cell phones, Internet, cable TV, groceries, synagogue membership, gas and transportation, recreation, student loan payments, auto insurance, etc.)

Decide in advance how much tzedakah you’d like to give for the year as a couple, given your financial situation. Aim to invest at least 10 to 15 percent of your pre-tax income in a 401(k) (if your employer gives you that option) and/or a Roth IRA, and begin stashing away savings to create a rainy day fund equivalent to six months of living expenses. “Be sure to budget extra for debt reduction and for savings,” says Greg Womack, author of the book “Wisdom and Wealth” (Beacon Hill Press: 2007). “Make a commitment to always live within your means, spending less than you make.”

Couples should decide together how they’d like to divvy up financial roles like paying the bills and whether they want to use joint or separate checking and savings accounts. There’s no right and wrong. “Different things work for different people,” Malovany says. “If a couple is marrying very young and neither has much in the way of assets, starting out with joint accounts makes sense,” he says. The same applies to couples where one spouse isn’t working. “From a psychological perspective, there’s something nice about feeling like you’re in it together, and that includes money.” Other couples, especially those with two incomes, prefer to maintain separate accounts and divvy up the expenses according to their salaries.

Financial experts like syndicated “Money Talk” columnist Liz Pulliam Weston recommend that couples each have some private funds. “Even a few bucks a week to blow on lattes or a movie can be enough to preserve a necessary sense of independence,” she write in her book, “Easy Money” (FT Press: 2008). Another way to avoid disagreements is to agree with your spouse not to make purchases above a certain amount (say $200) without consulting one another.

Once married, schedule a monthly “money date” with your spouse. “Many couples know that talking about money is important, but either fail or put off talking about it because money can be an emotionally charged issue,” says Kristy Archuleta, Ph.D., who co-directs the Financial Therapy Clinic at Kansas State University.

Despite a couple’s best intentions, there will always be disagreements, says Malovany. “Marriage involves a lot of compromise. Money is just one of the things you learn how to compromise on.”

When planning her wedding, the Jewish commitment to the concept of ba’al tashchit, of not wasting unnecessarily, was paramount to Miriam Brosseau. Brosseau is a songwriter for Stereo Sinai, a socially responsible and environmentally conscious band whose “Biblegum Pop” fuses traditional gospel music with Hebrew verses from the book of Judges.

She and fellow band member Alan Sufrin were married on Tu b’Shvat, the New Year for the trees. “We liked the idea of getting married on a day associated with growth and renewal,” she says.

For the ceremony, the couple decided to serve no poultry or red meat. Instead of costly plastic favors that often end up in the trash, each guest received a place card fashioned from seed paper. “That way, they can go home and plant their names,” she told The Jewish Week.

For the eco-conscious, green weddings are a “lifestyle, not a trend,” says Joyce Scardina Becker, a wedding planner who is the author of “Countdown to your Perfect Wedding (St. Martins Press: 2006). “If you are a couple who cares about the environment in your everyday living and leads a healthy and sustainable lifestyle, then you’ll want to have a sustainable wedding.” Becker estimates that close to 30 percent of couples in America are incorporating some green elements into their nuptials. And a recent David’s Bridal survey indicated that 45 percent of respondents were making an effort to be environmentally conscious.

How green are Jewish weddings? While there is no hard data, wedding planners and industry experts say that a growing number of Jewish brides and grooms are increasingly thinking green when crafting their wedding to-do lists. And while most are going the eco-friendly route because they want the celebration to be an extension of their eco-values, many are hoping to save a little green, too.

“Brides are considering secondhand dresses and saving hundreds of dollars,” says Mireya Navarro, author of “Green Wedding: Planning Your Eco-Friendly celebration,” and an environmental reporter for The New York Times. “They’re going local for food and flowers, which also saves money. The main thing about green weddings is to avoid waste and excess and consumption.”

