In describing its news-making $33 million grant to the Hebrew Union College, the Jewish Theological Seminary and Yeshiva University to train a cadre of more than 1,000 Jewish educators, the heads of The Jim Joseph Foundation were clear about where they envision most of these teachers working.“The vast majority will not necessarily go work at day schools,” Al Levitt, president of the Jim Joseph Foundation, told The Jewish Week. “Informal education is where it is going to be.”

While the foundation has shelled out $47.6 million in emergency grants and endowment-building campaigns for day schools in recent years, supports an Israel education project in Bay Area day schools and recently pledged $5.2 million to the DeLeT Teacher Education Program (for day school teachers) the bulk of its funds are earmarked toward experiential Jewish learning initiatives such as overnight camping, Hillel, youth groups and Birthright Israel NEXT, as well as innovative communities of young adults like Moishe House and Reboot.

This reality is in keeping with the wishes of the late Jim Joseph, a San Francisco-based real estate developer who early in his philanthropic career funded many day school curriculum projects but grew dissatisfied by the lack of impact he felt he was having. “Jim realized that day schools only affected a very small portion of Jewish youth,” Levitt said. “He defined Jewish education very broadly. He wanted to provide every young Jew with a Jewish education.”

Jim Joseph, which has emerged in recent years as the largest foundation focused exclusively on Jewish education, is part of a group of large, nationally-focused Jewish mega-donors who, while continuing to support day schools, no longer see them as a top priority. Instead, they are betting a majority of their money on Jewish educational alternatives. Michael Steinhardt — a co-founder of the day school-focused Partnership For Excellence in Jewish Education (PEJE) — has openly expressed his disillusionment with day schools, calling them too expensive and incapable of reaching a broad enough spectrum of young Jews.

In recent years, while his foundation continues to be a “sustaining partner” of PEJE, Steinhardt has led the charge in promoting Hebrew-language charter schools as a viable alternative. Harold Grinspoon, while also a partner of PEJE, has been focusing his efforts on growing the PJ Library, which provides free Jewish children’s books and CDs that promote Jewish literacy in more than 100 communities around the country.

Meanwhile, the Avi Chai Foundation — a longtime advocate and funder of Jewish day schools (and a PEJE partner) — is determining its strategy as it prepares to spend down its largesse by 2020.

Asked by The Jewish Week what it means to be a PEJE partner (the Jim Joseph Foundation is one as well), the group’s executive director, Rabbi Joshua Elkin, declined to say whether some minimal (or even current) contribution is required.

“For a number of years, people in the Jewish community were justifiably excited by the growth in the day school arena and were really focused on capitalizing on what was perceived to be a significant potential for continued growth,” says Jonathan Woocher, the Jewish Education Service of North America’s chief ideas officer and director of its Lippman Kanfer Institute.

“In the last few years, what people have begun to do is step back and say, ‘There are other areas of potential growth and other areas of potential needs, as well.’”

Is the day school enterprise, which looked so promising and was considered such a magic bullet in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s, doomed?

Even more significant than the declining interest of mega-funders, day schools have been hard hit by the recession, which has not only made fundraising more challenging but has greatly shrunk the pool of parents able to pay tuition.

With the day school enterprise facing dropping enrollment and rising scholarship requests, nearly a dozen institutions will not open their doors in September and many others worry about sharing that same fate. More than ever, pressure is on day school boards and development staff to professionalize and focus on endowment building and other long-term sustainability efforts.

Who, then, will step in to champion — and bail out — Jewish day schools? Probably not the mega-funders, day school insiders say.

“The universe of donors that consider day schools a priority was rather small to begin with,” says Schick, adding that “much of day school philanthropic funding is local, not national.”

Even the larger foundations — such as the Grinspoon Foundation in New England, The Weinberg Foundation in the Baltimore area, and the Rose Foundation in Denver — “gave in an important way to day schools [within their vicinity]” but “not in a national way because it was too much for them to bite off,” he says.

Part of the shift in philanthropic focus has to do with demographics.

“Day school enrollment is overwhelmingly Orthodox and becoming more Orthodox,” says Schick, who found an increase of 4 percent in enrollment among haredi day schools for the 2009-2010 academic year, largely due to high birthrates. During the same period, Modern Orthodox schools experienced a 2 percent decline in enrollments, and Reform and Conservative day schools saw enrollment drop 4 and 6 percent, respectively.

Even community day schools, which experienced significant growth throughout the past decade, are weathering a decline in enrollment of 5.5 percent.

“More and more parents are saying [about day schools], ‘Do I really need this?’” says Marvin Schick, a consultant for the Avi Chai Foundation. “It’s a sea change.”

Most of the money that keeps day schools — a $2.5 billion operation encompassing nearly 800 schools across the country that enroll 240,000 students — humming along, comes from parents, alumni and other community members who are closely connected to the schools.

“Community conversation tends to focus on the activities of a small group of mega-givers,” says Yossi Prager, executive director at Avi Chai, which devotes three-quarters of its annual North American grant budget of approximately $20 million to teacher-training programs and curricula development at day schools. “From that perspective, day schools were never primary for most. Other forms of Jewish education, especially experiential education, have attracted their interest.”

The popularity of Jewish camping, a major interest of the Jim Joseph Foundation, has also taken a toll on day school funding. “More funders are interested in summer camping, partly because it takes less outside philanthropic dollars to get things going in the camping world,” says Prager. While summer camps are more expensive, per day, than day schools, the overall costs are significantly smaller. It’s also easier for families to pay “the full freight” [of summer camp fees], Prager says, “whereas day schools are investing 10 to 50 percent of their budget on scholarships.”

Also, because virtually all organized summer activities cost money (as opposed to the school-year alternative of tuition-free public schools or charter schools), parents may be more willing to pay for camp than for day school.

To attract additional funding, day schools should not be “hunkering down and just defending what always has been,” says Woocher. In experimenting with technology and being on the leading edge of educational change, “day schools will gain access to funders who see themselves as innovators and want to try new things,” he says.

For Harry Bloom, the key to attracting new donors is for day schools to become more transparent about their finances, while at the same time maintaining or even increasing educational quality. “The days of saying, ‘Spend more because that equates with better quality’ — those days are over,” says Bloom, director of planning and performance improvement at Yeshiva University’s Institute for University-School Partnership, which has been a leader in researching issues of day school affordability and governance.

