Archive for July, 2006
Volunteer or Indentured Servant?
Congregation Beth-Israel has just finished a successful fundraising campaign. The campaign’s purpose was to purchase playground equipment for the children of residents of a local battered woman’s shelter – a great cause and an example of tikkun olam in action. Not only did Beth-Israel raise enough money to purchase the equipment and its installation, they raised enough to set aside a fund for future maintenance of the playground. The campaign was a success.
The major players in this campaign were four active members – Ruthie, Arlene, Joan and Lizzie. All four women are active sisterhood members. Arlene is chair of the social action committee. They all worked tirelessly for nine months planning and executing this project, often meeting several times a week at the synagogue. The local newspaper writes an article about the new playground noting that the funds were raised entirely through the efforts of Congregation Beth-Israel. The article did not mention by name any of the four women, though the rabbi acknowledged that it was a congregational effort. This is okay for Ruthie, Arlene, Joan and Lizzie. They do this work because that’s what tzedakah is about, seeking justice anonymously without expectation of personal gain. The synagogue proudly posts the article in the entrance foyer with a poster-sized sign saying, “Thanks to all our members who participated in this effort.” The project and newspaper article were the topic of the rabbis newsletter feature for the following month. Again, no one is cited or thanked by name and again, the group members say nothing.
Several months later the city officials ask the rabbi to help plan a citywide, interfaith event renaming a downtown park after a famous local philanthropist. Arlene happened to be in the synagogue office the day after the rabbi agreed to participate in this event. Since she did such a magnificent job with the playground project, the rabbi asked if she would chair this event. He also suggested that she enlist the support of her former fellow committee members. Of course, Arlene agreed – and, so did Ruthie, Joan and Lizzie.
Sound familiar? Synagogues reward successful synagogue volunteers with more opportunities to volunteer. For most volunteers, this cycle lasts a few years until they finally decide, often with personal and private embarrassment, that they can no longer work so hard with so little in return. All they really want is a heartfelt “thank you” and a little recognition for their efforts. Synagogues do not know how to do this and so the cycle repeats itself over and over. People like Ruthie, Arlene, Joan and Lizzie often keep up their service because they innately understand the concept of kol Yisrael arevim ze ba’ze — all the people of Israel are responsible for one another. They also take to heart the notion of tikkun olam — that they are responsible for healing the world. For these women and many other synagogue volunteers, gemilut hasadim are not optional. Acts of loving kindness are requirements of a Jew. And yet our synagogues often fail to practice these same principles.
We need to change our pattern of volunteer engagement. Jill Friedman Fixler of JFFixler and Associates, a nationally recognized expert in the field of volunteer engagement says, “Volunteering is not a life sentence!” One of the first steps in changing our pattern is to think of volunteering proactively rather then reactively. Synagogues generally find or agree to the project first without knowing if they have a pool of willing and able workers from whom they can choose. No other business or non-profit functions this way. Why should synagogues?
A major step in this proactive model is learning about the skills and talents of synagogue members. The church world has embraced this model using terms like gifts discernment or spiritual gifts inventory. In many of these congregations, every member goes through a process of interviews and training to discern their personal gifts. This often happens with new members when they join the congregation. For some this is an intense process of introspection, deciding what their gifts are and how those might best be used for their congregation. For others it is a simple matter of filling out a form that list their interests or hobbies. The next important and vital step is to record the information in a database that makes the information readily accessible.
Here is an example of how the process might work. The synagogue’s teen group is planning a project to clean up a block of one of the city’s neglected neighborhoods. The education director sees this as a great opportunity to recruit new teen group members by recording the teens “in action.” She needs someone to videotape the day and then edit the piece into a promotional and educational video. How would most synagogues handle this project? First, they might solicit someone like one of our congregational stalwarts in the playground scenario. Of course, they would readily agree. While they may own a video camera, the resulting finished video is, shall we say, of questionable quality! The other option often sought is to hire a professional to do the project. The quality is first-rate, but so is the cost.
The final scenario, and the one I suggest here, is to consult your database of volunteers (which of course, you have been collecting for the last many years!). With a few short keystrokes you discover that while Joe now works as an attorney, he worked as a videographer for his college television station while he was an undergraduate. He is still an avid amateur video maven and a prime candidate for your project. Joe has never volunteered for anything in the synagogue before but he quickly agrees after receiving a personal phone call from the committee chair. Up until now, no one has asked him to help the synagogue before and he is thrilled to receive this personal invitation. It is clear that this is a time-limited project. He can complete it in a few days. It will not interfere with his hectic work and family schedule. The final product is polished and professional, cost was minimal, and the congregation has enlisted the support of a new volunteer.