In her book, Navarro debunks common myths surrounding green weddings: that the wedding will take longer to plan, that the ceremony will have to break with tradition and that the bride will “look like oatmeal.”

There’s no one “right” way to plan a green wedding, Navarro says. “For every element of the wedding, ask yourself, ‘Is there an environmentally friendly alternative? Can I avoid this expense? Can I avoid having my guests travel long distances?’”

For her May 2008 wedding to Mark Berkowitz, Judith Belasco, the director of food programs at the environmental advocacy organization Hazon, chose local flowers and opted not to have any bouquets. The local food served at the celebration included an “amazing pea soup” and “interesting fiddlehead ferns,” she says. And instead of little gifts, the couple decided to “carbon offset” the wedding. (One way to do so is by visiting the Jewish National Fund’s GoNeutral Calculator at http://support.jnf.org/goneutral/carbonCalc.html and input the approximate number of miles that your guests have traveled to get to your wedding. You can then offset the amount of carbon emitted by donating towards the planting of trees in Israel). “Honestly, a lot of the green stuff is just good sense if you don’t want to spend a fortune on the wedding,” she says.

It’s not surprising that the green wedding trend has seeped into the Jewish world says Sara Marcus, founder of the JewishWeddingNetwork.com, which bills itself as “a Web site that takes the ‘oy vey’ out of planning your big day!” “If you think about it, tikkun olam relates to green values in many ways,” she says.

Many synagogues are driving this trend by installing solar panels and “greening” their buildings. And a handful of kosher wineries produce organic wines.

Instead of drowning the chupah in flowers, Marcus recommends that the happy couple consider constructing a chupah out of a tallit and branches. Another option is to create a quilted chupah out of fabrics that are meaningful to the bride and groom. “After the wedding, the quilt can be used a wall hanging,” she says.

And companies like Mazal Tov Glass are ensuring that the “breaking the glass” tradition under the chupah doesn’t result in more waste. The company sells easy-to-break glass cups for $36, which come with a bag to collect the shards. Afterwards, couples have the option of having the broken glass blown into a customizable bouquet vase or round bowl. “People want to preserve it as a keepsake,” says co-founder Andrea Osnow. “I don’t know whether it’s because they’re sentimental or eco-conscious.” (Osnow advises grooms to position the glass facing forward and to wear shoes. “The glass is pretty thin so it can cut you,” she says.)

In the Orthodox community, it’s common for brides to rent a wedding gown or silk floral centerpieces from a gemach, a communal organization, which is a decidedly “green” option. Another option is the JewishWeddingNetwork.com, which offers a free “buy and sell” online clearinghouse for brides who want to recycle old wedding gowns, veils and favors, and those who want to buy gently used wedding regalia. “Basically I’m making a shidduch between the two,” Marcus jokes.

Another option is the JewishWeddingNetwork.com, which offers a free “buy and sell” online clearinghouse for brides who want to recycle old wedding gowns, veils and favors, and those who want to buy gently used wedding regalia. “Basically I’m making a shidduch between the two,” Marcus jokes.

Even among the most fervent eco-conscious brides, other concerns may override the greenest of intentions. Though she lives in Hell’s Kitchen in Manhattan, Danielle Venokur is planning her August wedding to Timothy Greenberg in the Catskills. She’s not happy that most of her guests will have to travel to the ceremony, but wanted to hold her wedding at a place that was meaningful to her and her fiancé. Venokur, the owner of dvGreen, a sustainable event planning business in New York City, says that she often goes through such deliberations with her clients. “It’s your wedding, and it needs to be meaningful to you,” she says. She plans to buy carbon offsets and has incorporated sustainability into several other aspects of the wedding.

If the weather cooperates, she and her fiancé plan to hold their Saturday evening chupah outdoors, after sundown. “We’ll essentially be married under the stars,” she says, using tiki lamps to illuminate the area.