Bloom says that he is in talks with several potential donors, many of whom are not household names, who “are businesspeople that recognize and value the tools we’re bringing to bear on problems and challenges of day schools.”

“We need to be self-critical as day school people,” he says. “We have to earn the right to generate philanthropic support. When we ramp up efforts to be transparent about day school economics and how to improve them, we will attract more philanthropic interest.”

Even with the introduction of new donors to the cause, day schools must work to assure their own sustainability, particularly in the area of professionalizing their fundraising.

“Jewish day school fundraising is often a shvitzer’s activity,” says Schick. “The principal calls up a businessman and says, ‘We have a payroll of $50,000 to meet tomorrow and we’re short $15,000. How much can you give?’ The guy says, ‘I just gave you’ and ends up giving $1,000.”

In addition to improving cash flow, day schools must engage seriously in long-term financial planning. According to Bloom’s research, only a third of day schools have a long-term financial plan in place. And fewer than 5 percent of day schools have an endowment, according to Schick. Among the day schools that do have endowments, the holdings are often “shockingly low,” he says. “The fascinating thing about the Madoff scandal, in which several affluent schools lost money, was that when you consider how much they had, it was puny in terms of the needs of the school and what the parent body could afford to contribute.”

The tides may be shifting, however, as the economic downturn has highlighted the need for day schools to achieve long-term financial sustainability.

“There’s a growing conversation that is moving into real action as relates to legacy and endowment giving,” says PEJE’s Elkin. “Day schools, as institutions, by and large are pretty young. Given how important they are to the Jewish community, to be operating hand-to-mouth is not a tenable place for schools to be in.”

Many in the day school world are looking to The MetroWest Day School Campaign as a model for launching their own endowment campaigns. To date, the campaign has raised $30 million in cash endowment gifts as well as “legacy” gifts such as bequests, with the goal of creating a $50 million endowment composed of four funds: one community-wide and separate funds for each of the area’s three day schools.

“We want day schools to be a realistic financial option for more Jewish families” — particularly middle-income families earning $150,000 to $250,000, says Kim Hirsh, a development officer at United Jewish Communities MetroWest, the Jewish federation.

A flagship program of Pursue (formerly known as the AJWS-AVODAH partnership), the two-day Organizational Leadership for Social Change: A Board Service Training is premised on the belief that the key to engaging young Jews in organized Jewish communal life is to equip them with the skills and confidence needed for them to join the boards of established Jewish organizations.

For the nominal cost of $36 (and the better part of two Sundays), the board service training “combines tachlis, the hard skills of what it means to be part of a board of directors, with that other piece: figuring out what type of board you are interested in serving on,” says Merrill Zack, associate director of education and community engagement at the American Jewish World Service.

The program — the first of its kind within the Jewish nonprofit world — is a response to what Zack calls the “fraud complex,” which many young Jews experience. “They tell me, ‘I can’t get on a board because I don’t have money or a really long resumé yet,” she says.

While sizable donations may be a prerequisite for serving on the board of a hospital or large university, for a lot of grass-roots organizations, that’s simply not the case, says Marie Zieger, a consultant affiliated with the Support Center for Nonprofit Management who has facilitated Pursue’s board service training since its inception in 2008.

“The level of accomplishment among young people should be tapped into, not ignored,” says Bram Weber, chair of the Council of Young Jewish Presidents, an umbrella group of young Jewish leaders.

*

On a recent Sunday morning, 16 young Jewish professionals are gathered around a conference room table in Midtown Manhattan. They are an eclectic group of 20- and 30-somethings, from community organizers to corporate lawyers, who are here to learn the nuts and bolts of joining and serving on Jewish nonprofit boards.

“How would you describe the relationship of a board to a nonprofit?” the facilitator asks.

“It’s like a safety net to a trapeze artist,” says one of the participants.

“It’s like a Jewish mom to a child,” another replies.

“It’s coffee to my morning,” a third proposes.

At a time when established nonprofits bemoan the lack of engagement of young people with their causes, the under-30 set represents only 2 percent of those who serve on boards, according to the Nonprofit Governance Index 2007 conducted by BoardSource, a nonprofit that provides resources related to building effective nonprofit boards. While no comparative data exists regarding the demographic makeup of Jewish nonprofit boards, those in the field say that the number of millennials and Gen-Xers serving on boards is minimal, at best.

This is particularly troubling in light of the findings of a 2010 study conducted by the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute. “The Jewish People is facing a serious problem of high-quality leadership — spiritual, political and organizational — with no clear trend of improvement,” its “2030: Alternative Futures for the Jewish People” report concluded. “Efforts to attract and prepare the best and brightest for leadership roles are inadequate and … the entry of younger persons into leadership positions is very slow.”

In addition, the JPPPI report noted that “as the Jewish community ages and the older generation enjoys better health and longevity, older leaders crowd out leadership opportunities for younger people.”

In fact, this crowding out of leadership opportunities prompted the formation in May 2005 of the Council of Young Jewish Presidents, an umbrella group of young Jewish leaders who didn’t want to wait 20 or 30 years before being granted a seat on the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.

“Just because I’m 35 doesn’t mean I can’t sit at the table with people 25 years older than me,” says Weber, chair of the CYJP.

During the past year or so, the Council has been beefing up leadership development and training opportunities for its members, particularly in the area of board service.

“We recognize that leaders in the Jewish community who are our age shouldn’t just be chairs of young leadership organizations, but also encouraged to sit on senior leadership boards,” says Weber, who for the past year has served on the board of the Jewish Community Relations Council.

For Cara Herbitter, being turned down several months ago for a board position prompted her to attend the workshop.

“I wanted to better understand what board service entailed, as well as how to be a more attractive applicant in the future,” she told The Jewish Week.

She says she learned the importance of building a relationship with an organization before applying to be on its board, adding that she hadn’t previously volunteered with the organization.

Adina Mermelstein Konikoff, who participated in the board leadership program in spring 2008, says that the training prompted her to consider why she was not yet financially supporting a certain nonprofit, despite the fact that she hoped one day to join its board. She and her husband have since begun donating to that organization.

Serving on a nonprofit board can be a win-win, for both the young person and the board.