There are tangible benefits for synagogues with this proactive model. Synagogues can increase member engagement and create a culture of service and involvement. Since the synagogue has ready access to the skills that congregants are willing to give, volunteers are more likely to repeat their service to the congregation. Their initial experience with volunteer service was a great one and they now trust the process.
Synagogues need to begin seeing volunteers as gifts to the congregation. Many congregants want to be more active in the life of their synagogue. Some are afraid of setting a precedent – if I volunteer for this project they’ll never stop calling. Others simply do not know how to become more involved and are embarrassed to ask. Successful volunteerism is a proactive venture, not a passive one.
The Middle East According to Dennis Miller
“A brief overview of the situation is always valuable, so as a service to all Americans who still don’t get it, I now offer you the story of the Middle East in just a few paragraphs, which is all you really need.
Here we go:
The Palestinians want their own country. There’s just one thing about that: There are no Palestinians. It’s a made up word. Israel was called Palestine for two thousand years. Like “Wiccan,” “Palestinian” sounds ancient but is really a modern invention. Before the Israelis won the land in the 1967 war, Gaza was owned by Egypt, the West Bank was owned by Jordan, and there were no “Palestinians.”
As soon as the Jews took over and started growing oranges as big as basketballs, what do you know, say hello to the “Palestinians,” weeping for their deep bond with their lost “land” and “nation.”
So for the sake of honesty, let’s not use the word “Palestinian” any more to describe these delightful folks, who dance for joy at our deaths until someone points out they’re being taped. Instead, let’s call them what they are: “Other Arabs Who Can’t Accomplish Anything In Life And Would Rather Wrap Themselves In The Seductive Melodrama Of Eternal Struggle And Death.”
I know that’s a bit unwieldy to expect to see on CNN. How about this, then: “Adjacent Jew-Haters.” Okay, so the Adjacent Jew-Haters want their own country. Oops, just one more thing: No, they don’t. They could’ve had their own country any time in the last thirty years, especially two years ago at Camp David. But if you have your own country, you have to have traffic lights and garbage trucks and Chambers of Commerce, and, worse, you actually have to figure out some way to make a living.
That’s no fun. No, they want what all the other Jew-Haters in the region want: Israel. They also want a big pile of dead Jews, of course — that’s where the real fun is — but mostly they want Israel.
Why? For one thing, trying to destroy Israel – or “The Zionist Entity” as their textbooks call it — for the last fifty years has allowed the rulers of Arab countries to divert the attention of their own people away from the fact that they’re the blue-ribbon most illiterate, poorest, and tribally backward on God’s Earth, and if you’ve ever been around God’s Earth, you know that’s really saying something.
It makes me roll my eyes every time one of our pundits waxes poetic about the great history and culture of the Muslim Mid east. Unless I’m missing something, the Arabs haven’t given anything to the world since Algebra, and, by the way, thanks a hell of a lot for that one.
Chew this around and spit it out: Five hundred million Arabs; five Million Jews. Think of all the Arab countries as a football field, and Israel as a pack of matches sitting in the middle of it. And now these same folks swear that if Israel gives them half of that pack of matches, everyone will be pals..
Really? Wow, what neat news. Hey, but what about the string of wars to obliterate the tiny country and the constant din of rabid blood oaths to drive every Jew into the sea? Oh, that? We were just kidding.
My friend, Kevin Rooney, made a gorgeous point the other day: Just reverse the numbers. Imagine five hundred million Jews and five million Arabs. I was stunned at the simple brilliance of it. Can anyone picture the Jews strapping belts of razor blades and dynamite to themselves? Of course not. Or marshaling every fiber and force at their disposal for generations to drive a tiny Arab State into the sea? Nonsense. Or dancing for joy at the murder of innocents? Impossible. Or spreading and believing horrible lies about the Arabs baking their bread with the blood of children? Disgusting.
Now, as you know, left to themselves in a world of peace, the worst Jews would ever do to people is debate them to death.
Mr. Bush, God bless him, is walking a tightrope. I understand that with vital operations in Iraq and others, it’s in our interest, as Americans, to try to stabilize our Arab allies as much as possible, and, after all, that can’t be much harder than stabilizing a roomful of super models who’ve just had their drugs taken away.