“The general awareness of humanity and the environment and the idea that we have to respect other people and the planet is certainly a big part of Judaism,” she says.

Yet donations to religious institutions increased 5.5 percent, to $107 billion. And the category known as Public-Society Benefit, which includes multi-agency organizations like the UJA-Federation of New York and the United Way, saw a boost in giving of more than 5 percent.

“It’s the historical good news, bad news about philanthropy in recessions,” said Jeffrey Solomon, president of the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies. “Philanthropy does go down in recessions but never as much as the Dow.”

Part of that has to do with the fact that donors are keenly aware of the increased need due to rising unemployment and the deep losses in many portfolios, said Solomon. Also, many of the bigger donors make multi-year commitments and fulfill them even though they don’t have the same discretionary revenue to give away.

The Giving USA report does not divide data by religion or region. But those in the Jewish nonprofit world say that the Jewish community will continue to be hard hit by the decline in philanthropic dollars caused by rising unemployment and shrinking portfolios coupled with the Bernard Madoff Ponzi scheme scandal. As a result, many groups and federations have laid off personnel and slashed budgets and programming.

“I think that the report you want to look at is the one that will be done for the calendar year 2009,” said John Ruskay, UJA-Federation’s executive vice president and CEO. “UJA-Fed. had record-breaking results until the late fall.”

UJA-Federation’s annual campaign, which Ruskay admits is “challenged,” closes in two weeks, at the end of June. “We projected optimistically that our annual campaign would end at $140 million,” down from $153.7 million the prior year, he says. “We’re within fighting range.”

The campaign was framed as “for those who can,” step up to the plate, Ruskay said. “While most of our donors recognized our unique role in the community and the Jewish world, we encountered growing numbers of donors who lost enormous wealth. Or whose investments were decimated by Madoff.”

The bad news of the report was that human services agencies, which are more overextended than ever, experienced a 16 percent drop in donations in 2008. This may be because the “full impact of what was happening wasn’t truly understood until the last quarter of 2008,” said Solomon. His prediction? A lower gross amount of charitable giving in 2009, but a higher proportion of it will flow into the social services sector.

In fact, Ruskay said that in the first six months of 2009, 13 out of the 15 largest human service agencies that are part of the UJA-Federation network reported that their philanthropy was at last year’s level or higher. It’s possible that the uptick in giving to this area didn’t kick in until the beginning of 2009.

On the good news front, the recession offers a beacon of hope for one branch of Jewish institutions: synagogues and temples, said Robert Evans, a member of the Giving USA editorial review board and co-founder of the EHL Consulting Group. “Historically, Americans turn to their houses of worship in bad times,” he said. Close to 35 percent of giving in 2008 went toward funding houses of worship, up from 32 percent in 2007, and that percentage is likely to increase in 2009.

Houses of worship need to keep asking members of their congregations to give, Evans said. And give they will — as long as the appeal is to make synagogue life more affordable for all and so congregations can help those in need financially, he says.

Meanwhile Solomon estimates that the Jewish communal world will not see an uptick in overall giving until 2010, at the earliest. “I’m pessimistic in the short term,” he says. “But I have great faith in the generosity of Americans and American Jews in particular.”

While Jewish nonprofits are largely scaling back their budgets and slashing programming, PresenTense, which was launched four years ago, is a rarity in the sense that it’s still plugging forth, full speed ahead. The group, which prides itself on “growing pioneers who are solving Jewish problems with sustainable solutions,” has seen its annual operating budget rise nearly 200 percent, to $580,000 for the current fiscal year (PresenTense runs on a Hebrew calendar).

“The key thing is to keep our foot on the gas pedal,” says Aharon Horwitz, co-director of the PresenTense Group. In just three years, PresenTense has emerged from an all-volunteer-run organization to a known entity employing eight staffers (many of them working part time).
Cutting back wasn’t an option, says PresenTense co-founder Ariel Beery. “We’re not in this to build an organization; we’re in this to grow pioneers,” he says. “If we’re not launching new ventures or developing a creative community around a shared value, then we’re not doing our job.”