“It’s a way for young people to engage in social justice work and take on leadership roles as older and more established leaders begin to retire,” says Herbitter. At the same time, “young people can offer fresh perspectives to nonprofit boards and help build bridges between nonprofits and younger people in the communities they seek to engage.”

Many (though not all) young Jews interested in board service approach the task from the viewpoint of someone working as a Jewish communal professional.

“I now have a clear understanding of the division of responsibility between an organization’s professional and volunteer leadership, which is a difficult balance that I believe is often misunderstood,” says Jonathan Horowitz, a professional in the Jewish nonprofit sector and Brandeis alumnus who joined the board of directors of the Hillel at Brandeis after attending a board service training.

“I am astonished how many Jewish leaders, rabbis, and innovators trace the origins of their Jewish community-building work to Hillel at Brandeis,” he says. “I want to support an organization that is cultivating the leaders who are reshaping and revitalizing the Jewish community.”

For Sissy Block, the recent board service training came at an opportune time: she had just joined the board of Limmud NY. “I was hoping to clarify for myself how to make the transition from being a very active Limmud NY volunteer to participating in and supporting the organization as a board member,” she says. Learning the best practices of board leadership, including the legal and fiduciary responsibilities of the board, she says, “will make me more confident about my board service.”

It’s unclear how many of the 120 or so participants who have been trained over the course of the last three years have gone on to join boards. Pursue is in the process of surveying alumni of the board service training to get a sense of how the workshop has influenced their decisions whether or not to join a board.

“One thing we’re looking at for the future is to figure out how we can support that by facilitating introductions and matching up young people with boards,” says Zack. The organization hosts three to four follow-up events a year meant to reinforce the importance of board service, including a panel discussion featuring the board chair of an organization along with executive directors from small, medium and large organizations.

While demand is strong among young Jews for board service training, the question that has yet to be answered is whether the Jewish establishment will embrace the 20- and 30-something crowd in more than a token fashion.

“Bringing a young person onto a board because he or she represents a certain age group can be detrimental,” cautions John Brothers, a senior fellow with the Support Center, which conducts board leadership trainings. “Youth, in of itself, is not an asset.”

Boards that bring on younger members must be open to “changing the culture of the organization to be more representative of the community and the people that they serve” — a task that is easy to talk about but more difficult to put into practice.

Handing over the leadership reins may be even more difficult in the Jewish community, which “holds boards in high regard,” says Zack.

In 2008, Dobkin joined the board of the American Jewish World Service, which she currently chairs. In recent years, she’s broadened her philanthropic focus to include getting involved in the White House Project and leading the creation of Women Moving Millions, which raised more than $180 million in gifts of $1 million or more for women’s foundations and women’s funds. Last month, Dobkin received the prestigious Leadership, Equity and Diversity Award (LEAD) from the Women’s Funding Network and the Council on Foundations. The Jewish Week sat down with Dobkin at the AJWS building, where she dished about how women are changing the face of Jewish philanthropy, why funding women is so important and her impatience with how long it is taking for the Jewish community to practice the family values that it preaches.

Jewish Week: More Jewish women are gaining control of the purse strings and becoming philanthropic decision-makers — a trend that is expected to increase over the next decades. How has the role of Jewish women in Jewish philanthropy evolved?

Dobkin: Clearly it has changed some. I think you see it especially in the federation systems. When I would give a gift to the federation, the thank you almost always went to my husband, Eric. That has basically stopped. Jewish women’s foundations are popping up all over the place, mostly in federations, but some are independent. These are women getting together to fund women; some don’t give just to Jews. Most give from their endowment, so they’re not making huge gifts. Generally, the women who are involved are federation women and they’re not very progressive about their funding. But that being said, it is women funding women. And that’s very new and encouraging.

What, for you, would serve as a mark of achievement for women’s funding?

When Jewish men begin to fund things where Jewish women are making a difference … that will be a big change. The women’s foundations need to find ways to include progressive Jewish women who don’t necessarily fund anything Jewish. That would take a much more open kind of policy.

 You take a very hands-on, donor-activist approach to your philanthropy. Do you wish more Jewish philanthropists would do the same?

I’m often considered radical within the Jewish community. In my fantasy, I would like to see equality between men and women in every sphere of life. I would also like for women internationally to be valued. My friend Abigail Disney is working on a four-part series on women and war for PBS that deals with the question, ‘what would war look like if women really mattered?’ I thought that was brilliant. In a way, the whole world could be different if women really mattered.

Is there an underlying thread, a common denominator, to all of the causes that you fund?

What I tend to do personally is to look at a project and only fund the things that will begin to make a difference and begin to make change. The mission of the White House Project is pretty clear — the idea is to get women in the pipeline in all kinds of elected office, from school boards to hopefully the presidency. When it comes to the Jewish Women’s Archive, a lot of people don’t get it the way I get it. Until Jewish women are seen as part of Jewish history, it will be hard to make the change I want to see. The Jewish community needs to be much more inclusive. There are all kinds of Jews out there: lesbian Jews, Jews of color, and there are women. Women have to be seen as a minority in the Jewish community because that’s the way they’re treated. And as long as kavod [honor] in the Jewish community depends on money, things will not change in the mainstream [Jewish] community.

 Jennifer Gorovitz was just named CEO of the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco. She’s the first woman to head a large federation. Do you view this as a sign of progress?

We have to say it’s a sign of change. Still, I think it will be a long time before we see this happening elsewhere.

What’s your take on the stirring in the Orthodox community when it comes to female spiritual leadership?

The fact that so many women are studying is wonderful. There will be some sort of female Orthodox rabbi. Women themselves are speaking out. Our voices are all getting a little bigger.

You’ve been a longtime supporter of Shifra Bronznick’s Advancing Women Professionals and the Jewish Community. What do you think of AWP’s latest campaign, which aims to encourage Jewish communal organizations to adopt formal family-friendly policies?

The Jewish community talks about family values all the time. If we practiced family values, these would be reflected in our policies.

Your involvement with the American Jewish World Service can be seen as a departure from your focus on funding feminist projects.

AJWS is the best service-learning program that exists within the Jewish community. And most of the work in the global south is directed at helping women. I truly believe that the solutions are out there — and in the hands of women. The problem is that nobody is funding the women.

In recent years, you’ve expanded your funding to women’s causes within the secular world, primarily with the Women Moving Millions campaign. Do you think it’s easier to achieve gender equity outside of the Jewish community?