However, in any big-picture strategy, there’s always a danger of losing moral weight. We’ve already lost some. After September 11th our president told us and the world he was going to root out all terrorists and the countries that supported them. Beautiful. Then the Israelis, after months and months of having the equivalent of an Oklahoma City every week (and then every day) start to do the same thing we did, and we tell them to show restraint.
If America were being attacked with an Oklahoma City every day, we would all very shortly be screaming for the administration to just be done with it and kill everything south of the Mediterranean and east of the Jordan.
Please feel free to pass this along to your friends. Walk in peace! Be
Happy! Have a wonderful life!
An Open Letter To The World
by Ted Lansing
Dear World, I understand that you are upset by us, here in Israel.
Indeed, it appears that you are quite upset, even angry. (Outraged?)
Indeed, every few years you seem to become upset by us. Today, it is the “brutal repression of the Palestinians”; yesterday it was Lebanon; before that it was the bombing of the nuclear reactor in Baghdad and the Yom Kippur War and the Sinai campaign. It appears that Jews who triumph and who, therefore, live, upset you most extraordinarily.
Of course, dear world, long before there was an Israel, we – the Jewish people – upset you.
We upset a German people who elected Hitler and upset an Austrian people who cheered his entry into Vienna and we upset a whole slew of Slavic nations – Poles, Slovaks, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Russians, Hungarians and Romanians. And we go back a long, long way in the history of world upset.
We upset the Cossacks of Chmielnicki who massacred tens of thousands of us in 1648-49; we upset the Crusaders who, on their way to liberate the Holy Land, were so upset at Jews that they slaughtered untold numbers of us.
For centuries, we upset a Roman Catholic Church that did its best to define our relationship through inquisitions, and we upset the arch-enemy of the church, Martin Luther, who, in his call to burn the synagogues and the Jews within them, showed an admirable Christian ecumenical spirit.
And it is because we became so upset over upsetting you, dear world, that we decided to leave you – in a manner of speaking – and establish a Jewish state. The reasoning was that living in close contact with you, as resident-strangers in the various countries that comprise you, we upset you, irritate you and disturb you. What better notion, then, than to leave you (and thus love you)- and have you love us and so, we decided to come home – home to the same land we were driven out 1,900 years earlier by a Roman world that, apparently, we also upset.
Alas, dear world, it appears that you are hard to please.
Having left you and your pogroms and inquisitions and crusades and holocausts, having taken our leave of the general world to live alone in our own little state, we continue to upset you. You are upset that we repress the poor Palestinians. You are deeply angered over the fact that we do not give up the lands of 1967, which are clearly the obstacle to peace in the Middle East.
Moscow is upset and Washington is upset. The “radical” Arabs are upset and the gentle Egyptian moderates are upset.
Well, dear world, consider the reaction of a normal Jew from Israel.
In 1920 and 1921 and 1929, there were no territories of 1967 to impede peace between Jews and Arabs. Indeed, there was no Jewish State to upset anybody Nevertheless, the same oppressed and repressed Palestinians slaughtered tens of Jews in Jerusalem, Jaffa, Safed and Hebron. Indeed, 67 Jews were slaughtered one day in Hebron in 1929.
Dear world, why did the Arabs – the Palestinians – massacre 67 Jews in one day in 1929? Could it have been their anger over Israeli aggression in 1967? And why were 510 Jewish men, women and children slaughtered in Arab riots between 1936-39? Was it because Arabs were upset over 1967?
And when you, dear world, proposed a UN Partition Plan in 1947 that would have created a “Palestinian State” alongside a tiny Israel and the Arabs cried “no” and went to war and killed 6,000 Jews – was that “upset” caused by the aggression of 1967? And, by the way, dear world, why did we not hear your cry of “upset” then?
The poor Palestinians who today kill Jews with explosives and firebombs and stones are part of the same people who when they had all the territories they now demand be given to them for their state -attempted to drive the Jewish state into the sea. The same twisted faces, the same hate, the same cry of “itbach-al-yahud” (Massacre the Jew!) that we hear and see today, were seen and heard then. The same people, the same dream – destroy Israel. What they failed to do yesterday, they dream of today, but we should not “repress” them.
Dear world, you stood by during the holocaust and you stood by in 1948 as seven states launched a war that the Arab League proudly compared to the Mongol massacres.
You stood by in 1967 as Nasser, wildly cheered by wild mobs in every Arab capital in the world, vowed to drive the Jews into the sea. And you would stand by tomorrow if Israel were facing extinction.