Beery describes the organization’s structure as a series of concentric circles. The outer ring represents PresenTense magazine, a print and online medium with an emphasis on promoting creative Zionist culture and Jewish identity. Started in 2005 with $5,000 of Beery’s own money and $5,000 from a friend and mentor, the magazine is now published three times a year with the help of more than 90 volunteers. Issue 8 (which is actually the ninth issue since the first was labeled “zero”), focused on education, and is just off the press. Beery estimates that 30,000 young Jews read the magazine.

The middle ring, known as the “creativity” circle, refers to virtual hubs in Chicago, Boston and, until recently, New York. “It’s kind of like a roving think tank,” Beery says. The hubs allow PresenTense-affiliated Jews to volunteer together, participate in activities and brainstorm.
Right now, Jerusalem is the only city to have a physical hub, the Zion hub. “It’s sort of like a gym for entrepreneurs,” Beery says. It’s an alternative to the coffee shop for young creatives living in Jerusalem, complete with free WiFi and a happening vibe. And the fees don’t break the bank. A resident member receives a dedicated desk and six hours of conference room use for just $180 a month. About 30 regulars come in one-day rates, starting at about $7.50 a day. The idea is to promote collaboration and lower costs. More than 2,000 people have visited the hub in the past seven months to participate in activities and workshops, says Horwitz.

And earlier this month, PresenTense launched a pilot semester of the “School for Pioneering,” featuring classes devoted to topics like “Strategy and Other Corporate Drivel,” “What You Need to Know Before You Go to a Web Designer,” and “From Concept to Strategy.” Each three-week course costs about $36.

By charging for desks and courses, PresenTense is working to reach more social entrepreneurs while bringing in additional revenue in the hopes of achieving sustainability in the long run. Right now, a quarter of the annual budget comes from the Zion hub and workshop tuition. “We’ve developed a business model that provides value back to the community and to the organization,” Beery says.

Yet it’s the inner circle — the “Pioneering” ring— that PresenTense has been developing in earnest. This refers to PresenTense’s Summer Institute in Jerusalem, a six-week boot camp for 16 social entrepreneurs. The fellows pay for their own plane tickets, but are provided with free room and board (dorm-style) and a structured curriculum. This includes on-site coaching from PresenTense staff, skill-building workshops and a variety of accomplished speakers who are leaders in the field of innovation. The goal is for fellows to transform their “big idea” into viable, nonprofit ventures by the summer’s end.

PresenTense’s unique model is that it views itself as an outsourced research and development department for the broader Jewish community. As a result, PresenTense encourages Jewish federations, foundations and other organizations to sponsor “chairs” for the Summer Institute, at the price of $15,000 each. There’s no direct payoff for the sponsors of the chairs, nor do the sponsoring organizations retain intellectual property rights. However, PresenTense matches up sponsoring organizations with fellows who are doing work to advance a field that the organization has a stake in.

For example, last year the Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland sponsored a chair in online Jewish education, which went to sponsor J.T. Waldman’s spot at the Summer Institute. Waldman, the director of The Jewish Publication Society Interactive, spent the six weeks developing a project dubbed “Tagged Tanakh,” which allows users to “tag” the Bible with questions, commentary and insights. And this year, the Covenant Foundation, which advances Jewish education in North America, is sponsoring a chair in education innovation. The spot will go to Russle Neiss, a librarian at the Rodeph Sholom Day School on the Upper West Side. Neiss’ project, JPoints, aims to create an online resource for students, teachers and parents, where they can watch flash-based Jewish educational videos designed to spark children’s inherent curiosity in Jewish subjects.

“The main barrier to innovation in the Jewish community is economic investment,” says Beery. He estimates that an organization that wishes to launch a new initiative will spend approximately $150,000 without knowing whether the project will succeed or not. And when it comes to projects that use the Internet, he says, “Jewish organizations just don’t have the management and technical skills to truly build something from the bottom up.”

