EL PSEUDOMISTICISMO DE LA UNIÓN FUSIONAL

Rebuilding Justice: Jewish Philanthropy and the Politics of Representation

Introduction

World War II and the Nazi assault on European Jewry created new challenges for American Jews and for American Jewish philanthropy. Around the country, Jewish communities mobilized in support of the allied war effort and in order to condemn the unspeakable crimes that were unfolding against Europeans Jewry. Debates within the Jewish community about how best to represent community interests at this moment of crisis led to the formation of community councils empowered to speak on behalf of Jewish communities in the public sphere.

On December 18, 1941, a committee of three rabbis and four lay-leaders convened in the offices of the New Orleans Jewish Federation in order to consider the formation of a body that would represent the New Orleans Jewish community.

Advocating for such a community council, Uri Miller, the rabbi of the Orthodox Congregation Beth Israel, mentioned two examples from the New Orleans Jewish community’s responses to the war in Europe that, he argued, demonstrated an urgent need for a representative body authorized to speak on behalf of New Orleans’ Jews. In the meeting, Miller described a debate that emerged in response to a Jewish Federation contribution to a campaign raising funds for the “purchase of an Ambulance for Great Britain” questioned the gift’s designation as “a Jewish contribution.” Those in opposition

to the gift’s designation as “a Jewish contribution” wanted to avoid differentiating

between Jews and non-Jews when participating in broader wartime efforts. A community council, argued R. Miller, could mediate and resolve such debates and “express the community attitude” (Jewish Federation 1914-1994:box 111, folder 13).

R. Miller also described a boycott of German-made goods that had been proposed several years earlier. Without a council authorized to speak on behalf of the Jewish community, R. Miller asserted that “there was always the danger that some irresponsible individual or group of individuals might speak in what purported to be the name of the Jewish community,” potentially undermining the boycott’s efficacy (Jewish Federation 1914-1994:box 111, folder 13). Extrapolating from these examples, we can surmise that community council envisioned by R. Miller would achieve both inclusive and exclusive objectives. In the first example, R. Miller asserted that the council might incorporate divergent positions regarding how best to present Jewish community actions; in the second, he argued that a community council might neutralize wayward minority voices that might otherwise undermine the community consensus.

I think it important to note that Rabbi Miller was an effective leader within the Orthodox Jewish community in New Orleans in the 1930s, spearheading his

congregation’s growth. Miller left his post in New Orleans in the early 1940s and moved to a congregation in Baltimore, where he also served as one of the early presidents of the Rabbinical Council of America, the main professional association for Modern Orthodox rabbis in the United States (Gurock 2009). Jeffrey Gurock, a historian of American Orthodoxy, notes that Miller is an understudied figure whose influence on American Orthodoxy has not been sufficiently explored. While support for community councils

emerged from many sectors in the Jewish community, it is not surprising that strong support came from a leader in the Orthodox community and strong opposition, which I describe next, emerged from the Reform laity.

S. Walter Stern, a member of a prominent, wealthy New Orleans family, expressed opposition to the council’s formation on ideological grounds, arguing that Jewish philanthropic organizations should not have a representative function. Stern held that Jewish philanthropic organizations should not claim to speak on behalf of the Jewish community. Meeting notes describe Stern’s strong dissent:

Mr. Stern however, stated that he was opposed to the Community Council, because he felt that no organization no matter how representative could speak in the name of the Jewish people of New Orleans. He felt that if a controversial issue finally came to a vote in such a body the minority or many members thereof would not want to be bound by the majority opinion. He felt that if the matter did come to the community the people that were in favor of the given line of action could call a meeting of those interested and have it determined what the attitude of that particular group should be, leaving other groups in the community free to adopt whatever other opinion appealed to them. (Jewish Federation 1914-1994:box 111, folder 13)

We can understand Stern’s argument as an insistence that Jewish philanthropic

organizations should focus on their particular social, educational, and religious missions and should avoid taking on what might be construed as a “political” or representative function. Stern further argued that while the idea was to achieve unity, the council would likely disillusion those whose opinions were overruled by the council’s majority.