I’m a very impatient person. Take the Jewish Women’s Archive, for example. Women will say to me, “That’s a very important cause but how does it compare to someone who has no food to eat?” Yet I strongly believe that if we don’t change the way Jewish history is told, the mainstream Jewish community will continue to be very chauvinistic. Another problem is that when it comes to women’s causes, many people in the Jewish community view it as one-off funding. I believe that when you fund something, you stay in it for the long run. I’d like to get out of funding a lot of these things, but no one is standing in line to fund [Jewish women’s projects]. Even when they say they care, they’ll give to other causes.

Has your husband [Eric Dobkin, a retired Goldman Sachs executive] always been supportive of your philanthropic contributions?

My husband never needed to make his name in philanthropy. He was too busy earning money [she laughs]. Eric sees this as my money. To some extent, I still don’t see that. If I did, I’d give a lot more. He has things he cares about, including the arts. He’s involved in a great project — an anthropological think tank — at the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe, N.M. I’ve found ways for him to fund Native American women. I believe that you can use the gender lens with everything you do in terms of funding. The Dobkin Fellow is always a woman.

 You have two daughters. Do you envision them continuing your legacy as a funder of feminist causes?

My children will probably not be donors to any mainstream Jewish organization I can think of. What they want to fund, they fund. I trust their values.

What advice would you offer to aspiring Jewish women philanthropists?

Probably the same advice I’d offer to anyone involved in philanthropy. Start out by asking the following questions: What do you want to see changed, for instance, in the Jewish community? Who out there is doing that kind of work? If talking big bucks, look for people who are thinking out of the box. Find something that you really think you want to do and make a difference. There are also ways to give smaller amounts of money that really count. If you’re worried about the future, look at what some of the young people are doing and support them. Lastly, there are probably things you don’t like that are happening. Make sure you’re not funding them. And let them know.

Email: Tamar@jewishweek.org

Andrea Kruchik Krell became a believer in microfinance at the tender age of 5. As a little girl growing up in Uruguay, she once visited a neighborhood grocery shop where a poor boy approached her. “Can you buy me candies?” he asked.

With the little pocket money she had, she bought him a few treats. Instead of thanking her, he asked her to buy him more. She had used up all of her coins, so she said no. He kicked her and ran away.

“When you give and just give, people don’t appreciate and their situation doesn’t improve,” she says.

At the time, Krell might not have used the word “microfinance” — a term used to describe the empowerment of the poor by providing small loans, typically used to start a business, in lieu of doling out alms. But a few years ago, the 24-year-old launched Microfy, a microfinance project that provides small loans to Sudanese refugees living in Israel, primarily in Tel Aviv.

The loans are used to purchase supplies to make jewelry, handbags and other handicrafts, which for a time were sold out of a small store on Dizengoff Street. Another micro-grant was given to a Darfuri woman named Fathyia, who opened a restaurant serving Sudanese refugees.

More recently, Krell has partnered with the Micro-Credit Clinic at Tel Aviv University and Supportive Community, an NGO that helps Israeli women become entrepreneurs, to teach business skills and provide micro-loans to refugees from the Congo, many of whom came to Israel with a higher level of education and skills than the Sudanese refugees. She regularly meets with a group of 15 women who are learning to speak English and Hebrew. Along with the help of business students at Tel Aviv University, she provides business coaching, which includes teaching refugees about Israeli taxes and other legalities and helping them craft a sound business plan.

Three students — Ilga, Faida and Gina— started a kindergarten and are poised to receive a $1,000 loan, which will allow them to move to bigger premises and expand the business.

Krell is one of several players in the small yet growing microfinance initiatives focused on improving the economic situation of underserved communities in Israel and the West Bank. Popularized in recent years by Bangladeshi economist Muhammed Yunus’ 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for founding Grameen Bank, micro-loans now serve more than 80 million people in developing countries. While microfinance has long been considered an effective way to lift people out of poverty in third-world countries, the same principles are now being applied in developed countries, too. These efforts often target less-advantaged populations within the larger society, particularly those with little access to banks or those who may not qualify for a standard business loan.

Microfinance is particularly apropos in Israel, a country in which a quarter of its population is living at or below the poverty level, says Dina Weinstein, executive director of PlaNet Finance Israel. PlaNet Finance Group, an international nonprofit that provides technical assistance to microfinance institutions in more than 60 countries, opened its Israeli branch in 2007.

In Israel, “the gap is huge and the demand is very big,” says Weinstein. “Israelis assume that every Israeli has a bank account and access to funds, but we’ve seen that this is not the case.”

Microfinance initiatives have started to grow in popularity in Israel partly due to the increased recognition that Israel has a poverty problem. “Before, Israelis were ashamed to say we have a poverty issue,” she says. “They want Israel to be recognized as a fast-developing country with a booming high-tech industry. The first step to solving a problem is recognizing that you have a problem.”

Many of the microfinance initiatives in Israel aren’t microfinance in the classical sense, since a $50 or $100 loan wouldn’t go very far. Still, in underserved communities that lack access to credit from banks — including the Bedouin, Israeli Arab and fervently Orthodox communities — a loan of a few thousand dollars can make a real difference.

Asyah, a 31-year-old mother of eight from Rahat, a Bedouin city near Beersheva, is living proof of why microfinance holds such appeal. She was married at the age of 14 and after years of abuse, she divorced her husband. Her home was demolished since she was unable to attain the necessary building permits and, as a result of her homeless status, social services took away her children.

Asyah’s life took a turn for the better when she approached the Koret Israel Economic Development Fund (KIEDF), Israel’s most established microfinance program. Through KIEDF’s SAWA – Direct Lending Microfinance Program, Asyah received a modest loan and business training and began selling Bedouin pita bread. She hopes to soon open a traditional Bedouin restaurant, which would grant her the income necessary to support her children.

SAWA is one of the few programs in Israel providing direct, non-bank micro-loans of between $500 and $2,500. In the four years the program has been in existence, it has provided more than 1,100 loans totaling nearly $1.2 million. The program’s success may be attributed to its requirement that micro-loan recipients form “solidarity groups” of five women each. The groups meet regularly to discuss business development issues, monitor loan repayment and address basic needs of the participants, including women’s rights, health, education and family planning.

