With money tight, we can’t afford to let our federations go under

One afternoon a month, employees at the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation gather in the boardroom around candlesticks and challah for “Ner Shel Achshav,” the Light of Now. It’s a twist on the Hebrew “ner shel Shabbat” (light of Shabbat) uttered during the Friday night candle blessing. But it’s Thursday. So they come just to “rejudaize” a bit.

It’s all very haimish. I know many of these federation staffers, and consider them friends. They work hard every day for the Jewish community, and they deserve this moment’s respite. The same is true for the East Bay federation.

Lately, it seems, too few want to give much love to Jewish federations.

Not only are federations struggling to keep pace during the recession, they must cope with increasing doubts from within the Jewish community as to whether they even matter anymore.

According to the doubters, federations might have played a role years ago, but times have changed. No longer do we need a central address for the Jewish community. Federations are just bloated, antiquated bureaucracies.

So they say.

Maybe I’m just contrary by nature, but I don’t buy it. I think American Jewish communities need federations more than ever. I’m talking old school: brick-and-mortar buildings, a huge unrestricted general fund and experts who know what to do with it.

I don’t mean to malign major donors. They are amazingly generous with their time and money. They care deeply about Jews, Judaism and Israel.

But philanthropy has changed in recent years, and not all for the better.

Big donors demand more of a say in where their dollars go. They launch donor-advised funds to finance pet projects, like camperships or Birthright. Or they lay out huge capital grants to get building projects under way.

All of that is fine and good. But under this system, donors become the de facto experts on the needs of the Jewish community. Well-intentioned as they are, just because they have big bucks doesn’t mean they have the same expertise as those toiling in the federation trenches.

It reminds me of California’s taxpayer revolt that began some 30 years ago.

Prop. 13, term limits, two-thirds legislative majority required to pass budgets: These measures seemed like a returning of power to the people. But all turned disastrous for California. With Prop. 13 we lost local funding for basic services. With term limits we lost an experienced political class. And with that two-thirds rule, we probably will have more budget impasses like the one we saw in Sacramento recently.

Federations are a form of central government, and as such run the risk of devolving into hubristic self-justifying bureaucracies. So Jewish philanthropists had a little taxpayer revolt of their own. Demanding more freedom of choice, they began giving less to general funds and annual campaigns, and more to their personal areas of interest. Federation clout unavoidably waned.

But consider: If Donor A will give, but only if the money goes to a JCC construction project, then what happens to the local Midrasha down the street? If Donor B wants to support only day schools, what happens to the kosher meals for seniors program?

Over recent decades, we figured the coast was clear, that we could decentralize because, after all, the pool of money was large enough to float all Jewish community boats.

With so much of that prosperity evaporated, we are left with federations that cannot adequately handle emergencies. Smaller donations drop. Demand for services rises.

Maybe it’s time to go back to the old model: fewer pet projects and more shoring up of the general coffers.

When I donate to federation annual campaigns, I do have a pet project in mind. It’s the whole Jewish community. Call me naïve, but I trust the field generals to know what to do with my gift.

Someone once said “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.” It was that great villain of history, Karl Marx. His economic and political theories ultimately proved ghastly. But he might have made a good federation president.

Dan Pine can be reached at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).