I pause here to offer a brief biographical note. S. Walter Stern’s father, Maurice Stern, emigrated from Germany in 1871 and came to lead a large cotton trading firm based in New Orleans (Richardson 1997:328). Embracing a philanthropic ethic, Maurice Stern and his children all came to play prominent roles in developing the civic, cultural,

and welfare institutions of the city. For example, many members of the family served on the board of Dillard University, a historically black college. Notably, S. Walter’s brother, Edgar, married Edith Rosenwald Stern, the daughter of the famed philanthropist Julius Rosenwald and his wife, Augusta Nusbaum Rosenwald.¹⁴ Jumping forward a few generations, Ben, the first director of AVODAH New Orleans and one of my central fieldwork guides, is a direct descendent of S. Walter Stern.

Arguments in favor of the formation carried the day and the committee passed a resolution recommending the establishment of a community council. This development, alongside the founding of community councils throughout the United States, concretized the notion that Jewish philanthropic organizations include a representative function and can claim to speak on behalf of Jewish communities. In fact, in the seventy-five years since this meeting occurred, the idea that Jewish philanthropic organizations, and especially the Jewish federation system, represent American Jewry has been widely accepted both within and outside the American Jewish community. These acts of representation are not grounded in explicit religious or theological positions but enact what might be described as Jewish public policy based on a sense of what positions and policies might best serve Jewish community interests (Elazar 1995). I call our attention to this development in the history of the New Orleans Jewish community, and to Stern’s opposition in particular, because it suggests a number of questions about the field of American Jewish philanthropy with contemporary relevance. What are the possible consequences of Jewish philanthropy assuming a representative and political role for

14 Jewish Women’s Archive website, http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/stern-edith-rosenwald, accessed January 5, 2015.

American Jews? And what happens when there are those who oppose the actions and policy decisions of Jewish philanthropic organizations?

Building on these questions, this chapter considers the intersection of race politics and the politics of representation. While positions put forth on behalf of the New Orleans Jewish community by its community council (now Jewish community relations council) and its affiliate, the Jewish Federation of Great New Orleans, do not typically lead to intra-community strife, this chapter analyzes one particular instance when an initiative enacted by the New Orleans Jewish Federation on behalf of the Jewish community led to a contentious debate about what constituted ethical Jewish post-Katrina social action. I focus in particular on a debate that emerged in response to a partnership between the St.

Bernard Project and the Jewish Community Federation of Greater New Orleans. As in the World War II-era debate about whether to form a community council, the post-Katrina era involved questions regarding how the Jewish community might represent itself at a time of crisis with very specific implications for the Jewish community and for a larger struggle that transcended specific Jewish concerns. As with the question

regarding whether gifts given as part of an effort to donate an ambulance to Great Britain should be designated as Jewish, this post-Katrina debate primarily revolved around the politics of representation both within and outside of the Jewish community. In the pages that follow, I offer an analysis of the debate itself and consider the ways in which a debate about post-Katrina recovery was reframed in specifically Jewish terms. Following the lead of the activists who challenged the Federation partnership, I then ask what it might mean for Jewish humanitarian action to be present itself as either “political” or

“apolitical” in nature. As part of my analysis of the question of politics and humanitarian

aid, I suggest that activists’ exposure to anthropology and other critical social sciences influenced their understanding of what might constitute ethically informed and culturally sensitive expressions of humanitarian assistance. I conclude the chapter by thinking about what defines Jewish community as well as the always-political process of Jewish community formation.

Visualizing Jewish Aid

On August 11, 2009, three weeks before the fourth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, Michael Weil, the executive director of the Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans, sent an email announcing a Federation partnership with the St. Bernard Project, a rebuilding agency that was established in the years following Hurricane Katrina. Weil was hired in 2006, when the New Orleans Jewish community was struggling to get back on its feet after losing a third of its population, including many families with young children. Weil is a career Jewish professional known for effective fundraising and strategic planning. Prior to coming to New Orleans to aid the community in its recovery efforts, Weil spent most of his career in Jerusalem as a government consultant in support of a variety of urban planning and civic projects.