* * *

With the advent of online micro-giving sites like www.kiva.org and a desire to earn a “double bottom line” on one’s dollars, now even those who are hundreds of miles away can lend small sums to micro-entrepreneurs living in the Middle East. One such initiative is www.LendForPeace.org, a Web portal that allows individuals to loan as little as $25 to Palestinian entrepreneurs living in the West Bank who have been vetted by U.S. government-approved microfinance institutions.

The microfinance platform is the brainchild of Sam Adelsberg, a senior at the University of Pennsylvania who grew up in an Orthodox home in Brooklyn and spent a summer interning at Planet Finance working on a microfinance feasibility study. Adelsberg strongly believes that an overlooked key to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is to promote economic opportunity among Palestinians living in the West Bank. Since February 2009, when Adelsberg launched LendForPeace along with a fellow Jew and two Palestinians, the site has doled out more than 45 loans at an average size of $800 each. The premise is to promote peace through prosperity — one $25 loan at a time.

“As a Zionist and as an Orthodox Jew, I don’t think this is a zero sum game,” Adelsberg says. “If there’s ever going to be a solution to this conflict, it’ll be when we’re both in better economic positions.”

Adelsberg is not the only one who envisions microfinance as a tool to achieve not only economic stability but also peace. In February 2009, a Jewish economist from London named Donald Franklin co-founded the Jerusalem Interest-free Microfinance Fund (JIMF). JIMF’s pilot program brought together two parallel groups of religious Arabs from east Jerusalem and haredi Jews; the two communities have among the highest rates of poverty within Jerusalem and very limited access to capital. 

Each cohort was offered training and assistance in creating a business plan. Those who went through the program were then eligible for nearly $5,000 in interest-free loans to jumpstart their businesses. The loans are offered interest-free to comply with religious restrictions against the charging of interest.

“There’s a mutual sense of victimhood,” says Franklin, adding that “there’s surprise within the Muslim community that there is poverty on the other side.” While it’s too early to tell whether the venture has been a success — both in launching new businesses to alleviate poverty and fostering goodwill between the two groups — Franklin says that he is optimistic. “Even if there’s a little more mutual recognition and a little less hatred and misunderstanding by having a few more people get to know somebody on the other side,” he says, “a long-term solution emerges easier to reach.”

Email: Tamar@jewishweek.org

As the green movement continues to gain ground within the Jewish community, many investors are re-examining their investment portfolios with an eye toward not only financial gains, but also social impact. The same people who frequent farmers markets and have switched all of their light bulbs to CFLs are bringing that passion to their portfolios.

In light of the stock market losses of 2008 and the Madoff affair, investors are increasingly open to the idea of measuring their returns in ways that are not solely financial.

“There’s a lot more interest in what we call a triple-bottom line: financial profits, social impact and environmental responsibility,” says Jeremy Burton, senior vice president of philanthropic initiatives at the Jewish Funds for Justice (JFSJ).

Until recently, however, only Jews of high-net worth or institutional investors like the Reform Pension Board, federations, and family foundations had access to uniquely Jewish avenues for ethical investing. This left individual social justice activists and even Jewish communal professionals like Burton out in the cold.

For over a decade, JFSJ has leveraged more than $30 million in loans through the TZEDEC Economic Development Fund. TZEDEC offers mission-minded investors the opportunity to earn a modest interest rate while supporting job creation and community development in low-income areas such as Baltimore, Md., the Gulf Region, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, South Florida, and Washington, D.C. TZEDEC currently manages $11.5 million in investments, an increase of more than double in the last five years.

The minimum investment, though, is $18,000 — quite a hefty sum.

But as demand for socially responsible investment options increases, even Jews of more modest means can invest their money to achieve social impact in a very Jewish way.

In 2008, JFSJ partnered with the Calvert Foundation to launch the Jewish Funds for Justice Community Investment Initiative, which allows American Jews to participate in community investment by lending as little as $1,000. More than $120,000 has already been invested through this program. “It’s nascent, but it has a lot of potential as a vehicle for smaller investors,” Burton says, adding that he has invested his own money in the fund.

As the economy begins to rebound from the Great Recession, investors are slowly rethinking their investment options as they begin to move money back into the stock market. Only now, thanks to the clarion call of the eco-friendly and social justice movements, as well as tough lessons learned from the Madoff debacle, investors are more open than ever to exploring investment options that yield a blend of both financial and social returns.

Socially Responsible Investing (SRI), also known as Ethical Investing, has seen a boon in recent years. Currently, one out of every nine dollars under professional financial management in the United States is involved in socially responsible investing — investments that take into consideration not just the financials but also the social and environmental consequences of investments.

“The awareness of our financial industry’s relationship to real people on the ground is heightened in a way it hasn’t been in years,” says Burton. “Suddenly, people are viewing banks not just as the place where they happen to have a checking account. They want to see how that money creates jobs and makes a difference for real families locally.”

Within the faith-based world, Socially Responsible Investing dates back more than 200 years, with Quaker immigrants arguing against investing in war and the Methodists managing their money using what is known in modern investment lingo as “social screens.” Today, religious mutual funds have $26 billion in collective assets, according to the Social Investment Forum Foundation. Most of these funds screen out, or avoid investing in, businesses that make money from tobacco, gambling and other “sin stocks” that violate their religious values.

The Timothy Plan, for example, is a Christian mutual fund that bills itself as “America’s first pro-life, pro-family, biblically-based mutual fund group.” Ave Maria’s Catholic Values Fund was started at the insistence of Tom Monaghan, the owner of Dominos Pizza and a devout Catholic. The fund screens out companies involved in activities that the Catholic Church is against, such as abortion and pornography. And the Amana Fund invests according to Islamic principles, avoiding firms that derive more than 5 percent of revenues from pork, alcohol, gambling, pornography or tobacco.

No corresponding Jewish SRI fund exists, says Jared Pfeifer, a doctoral candidate at Cornell University whose work focuses on the intersection of finance and religion. Yet Mark Schwartz, associate professor of law, governance and ethics at York University, believes that one may come onto the scene in the near future. However, there will be many challenges to be overcome, such as who will be on any screening committee for the Jewish mutual fund, what their qualifications would be and whether their qualifications will be accepted by the majority of Jews.

“This is particularly the case in the Jewish community where there is great diversity of beliefs regarding many matters, including acceptable investment practices,” Schwartz says.