Beery’s pitch is that PresenTense’s Summer Institute offers Jewish organizations the opportunity to test out an innovative project at a tenth of the cost. So far, the pitch is working. The number of sponsored chairs is up from six last year to 11 this year (including two chairs that are internally sponsored by PresenTense). Part of this success is undoubtedly tied to PresenTense’s track record: among fellows from the two previous Summer Institutes, 27 ventures were launched and of those, 13 have received funding or merged into existing organizations.

“In a way, Jewish organizations see us as HR [human resources] for the Jewish people,” says Beery. “We’re developing the human and social capital that the Jewish people need to launch 21st Century ventures.”

Q: How would you characterize your drashot?

A: The sermons aren’t religious. I talk a lot about honesty and gratitude while drawing upon a lot of different traditions. Often, I’ll use something that happened in my day-to-day life. I began e-mailing the sermons to clients and friends. Before long, it was reaching thousands of people every week.

What are some of the more important lessons to gain from your book?

The importance of embracing awkwardness and uncertainty. Often, when you feel the most uncomfortable, it’s a signpost for the direction you should go to grow. Giving these sermons was intensely awkward at first. I’m a new person at the company and I wear a kipa to work. [The real estate brokers] were just staring at their watches. They have business to transact. Yet I discovered quickly that people would come up to me and say, “This is one of the highlights of my week.” I became sort of like an in-house rabbi. People began to drop by my office to ask advice. It’s very gratifying.

Why do you focus on the workplace as a place for spiritual growth?

Work is a spiritual gymnasium. That’s where we are tested to implement the spiritual notions we learn about on Shabbat or on Sunday or on the meditation pillow. We see what happens to the world when people who are leaders in the workforce don’t obey the very basic spiritual teachings like “be honest,” “don’t hoard,” and “tell the truth.”

What do you make of Bernie Madoff?

I can’t analyze Bernie Madoff. He’s probably psychotic in a profound way. Idolatry in Judaism is not about worshipping little statues; it’s about placing something — such as success and money — above God. The correction, tikkun, for that modality is simply gratitude. The way to accept abundance without becoming greedy is to live in gratitude.

Should every firm have an in-house rabbi?

I don’t know about that. Every firm has a person like that within its rank. And yet the person who gets rewarded at most firms is the person who brings in the most dough. What if we valued people who embody the principles we seek to emulate? We need both types.

‘You’re overspending — slow down.”

That’s the advice I received when I first logged onto Thrive (www.justthrive.com), which bills itself as a free online personal finance adviser. Eighty percent of other users got the same advice.

Like Mint.com, Quicken and other free personal finance management tools, Thrive organizes all of your credit cards, savings and checking accounts, student loan debt, and retirement and investment accounts in one place — giving you a big picture of your current financial health.

What differentiates Thrive, says Israeli co-founder Ori Schnaps, is that “we’re opinionated. We’re not trying to be your father or your mother,” he says. “But if you’re trying to pay down credit card debt or buy a house, we help you move in that direction.”

Pie charts offered by competitors, which indicate users’ biggest spending areas, don’t work, Schnaps says. “It doesn’t tell you what you need to do and how to do it.”

And traditional budgeting has its flaws, too. “It’s like dieting,” he says. “Most people start off with good intentions, which then fall by the wayside.”

Instead, Thrive, which launched six months ago, gives its 20,000-plus users a dose of what it calls “behavioral budgeting.” Thrive’s software analyzes a person’s monthly spending habits and then offers simple suggestions to fine-tune spending. If your savings goal is to afford a $3,000 vacation abroad, for example, Thrive will encourage you to cut your 10 monthly dinners out in half, and calculate yearly savings.  Users can set up a “rainy day fund” or track savings goal, such as buying a house.