And since we know that the Arabs-Palestinians dream daily of that extinction, we will do everything possible to remain alive in our own land. If that bothers you, dear world, well think of how many times in the past you bothered us.
In any event, dear world, if you are bothered by us, here is one Jew in Israel who could not care less.
The predictable condemners
Alan M. Dershowitz, The Jerusalem Post Jul. 22, 2006
The Hizbullah and Hamas provocations against Israel once again demonstrate how terrorists exploit human rights and the media in their attacks on democracies.
By hiding behind their own civilians the Islamic radicals issue a challenge to democracies: Either violate your own morality by coming after us and inevitably killing some innocent civilians, or maintain your morality and leave us with a free hand to target your innocent civilians.
This challenge presents democracies such as Israel with a lose-lose option, and the terrorists with a win-win option.
There is one variable that could change this dynamic and present democracies with a viable option that could make terrorism less attractive as a tactic: The international community, the anti-Israel segment of the media and the so called “human rights” organizations could stop falling for this terrorist gambit and acknowledge that they are being used to promote the terrorist agenda.
Whenever a democracy is presented with the lose-lose option and chooses to defend its citizens by going after the terrorists who are hiding among civilians, this trio of predictable condemners can be counted on by the terrorists to accuse the democracy of “overreaction,” “disproportionality” and “violations of human rights.”
In doing so they play right into the hands of the terrorists, causing more terrorism and more civilian casualties on both sides. If instead this trio could, for once, be counted on to blame the terrorists for the civilian deaths on both sides, this tactic would no longer be a win-win situation for the terrorists.
IT SHOULD BE obvious by now that Hizbullah and Hamas actually want the Israeli military to kill as many Lebanese and Palestinian civilians as possible. That is why they store their rockets underneath the beds of civilians; why they launch their missiles from crowded civilian neighborhoods and hide among civilians. They are seeking to induce Israel to defend its civilians by going after them among their civilian “shields.” They know that every civilian they induce Israel to kill hurts Israel in the media and the international and human rights communities.
They regard these human shields as shahids – martyrs – even if they did not volunteer for this lethal job. Under the law, criminals who use human shields are responsible for the deaths of the shields, even if the bullet that kills them came from the gun of a policeman.
Israel has every self-interest in minimizing civilian casualties, whereas the terrorists have every self-interest in maximizing them – on both sides. Israel should not be condemned for doing what every democracy would and should do: taking every reasonable military step to stop the terrorists from killing their innocent civilians.
NOW THAT some of those who are launching rockets at Israeli cities have announced they have new surprises in store for Israel that may include chemical and biological weapons, the stakes have gotten even higher.
What would Israeli critics regard as “proportioned” to a chemical or biological attack? What would they say if Israel tried to preempt such an attack and, in the process, killed some civilians? Must a democracy absorb a first strike from a weapon of mass destruction before it fights back? Would any other democracy be expected to do that?
The world must come to recognize the cynical way in which terrorists exploit civilian casualties. They launch anti-personnel rockets designed to maximize enemy civilian casualties, then they cry “human rights” when their own civilians – behind whom they are deliberately hiding – are killed by the democracies in the process of trying to prevent further acts of terrorism.
The very idea that terrorists who use women and children as suicide bombers against other women and children shed crocodile tears over the deaths of civilians they deliberately put in harm’s way gives new meaning to the word “hypocrisy.” We all know that hypocrisy is a tactic of the terrorists, but it is shocking that others fall for it and become complicit with the terrorists.
Let the blame fall where it belongs: on the terrorists who deliberately seek to kill enemy civilians and give their democratic enemies little choice but to kill some civilians behind whom the terrorists are hiding.
Those who condemn Israel for killing civilians – who are used as human shields and swords for the terrorists – actually cause more civilian deaths and make it harder for Israel to withdraw from the West Bank.
HOW THE WORLD reacts to Israel’s current military efforts to protect its citizens will have a considerable impact on future Israeli steps toward peace. Prior to the recent kidnappings and rocket attacks the Israeli government had announced its intention to engage in further withdrawals from large portions of the West Bank.
But how can Israel be expected to move forward with any plan for withdrawal if all it can expect in return is more terrorism – what the terrorists regard as “land for rocket launchings” – and more condemnation when it seeks to protect its civilians?
The writer is a Professor of Law at Harvard and the author of
Preemption: A Knife that Cuts Both Ways.
Ma Hamatzav? (Was' Up?) 