The Jewish community, however, has been an active force in the world of community investing, a form of SRI in which investors loan funds, often at a below-market interest rate, to support affordable housing and other initiatives that benefit traditionally underserved communities. In 1997, the Union for Reform Judaism began actively promoting ethical investing among its membership. “For the Reform Jewish Movement, devoted as it is to tikkun olam, socially responsible investing policies and practices are not an optional commitment,” read the 1997 resolution. “They are an organic expression of our core beliefs.” In addition, the Reform Pension Board, which serves professionals in the Reform movement, was the first Jewish organization to join the Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility. In recent years, the URJ has encouraged congregations to join the Chai Investment Program by investing 1.8 percent (a play on the numerical value of “chai,” or life, which is 18) of its assets in community development.

For individuals, however, the Jewish Funds for Justice Community Investment Initiative, offered through the Calvert Foundation, is a welcome option that has been a long time coming. That’s because while many Jews are already investing in socially responsible funds, “they do it from a place of Jewish values but don’t necessarily do it with a public Jewish face,” says Burton.

The JFSJ is trying to change that. “Making it visible that Jews are participating in social change as a Jewish community is what we do at the Jewish Funds for Justice,” Burton says. “Vehicles like ours help make it more transparent.”

Though she would invest in community development anyway, the fact that there’s now a Jewish vehicle for modest investors is cause for celebration, Weinberg says. “This is a trustworthy way to help people through the gate into this world of community investing,” she says.

Though his family is not chasidic, Yinon Badichi grew up in a chasidic enclave in Jerusalem where everyone, it seemed, dressed identically. “The men wore the same black shoes, the same black pants and same black hat,” says the 33-year-old fashion designer turned entrepreneur. “The only thing that really defined them was the buckle [of their belts].”
After attending Netiv Meir (“the Harvard of yeshivas,” according to Badichi, “where I was better at basketball than as a student,”), and serving in the prestigious Golani unit of the Israeli army for three years, Badichi decided to move to China. “Everything we wear and use is made in China,” he says. “So I said, ‘I need to move to China.’”

There, he started his first company, Joseph Kauffman, which sells outerwear. At the time, Badichi struggled to find the perfect belt: a black textured leather belt that was the right length and came with a brass buckle that was at the same time understated but not generic. His search for such a belt led him to identify an untapped niche market: custom belts.

“Today, you can customize everything, from your tuxedo to your pants to your shirt and even your shoes,” he says. “Soon you can even customize people. But you can’t customize your belt — you have to buy it off the rack.”

And the belt, in Badichi’s viewpoint, is “the last touch of an outfit … it’s very important.”

Along with his brother, Badichi opened a factory in Jerusalem, where the fine Italian leather he imports is cut. He launched his first customized belt boutique in Tel Aviv in 2001 and has since expanded to five stores in Israel. But his dream was always to open a store in Manhattan.

That’s where the connections he made in China really paid off. He shared his business idea with Jerome Kaplan, the father of a former roommate who is a math professor and owns a publishing company. Kaplan “loved the concept,” Badichi says, and invested a significant sum.

This Tuesday, the Badichi belt boutique (http://badichibelts.com) celebrated its grand opening in the heart of Soho, just blocks from the Israeli soap company Sabon. “Every second store [on Prince Street] belongs to some Israeli,” he jokes. “Just look at the mezuzah.”

The former copy shop has been transformed into an inviting space complete with racks of leather belts in a variety of sizes and colors, and rows upon rows of buckles — from basic brass buckles to edgy buckles bearing images of skulls and snakes. Badichi also offers crystal-encrusted floral buckles hand-painted by an Israeli artist named Ahuva. Prices start at $60.

The store prides itself on being the only boutique offering customers the opportunity to personalize their belts and have them sized on the spot. “It looks simple, but you have to know so many little details, like how big the holes need to be,” Badichi says.

Behind the counter stands a press machine and a 100-year old splitter machine (used to cut leather), which Badichi tracked down in Texas; the machine had originally been imported from France.

When asked how he imagines the Israeli belt boutique will fare in New York, Badichi was optimistic. “In Israel, everyone wants to be prime minister. Even the man cleaning the street; you ask him what his dream is, and he says, ‘I want to be prime minister.’” Not so in America. “People want to be what they are.”

This American attitude will translate well for business, he hopes. “People want to be their own designers; no one wants to wear a belt everyone else is wearing.”

Email: Tamar@jewishweek.org

$100 — into the eCharityBox whenever they’re in a particularly generous mood. They can also set up recurring donations (say, $36 a month or $1 a day) or set up a reminder to give on a certain date or every Friday before Shabbat.

“It’s recurring giving, but more exciting,” Fellig says.

Donors can watch as their virtual pushkes fill up to a predetermined amount. Once the pushke is “full,” the credit card on file is charged and the virtual pushke resets to zero. At any time, users can click the “empty box” button to submit a donation, even if their pushke isn’t yet full.

Fellig, an Orthodox Jew and serial entrepreneur, founded eCharityBox with his brother-in-law, Rabbi Eliyahu Schusterman, a pulpit rabbi in Atlanta. Fellig’s first client was his father, a Chabad rabbi in Florida who signed up his shul nearly eight months ago. After fixing the inevitable kinks, eCharityBox began to roll out its application to a wide swath of charities across the country.

While a majority of their clients are Jewish, the company offers a second application, called eOfferingPlate, which is geared to the Christian community and to secular social service organizations. “We wanted to reintroduce into society the act of giving and getting everyone to do an act of goodness and charity every day,” Fellig told the Jewish Week. “It’s not a question of how much to give, but of being sure to give regularly.”

Right now, the eCharityBox is branded to a particular organization, so if you download your local synagogue’s charity box, all of your money will be earmarked to that cause. This may likely turn off all but the most loyal donors who are devoted to a single cause. Anticipating this reaction, the company says that it will soon launch MyCharityBox, an open-ended virtual pushke that will allow you to choose from more than 6,000 charities. When you empty the charity box, you can decide to split the pot among your favorite causes, be it the American Red Cross, American Jewish World Service or your local Jewish federation.
For the more than 300 organizations that have already signed up, eCharityBox’s appeal lies in its ability to attract new donors who crave ease of use and the ability to give when inspiration strikes, without having to log online and fill out credit card information or dig out a checkbook from the back of the drawer. “It’s a one-stop shop for charities,” Fellig says. “You’re immediately placed across mobile and online platforms and your donors can download an app.”