Weil’s email explained that a primary motivation for establishing the partnership was to present the Jewish community as making a visible contribution to the broader humanitarian project of post-Katrina rebuilding and recovery. Weil wrote that despite having “sent thousands of volunteers and millions of dollars to help rebuild the Gulf Coast,” the Jewish community’s response was impossible “to measure” and “visualize.”

By directing Jewish relief efforts to a particular rebuilding agency, a partnership between

the Federation and the St. Bernard Project would enable the Jewish community to make a noticeable contribution to post-Katrina rebuilding and would “allow any Jewish

individual or organization, regardless of affiliation who wishes to help rebuild the Gulf Coast, to have a central Jewish volunteer location where our joint efforts can be

measured” (Federation email, August 11, 2009). In language reminiscent of the World War II-era meeting that recommended the formation of a community council, Weil’s email reflected a desire to represent efforts sponsored by American Jews in support of the broader project of post-Katrina recovery as a “Jewish contribution.”

This email and the partnership suggest the following questions. What might account for this Jewish community concern with visibility? Why did the Jewish community wait until the storm’s fourth anniversary to consolidate their rebuilding efforts? These questions are especially pertinent when we consider that a number of Christian denominational networks including Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, Catholic Charities, and Lutheran Disaster Response played an early and central role in

coordinating post-Katrina aid and recovery efforts (Erdely 2011:6; Adams 2013).

Bolstered by national and international Jewish support, by 2009, the New Orleans Jewish community was enjoying a renaissance marked by a flurry of activity, a

collaborative spirit, and new leadership. The spirit of collaboration was most evident in the relocation of Congregation Beth Israel, an Orthodox synagogue whose building was destroyed by the storm, to a building belonging to Congregation Gates of Prayer, a Reform congregation.¹⁵ The sense of revitalization was also reflected in the arrival of a cohort of young, charismatic rabbis across the various denominations who were drawn to                                                                                                                

15 While the various liberal denominations (Reform, Renewal, Reconstructionist, and Conservative) often coordinate with one another, interdenominational collaboration between liberal and Orthodox congregations is increasingly rare.

the challenges and opportunities of post-Katrina rebuilding efforts. Relatively secure, mostly recovered, and infused with new leadership, the New Orleans Jewish community was in a good position to reorient itself outwards toward the broader project of post-Katrina rebuilding and recovery.

Weil’s email also reflected an anxiety regarding whether the Jewish community—

broadly defined—had contributed sufficiently to the project of post-Katrina recovery and rebuilding. This anxiety would be acutely felt at a moment when the Jewish community was transitioning from post-Katrina recovery to post-Katrina vitality. Weil’s email and the partnership it announced addressed this concern by establishing an institutional framework within which the Jewish community could symbolically and tangibly

contribute to the broader project of post-Katrina recovery. A stronger formulation of this idea was expressed by Ruth Messinger, who suggested to me during an interview that many members of the Jewish community who had contributed to the Federation’s Katrina fund were under the impression that they were donating to the broader project of post-Katrina recovery efforts when, in fact, the funds were mostly directed toward Jewish aid recipients (interview, December 31, 2013). The partnership thus served as a corrective measure meant to assuage members of the Jewish community who wanted the

community to focus on the broader project of post-Katrina recovery. The establishment of the Federation-St. Bernard Project partnership can thus be understood as a moment of transition from a particularistic to a universalistic perspective on the project of post-storm rebuilding. When they chose the St. Bernard Project, a widely praised rebuilding agency, the Federation and its leadership were surprised to find themselves challenged by a group of Jewish progressive activists.

Challenging the Federation

Upon receiving Michael Weil’s email, a number of youth activists also became concerned with the issue of visibility but from a very different perspective. The activists were concerned that, as a result of this partnership, the Jewish community might become implicated in a series of racist housing policies that St. Bernard Parish had enacted since the storm. Moving beyond informal discussion, a number of activists penned a letter voicing their concerns about the partnership. The letter, which was ultimately signed by thirty-four young, Jewish New Orleanians, ignited an antagonistic exchange with the Federation and the establishment of the NOLA Havurah, a short-lived progressive Jewish group that defined itself in opposition to the Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans.

