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Yiddishists court Ross

By Jacob Berkman · July 31, 2008

During the short period that the Fundermentalist has been around, I have on occasion received email from readers who wish to get in touch with potential funders about whom I have written.

But I had yet seen a response like the one I got after writing about Mickey Ross, the former writer and producer on All in the Family, The Jeffersons and Three's Company, who is apparently giving away most of his fortune to programs that promote Yiddish. So far, the 89-year-old Ross, who has no heirs, has given away some $14 million to UCLA and the City College of New York to build up their Jewish Studies programs.

Half a dozen people associated with Yiddish programs have contacted me asking for a way to get in touch with Ross so they could pitch their organizations to him. (Unfortunately for them, when I called my contact for Ross, he told me that Ross is not interested in solicitations at this time.)

Thursday, I finally asked one of them why it is that Ross has generated so much interest.

While there has been a Yiddish revival of late, and a groundswell of interest in keeping the language alive, it seems that finding funders is somewhat difficult, Adrienne Cooper, the executive officer for external affairs for the Workmen's Circle/Arbeter Ring, told me. Even within Jewish philanthropy, Yiddish is simply a niche market.

"There isn't a clear sense of who is out there," Cooper said. Funders of Yiddish tend to fund very close to home, she said. They tend to associate with programs that they know intimately or that they helped start. And getting the word out to other potential donors is sometimes hard.

"They don't always know what we do because [they often fund programs with which they have] a familial connection," Cooper said. "And they often reach out to organizations in their own communities, or they are flying under the radar."

The Workmen's Circle has a budget of about $2.3 million, said Cooper, who has also worked for the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, another Yiddish-centric organization.

And often, when funders find her, it is a total surprise and not necessarily the result of long-term donor cultivation.

She may have also shed light on another Ross-related tidbit.

The Folksbiene National Yiddish Theater recently honored Rob Reiner for his efforts in preserving Yiddish. Reiner, of course, became famous for his role as Meathead on All in the Family.

I wonder what kind of schpeel the Folksbiene used to court Meathead?

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Jewish Funds for Justice works with churches to save burned-out Baltimore neighborhood

By Jacob Berkman · July 31, 2008

This block is like scores of others in the Oliver Neighborhood of Baltimore. The Jewish Funds for Justice and BUILD are working to knock these houses down and build housing for low income residents in an attempt to save the neighborhood.

The Baltimore Sun has a story about a fascinating urban renewal project in Baltimore. The Jewish Funds for Justice worked with a church group, BUILD, to construct affordable housing in Oliver, one of Baltimore's worst neighborhoods.

If you've ever seen "The Wire," you can get a pretty good sense of this neighborhood. I was down there during the winter to check out this story (which is in the hopper), and it is a total wasteland.

For anyone who has taken the train through Baltimore, Oliver is the neighborhood on your right just as you enter Penn Station there – the one that looks like Kosovo during the war, block after block after block of boarded up and burned out row houses. It is not the neighborhood from the HBO show, but it is almost as bad and almost as drug-ridden.

BUILD organized churches to raise $1.2 million to buy lots to build 75 new homes for low- to medium income families, and another 47 will be built, the Sun reports. Jewish Funds for Justice organized local Jews in Baltimore to match the $1.2 million.

The first homes were dedicated in a ceremony with Baltimore's mayor, Sheila Dixon, and the Maryland's governor, Martin O'Malley, July 28.

The block in the photo above, which I took this winter in the area where the homes are being built, is one of acres and acres of similar landscape. It will be replaced by new homes as shown in the photo in the Sun article.

This is not a straight philanthropic effort, I was told this winter. The houses will be sold and investors will take a small profit – albeit a much smaller profit than if this was a straight development deal.

Still this is a socially conscious project and in an area of Baltimore that is not Jewish at all. While other rebuild projects might seek to renovate areas abutting Jewish neighborhoods, Oliver Street is nowhere near Baltimore's Jewish center.

But in a city where black-Jewish relations have been strained at best and non-existent at worst in recent years, this is a project that could go a long way to rehabilitate more than just a neighborhood.

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Project Genesis clarification

By Jacob Berkman · July 31, 2008

The post from Tuesday regarding the Russian Genesis Philanthropy Group had several inaccuracies.

The project to fund Jewish identity programs for Russian-speaking Jews is funded only by Russian billionaires,while American groups such as the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation and the Chais Family Foundation are only consultants and/or board members. Philanthropists Lev Leviev and Vladimir Goussinsky are not involved with the project.

The Jewish Funders Network is running the organization's American operation out of New York. It has similar arrangements with Matan in Israel and Charities Aid Foundation Russia, a British-based organization.

Rabbi Avraham Berkowitz, the former executive director of the Chabad-led Federation of Jewish Communities, has left the federation to set up an independent office in Moscow focused on reaching out to unaffiliated Jews in Russia, a central goal of Genesis. He has been called upon to consult on the project, but is not an employee.

Read the full story on this interesting project here.

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