“Quite a number of users have downloaded it, and from my inkling, this includes many new donors,” says Rabbi Yosef Jacobson, dean of TheYeshiva.net, a global classroom for Jewish thought and its contemporary applications. When Rabbi Jacobson was first contacted a few months ago, he said he loved the idea. “This sanctifies modern technology, which drives so many of us meshuga and takes it to a much higher place,” he says. While the amount donated differs by person, Rabbi Jacobson says that the average user donated between $30 and $40 a month using this application.

Others appreciate eCharityBox for its donor-management software that tracks donors and automatically sends tax receipts, cutting out a tremendous amount of back-office work for charities that sign up for the service. “We don’t have a huge staff, so having them track the 501(c)3 donations and taking care of the paperwork — that was one of the main reasons we decided to go with them,” says Jonathan Hirshon, president of the board of trustees of Beit HaMidrash of the Bay Area (HaMidrash.org), a provider of online classes featuring cross-denominational learning, ranging from Chabad to Humanism.

“In trying to raise money for a new charity, electronic fundraising is integral to what we’re doing,” says Hirshon. The Silicon Valley-based organization rolled out its eCharityBox a week ago, so it’s too early to tell how much traction it has gotten. But Hirshon is optimistic. (So optimistic, in fact, that he has since agreed to join eCharityBox’s advisory board.) “People who have seen it so far say it’s incredibly cool,” he says. “When you’re taking a class and feel motivated at the end of the class to donate a few dollars, instead of going to the PayPal Web site in your browser, you can literally touch the iPhone app icon, put in a number and hit “enter.”

Charities can sign up for the service for a couple of hundred dollars, similar to the costs of setting up a text-to-give campaign. Donors don’t encounter any transaction fees; bank and merchant fees under 5 percent are taken out of the money given to the charity. Unlike other services, eCharityBox doesn’t make charities sign a contract, so charities can test it without making a long-term commitment.

For Fellig, eCharityBox is unlike any of the six other ventures he’s worked on — from the patented Phone Slipper, a BlackBerry/iPhone case that holds credit cards and IDs, to residential real estate, to starting AdNav, a mobile concierge company for hotels. “At the end of the day — the more charities that sign up, the more funds that are processed through the system — it’s all about charity. And we’re a part of that. It’s an incredible feeling.”

E-mail: Tamar@jewishweek.org

It wasn’t until his mother, Irene, passed away in December 1986 that Stuart Waxenberg found out about Josef. In emptying the contents of his mother’s safe deposit box, he found a card listing the gravesite of Josef Kleizman, a maternal uncle he had never heard of before.

“Mother never talked about it,” he said.

Waxenberg later learned that Josef had died in 1921 at age 6. Like hundreds of other recent immigrants, the family was too poor to pay for Josef’s burial, so the Hebrew Free Burial Association buried him in Mount Richmond Cemetery in Staten Island.

This past October, Waxenberg visited his uncle’s grave and did what he wanted to do ever since he learned of his mother’s dead brother — he brought dirt from his mother’s and grandmother’s graves, located in the Hebrew Cemetery in Rock Island, Ill., and placed it under the headstone.

Then he purchased a headstone for $150, “to help someone else,” he says, as a sign of gratitude for the anonymous donor who had paid for Josef’s headstone and burial decades ago.

Most recently, Waxenberg has donated $180 to the HFBA — an organization located 1,000 miles away, which he had never heard of until his mother died — to set up a permanent Kaddish for Josef. “I always send in money during holiday times and on his yartzheit,” he says.

Waxenberg represents a group of “loyal donors” whom nonprofits should be courting, but generally are not, according to Adrian Sargeant, Robert F. Hartsook Professor of Fundraising at Indiana University’s Center on Philanthropy.

“Nonprofits should be targeting people who have benefited from their services,” says Sargeant, whose latest book on the subject, “Fundraising: Principles and Practice,” (Jossey Bass), will be published next month. “Sometimes nonprofits are a bit shy of doing that, but a lot of people, when they’re in the position to give back, are happy to do that. There’s no reason to feel uncomfortable.”

Donor loyalty is an issue the nonprofit world is failing at, Sargeant says. “For every six donors we recruit, we lose five,” he says. And well over half of the people who give an initial gift don’t give a second. “If you were running a business and lost half of your customers, you wouldn’t survive,” he says.

What’s more, Sargeant’s research indicates that a 10 percent improvement in loyalty can yield up to a 200 percent increase in the projected value of a donor base, as significantly more donors upgrade their giving, give in multiple ways, recommend others and, ultimately perhaps, pledge a legacy/bequest.

“Perhaps the message is that even within the economic downturn, people still attach significance to the yahrtzeit and give a donation — even if it’s in a smaller dollar amount — in memory of their loved ones,” says Andrew Parver, director of education and outreach at the HFBA.

People who engage with an organization in multiple ways are more loyal than those who don’t, Sargeant’s research indicates. So it’s probably not surprising that service beneficiaries who then become donors tend to remain loyal supporters, even when the tough economic climate necessitates cutting back.

Just ask Gregory Trakhtenberg, a Queens resident who emigrated from Odessa when he was 3 years old. Interest-free loans totaling nearly $7,500 from the Hebrew Free Loan Society helped him afford physical therapy school. Ever since graduating in 1999 and opening his own physical therapy practice, he has been giving back to the organization.

“I give a few hundred dollars a couple of times a year, every year,” he says. “There are millions of charities out there, but I personally experienced what [Hebrew Free Loan Society] did for me,” he says.

“With them, I’m sure where the money is going and that definitely makes it easier for me to donate to them, since I’d like other people to benefit from them,” he says.

In recent years, the HFLS has experienced success in its efforts to solicit donations from those who have paid off their loans. In 2007, 5.5 percent of the 847 loan recipients gave a gift. The percentage has been increasing each year, with 7.4 percent of borrowers becoming donors in 2009.

“These numbers are conservative, because they do not reflect repeat givers and those who started giving before we kept that data,” says Moshe Soloway, the assistant executive director of the Hebrew Free Loan Society. “So in reality the universe of borrowers who became donors is bigger than what you are seeing here.”