“When it comes to personal finance issues,” Schnaps says, “people tend to tackle too much at the same time.” That’s why Thrive is focused primarily on mini-goals: If you visit the ATM 10 times each month and take out $600, Thrive will set a goal for you to take out only $580 next month.

Active Thrive users tend to log in one-and-a-half times a week, spending close to 18 minutes at a time, according to data provided by Matt Wallaert, Thrive’s lead scientist. Women, who make up 60 percent of Thrive’s users, tend to visit the site closer to two times a week, on average, and spend a smaller percentage of their income than male users (but make only 75 percent of what men make and tend to have smaller rainy day funds). In general, one-third of active users follow at least one of Thrive’s recommendations (be it to open a savings account with a higher interest rate or choose a new credit card with a lower interest rate).

Gripes about the site include its penchant to crash, particularly when adding accounts, and worries about security. Thrive is working to address the former and Schnaps says that security is “by far our No. 1 concern.”

“I use it, my mom uses it…we wouldn’t want our information to leak out,” Schnaps says. Thrive uses government-grade encryption tools and maintains stringent password requirements. Plus, all account information on the site is read-only; if someone managed to hack into your Thrive account, he would not be able to make any transfers.

Through a partnership with Credit.com, Thrive not only provides users with a free Credit Compass — an approximate credit score —but also doles out advice on how to improve it. These include: “Keep your oldest credit card account open,” “Make a plan to lower your debt,” and “Get a free credit report once a year from annualcreditreport.com.”

The site attracts those in their 20s and 30s — an underserved market, since Gen Y’ers typically don’t have that much money and financial institutions can’t make much money off of them, Schnaps says. Schnaps’s co-founder, Avi Karnani, came up with the initial idea for Thrive while working in finance. His friends often bombarded him with personal finance questions, but he wasn’t able to offer much help. “I work at a hedge fund,” he’d tell them. “What I’m doing has nothing to do with your 401(k).” In 2007, Schnaps, who was working for Goldman Sachs at the time, answered Karnani’s Craiglist ad. The two soon teamed up to create Thrive, which launched in October 2008 with “angel” funding of approximately $1.5 million.

“Most of my friends, to this day, live month-to-month, paycheck-to-paycheck,” Schnaps says. Their goal was to change that.

Schnaps, who was born in Haifa and moved to Long Island when he was 9, is a serial entrepreneur. Thrive, which was sold to online mortgage marketplace LendingTree in January 2009, is his sixth start-up.

There aren’t any advertisements on Thrive. Instead, when users sign up for recommended credit cards, Thrive receives a cut, generally referred to as a “bounty.”  That bounty is not taken into consideration during the referral process, says Schnaps, adding that you’re guaranteed to get the best credit card for you (often the one with the lowest interest rate). It’s a win-win, Schnaps says. “A lot of people come in with $10,000 to $15,000 in credit card debt with interest rates toppling 29.99 percent, very near the usury rate.” Thrive helps open a new credit card with a lower interest rate and zero-percent transfer fee. The site makes it easy, highlighting the amount of savings the new card will yield during the course of a year.

“We use the formula of ‘here’s the choice you need to make … and here’s why,’” says Wallaert. Thrive plans to soon link recommendations to related articles on the company blog, which explain everything from 529 plans to 401(k)s.

Before starting Thrive, Schnaps led the development of Pronto.com’s comparison shopping search engine. “I built an amazing search engine, but at the end of the day, I was only saving someone $12 on a pair of shoes,” he says. He yearned to put his technology smarts to a more purposeful use. “With Thrive,” he says, “we make an immense impact on people’s lives. To see people come in with credit card debt and spending problems, and six months later, have it all under control … that’s very rewarding.”

