Editorial: Survival of the fittest

Posted

Issue of Dec. 19, 2008 / 22 Kislev 5769

The full ramifications of events large or small are not always apparent right away. Sometimes we need to wait a little while as a new reality takes hold.

In many ways, that is not true of the situation — the catastrophe — allegedly wrought by Bernard Madoff.

Banks and funds, foreign and domestic; charities, large and small; the well-to-do and the modestly well-off — many have immediately understood the chilling implications of the $50 billion rip-off to which Madoff is said to have confessed.

Several foundations have already been shuttered; many financially comfortable families have been shattered; at least two are reported wiped out to the point that possessions are for sale and parents are moving in with children.

Madoff will undoubtedly get what's coming to him, either in court or after 120 years. However, the toxic effects of a $50 billion fraud, over and above the damage already done by a flailing economy, means that the financial fabric of Jewish communal life has been altered, probably forever.

This time a year ago yeshivot were in trouble, even the ones that didn’t have officers making money off of the endowment. At the very least many of the parents who pay for their children to attend said yeshivot were in trouble. The tuition crisis was a big story. Now it’s not only the educational institutions grasping for every dollar, but just about every communal organization is on its figurative hands and knees, trying to get back that quarter that just rolled under the soda machine.

The simple fact is we can no longer afford to support so many institutions. The Jewish community — particularly the Orthodox community — is incredibly top heavy, and that's going to have to change.

Mi K'amcha Yisroel, we like to say. It's true — we are charitable, and we do usually go out of our way to act upon our national characteristic of rachmones. And, generally, we succeed. Countless organizations perform truly limitless chasodim both within our own communities and for the world at large.

But honesty compels us to admit that its not only the drive to do good that propels the Jewish organizational world. A great deal of effort is duplicated and funds wasted every day, and that is purely the result of the need commonly known as "I wanna be the boss."

Do we really need two or three or five of everything? Of course we don't. And we can no longer afford the redundancy. Years ago it was already being said that 'something has to give; we can't continue doing this.' Without a doubt, we no longer can.

It's probably too much to hope — well, it's certainly too much to hope –– that communal organizations that address identical problems in identical populations would get together and peaceably merge, or actually phase out those that are redundant; the bureaucratic survival urge is too strong.

But, failing that, well, we'll see how well Darwin's theory of survival of the fittest applies to not-for-profits. Because, certainly, there is not enough money to go around.