While a majority of these gifts are small, they are consistent. “It’s not Sergey Brin,” admits Shana Novick, HFLS’s executive director, referring to the Google co-founder who gave $1 million to the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society in October 2009 in recognition for HIAS’ assistance to Brin’s family when it fled the former Soviet Union three decades ago.

Still, HFLS provides loans to many Russian immigrants, where “there was no culture of philanthropy or volunteerism,” she says. Encouraging beneficiaries of the interest-free loans to get involved in philanthropy has been a goal of the organization.

At the HFBA, the closest “Sergey Brin”-like giver was actor Mel Brooks, whose maternal grandparents, who went by the name “Brookman,” were buried by the HFBA. When HFBA officials contacted Brooks about it in 2008, he paid to fix his grandparents’ tombstones, sponsored four tombstones for unmarked graves, gave his grandparents perpetual care and Kaddish and even rounded up his donation to the next $100, insisting that the remainder go toward an office lunch. “It was really sweet of him,” says Amy Koplow, executive director of the HFBA.

Still, most loyal donors are less like Mel Brooks and more like Iris Sadove, who was orphaned at age 16. As she was washing her hands upon exiting the cemetery, her uncle dropped a bombshell. “By the way, you were adopted,” she remembers him telling her. “It wasn’t the best timing,” she admits.

Years later, as a single mother raising three children, Sadove hired a private investigator to help discover the identity of her birth mother. Soon she received the bittersweet news: her mother was identified as Brigitta Blumstein (she had remarried), but she was no longer alive. She had been buried by the Hebrew Free Burial Association.

In July, Sadove visited her mother’s grave along with her half brother, Charlie, whom she discovered while verifying her Jewish lineage in order to make aliyah. It was a rainy day, but the sky opened up and the sun came out just as the rabbi finished reciting the memorial prayer, El Maley Rachamim, as the reunited half siblings prayed at the foot of their mother’s grave.

Sadove was overwhelmed with gratitude and wanted to pay for her mother’s gravestone, but was told that someone else had already done so. “It was so touching to think that she would not have had a proper Jewish burial, and probably none at all, if not for the work of the Hebrew Free Burial,” she says.

Instead, she donated headstones for other unmarked graves. Whenever she gets a mailing from the HFBA, she gives a donation, she says. “If not for Hebrew Free Burial, my mom would be a pile of ashes. I feel very blessed to have so many piece of my broken life coming together.”

The Aleinu results are consistent with previous research indicating that couples who participate regularly in religious activities report greater marital contentment and are less likely to divorce. Still, I was surprised. While there are no official statistics, there exists an overwhelming perception in the Orthodox community that divorce rates have gone up, particularly among younger couples. The undertaking of the Aleinu survey attests to some level of worry on the part of Orthodox leaders that the sacred bonds of marriage have been weakened.

To its credit, the Orthodox Union, at a press conference last month, highlighted the top stressors to Orthodox marriages. Lack of communication, not enough time together, and conflicts with in-laws—common complaints of couples religious and not—are on the list. But also on it are special challenges, at least some of which will be familiar to people of other faiths and traditions that favor private schooling, early marriage and large families.

Major financial strain was a top complaint, even among those with above-average incomes. “Day-school tuition—we call it the Orthodox tax—is the most significant factor we’re dealing with,” says Rabbi Steven Weil, the OU’s executive vice president. This tuition, considered nonnegotiable despite its hefty price tag, ranges from $8,000 to more than $20,000 per child. “Once you have kids, you’re in for two decades worth of that added expense,” says David Pelcovitz, a psychology professor at Yeshiva University’s Azrieli Graduate School of Jewish Education, who interpreted the survey results for the OU. “With large families, that’s a bulk of a person’s married life.”

Close to half of respondents cited some problems with physical intimacy and lack of sexual education. “There’s something missing in the job we’re doing in conveying values about sexuality to our children,” says Prof. Pelcovitz. “It’s just not talked about.” In fact, a national survey of all religious groups found that 41% of Jewish adolescents said that their congregation has done nothing to help them understand sex, a higher percentage than their peers of other faiths.

Among younger Orthodox couples, several other stress factors come into play. Birth control is highly discouraged if not banned even by Modern Orthodox rabbis during the first years of marriage. Therefore, young couples (many of whom are still in college or yeshiva and not financially independent) often become parents right away. In addition to the financial and emotional strain inherent in child rearing, research has shown that having children decreases marital satisfaction. Because many rabbis interpret the mitzvah, or commandment, to have children as being fulfilled only by having both a girl and a boy, couples often have several children in close succession.

For the 17% to 25% of Orthodox couples who struggle with infertility, not being able to have children results in significant marital conflict, says Rabbi Gideon Weitzman, director of the Puah Institute for Fertility According to Halakha. The institute receives 150 calls a day, a small number from brides in their 20s who are married for just a few months and already worried that they’re infertile. Fertility treatments often are not covered by insurance. And the effort to get pregnant when medical intervention is needed “turns intimacy from being a manifestation of love into something mechanical,” says Rabbi Weil. “When all the other young couples have two to three children . . . there’s tremendous stress.”

With all the added pressures Orthodox couples face, how is it that they report happier marriages?

Perhaps the Orthodox approach marriage with different expectations. “There’s a very strong valuing of family as the center of one’s life, which may override individual needs,” says Prof. Pelcovitz. “This probably has people weathering storms that in other couples might lead to divorce.” Despite the difficulties inherent in raising children, this family-centeredness gives couples a sense of satisfaction, says Rachel Pill, a Lawrence, N.Y., clinical social worker with a primarily Orthodox clientele. “They feel they’re part of something really important.”

Mental health professionals often advise couples to schedule a date night. For Orthodox Jews, the Sabbath “is a built-in time to reconnect with one’s spouse, without the distraction of TVs, BlackBerries or the Internet,” says Eliezer Schnall, a psychology professor at Yeshiva University. And maybe the purity laws that narrow the opportunities for marital sexual intercourse as well as physical affection play a role. “There’s a time to invest in physical contact and time to invest in the spiritual relationship between the couple,” says Rabbi Weitzman. “The Torah speaks about the union between husband and wife as a holy thing, something our Father in heaven is part of.”

Ms. Snyder is a staff reporter at the Jewish Week in New York.