St. Bernard is a low-lying parish located directly to the East of New Orleans that was hit hard by the storm.¹⁶ The roughly 70,000 residents who lived in the St. Bernard parish in 2005 when Katrina struck were all impacted when virtually every building in the parish was either damaged or destroyed. The magnitude of the damage in the parish led Liz McCartney and Zack Rosenberg, post-Katrina transplants from Washington, D.C., to found a rebuilding agency and to focus their initial efforts exclusively in the parish. The agency that McCartney and Rosenberg established “became one of the highest-profile initiatives in the region, with millions of dollars in corporate and individual donations and thousands of volunteers” (Flaherty 2010:130).

While the St. Bernard Project was achieving national fame for its efficiency rebuilding homes damaged or destroyed by the storm, the parish after which it was named attracted negative attention for its racist housing policies. In particular, the parish                                                                                                                

16 On account of its Catholic past, Louisiana uses the term parish to describe what is in other states called a county. The City of New Orleans and Orleans Parish cover the same geographical area.

passed a “blood relative” ordinance that made it illegal for homeowners to rent to anyone who was not a blood relative, effectively restricting African Americans from moving to a parish that was eighty-five percent white before the storm (Flaherty 2010:129). Even after federal courts stuck down the ordinance, the parish was held in contempt of court on numerous occasions for continuing to pursue racially discriminatory policies (Alexander-Block 2013).

The St. Bernard Project’s increasing prominence led to a flurry of activist voices calling on the agency to challenge the parish’s policies. Although McCartney and Rosenberg did not originally intend to align themselves with the parish’s policies, when confronted they insisted that they were not an advocacy group and were unwilling to critique the parish. On September 10, 2009, local activists posted an open letter on the blog of the Louisiana Justice Institute challenging the parish’s discriminatory policies.

The letter was signed by many progressive agencies involved in post-Katrina rebuilding as well as by many individual activists. A day after the broader activist community posted this letter to the Louisiana Justice Institute blog, a group of Jewish activists calling themselves the NOLA Havurah sent a letter to the New Orleans Federation challenging the partnership that had been announced a month earlier. As I discussed in the

introduction, the term “Havurah” evokes grassroots alternatives to institutional Judaism.

It is important to note that the Jewish activists oriented their critique toward a Jewish philanthropic agency and not toward the Parish itself.

While the Federation’s letter emphasized a desire to establish a visible and measurable response to Hurricane Katrina, the young activists were primarily concerned with how this relationship might be understood by the African American community:

We worry about the ramifications this partnership could have on our Jewish community and our relationships with communities of color. For example, if the Federation does not actively and publicly oppose St. Bernard’s racist policies, will the public assume that the Federation (and by extension the Jewish community) supports them? (activist letter, September 11, 2009)

As members of the Jewish community, the young Jews felt obligated to challenge an agency that claimed to speak on their behalf. Mirroring the efforts of the broader activist community, the young Jews were loath to become even implicitly associated with the structures of inequality they perceived and challenged. I note here that this youth activist challenge to the Federation fulfills Stern’s prediction regarding the consequences of empowering Jewish philanthropic organizations to enact Jewish public policy.

In their letter, the young activists explained their concerns regarding the

partnership and their sense that it did not emphasize or advance “equity” in the rebuilding process:

We are troubled by S[aint] B[ernard] P[rojects]’s refusal to make any public comment on St. Bernard Parish’s racially discriminatory housing policies, or to inform volunteers about these policies, despite requests from a growing number of Jews and non-Jews in New Orleans and across the nation… Our Jewish values and history remind us that silence in the face of injustice is tantamount to complicity. (activist letter, September 11, 2009)

The non-sectarian letter that emerged from the broader activist community makes a similar point regarding the implications of silence: “With the benefit of hindsight, we now know that St. Bernard Parish officials interpreted silence as consent, which has now emboldened them to pursue other means to deny the Fair Housing Act” (The Louisiana Justice Institute, 2009). By reframing the struggle against St. Bernard Parish in relation

to Jewish history, the activists began to situate this local issue within national, intra-Jewish debates about the nature of contemporary intra-Jewish social responsibility.

to Jewish history, the activists began to situate this local issue within national, intra-Jewish debates about the nature of contemporary intra-Jewish social responsibility.