Email: Tamar@jewishweek.org

Not everyone is this lucky. According to the market research firm Compass Intelligence [1], K-12 schools invested some $243 million in laptops in 2008, which includes hundreds of thousands of dollars spent to replace equipment that went missing. That investment could spell big losses for many cash-strapped school districts. And some stolen goods can never be replaced: student work that wasn’t backed up, for instance, and lesson plans and grades on a teacher’s laptop.

Fortunately, schools can take steps to protect their hardware and intellectual assets. Edutopia consulted security experts, district managers, and IT coordinators, who provided the following tips for keeping laptops safe.

Mark your Property

At Putnam Valley Central School District, in Putnam Valley, New York, a student’s claim of “I lost my laptop” could have meant “I just sold my laptop to some guy on the street for $500,” says Michael Lee, network administrator and chief information officer. The district put an end to such thefts by laser etching the front cover of each of its 1,700 MacBooks with “Property of Putnam Valley Central Schools” in bold letters. “Since implementing that, we haven’t lost a single laptop,” Lee says.

The laser etcher cost the district $9,000, or the price of just six laptops. The district does the etching during the summer months, using equipment purchased from Epilog Laser [2]. “It takes only two minutes,” Lee says. “We just place the laptop onto the etching tray and press a button.”

Purchase an Insurance Policy

The San Diego Unified School District issues every student in its new iHigh Virtual Academy [3] a laptop for home use. To keep thefts and recovery costs down, the district purchases insurance through Safeware [4], which secures computer systems the district loans to students.

“It ranges as low as $20 per machine per year,” says Darryl LaGace, the district’s chief information and technology officer. His district pays about $32 per laptop for a policy that covers burglary, theft, vandalism, and certain kinds of damage. Students are forgiven unintentional damage, but after that, anyone who receives another laptop must pay part or all of the retail cost if a computer gets lost or stolen.

Install a LoJack for Laptops

Just like the LoJack antitheft system, which tracks down stolen cars, there’s a device called Computrace [5], which IT administrators can install on laptops. A hidden transmitter pinpoints the location of the computer. Since the Orange County Public Schools, in Orlando, Florida, installed Computrace on its 26,000 computers, the school district has recovered a third of some 70 stolen laptops.

“We wanted software that could track down laptops within a guaranteed time frame of 60 days,” says Tom McNabb, the district’s assistant director of device management. A bonus in installing tracking software on laptops is that schools often recover other stolen equipment, such as overhead projectors and DVD players, at the same time.

Control the Contents

Before assigning laptops to kids, IT staff should install a program like Deep Freeze [6], which prevents students from permanently installing their own software — and requires storing files on a separate hard drive, such as a school server. Other applications, such as Bit9 [7], allow students to run certain software, while blocking programs like iTunes and screensavers.

The inability to save unsanctioned content is a constant reminder that the laptop is someone else’s property. It also deters theft, because who wants a laptop that can’t be customized? Limiting outside content has a few other fringe benefits: It keeps the laptops’ operating systems running smoothly because it bars memory-hogging applications, video files, and more. And it saves the work of erasing hard drives when transferring laptops from student to student.

Leave No Option Unturned

What’s suitable for one district may not work for another, and educators should not rely on a single measure to prevent loss and theft. “There is no silver bullet when it comes to securing laptop data,” says Dan Yost, chief technology officer for Tri-8, which sells MyLaptopGPS [8]. “Districts should never rely on a single feature.”

Tamar Snyder is a writer in New York City who specializes in education, personal finance, and careers.

Source URL: http://www.edutopia.org/tips-protect-laptop-computers-theft

Links:
[1] http://www.compass-intelligence.com
[2] http://www.epiloglaser.com
[3] http://www.sandi.net/enrollmentoptions/ihigh.html
[4] http://www.safeware.com
[5] http://www.absolute.com/laptop-security-solutions.asp
[6] http://www.faronics.com/html/deepfreeze.asp
[7] http://www.bit9.com
[8] http://mylaptopgps.com
Copyright 2008 The George Lucas Educational Foundation