For a very long time, scholars and just plain folks have pondered whether Judaism is a religion or a nationality.
Is being Jewish being part of a faith or part of a people?
There are all kinds of repercussions based on which of those answers you choose, and each leads to a very different kind of picture of Judaism.
But I think we can put the question aside at the moment and see it as basically irrelevant for our times.
For I think we have an answer about what Judaism truly is in this place, at this time.
Judaism is neither religion nor nationality. It’s a corporation.
That’s right, a corporation. Indeed, the corporatization of Judaism has been sneaking up on us for years and has now come into full flower. And 1999 promises to accelerate the trend and accentuate the corporatization of our little tribe.
Made in Yiddishkeit Inc.
As I say, the trend has been visible for years. Take the federation world where the head lay leader used to be called the president and the head staff guy was called the executive director. Both terms signaling that this was a Jewish organization.
No more. Now the head lay guide is called the chairman of the board, while the head staffer is the president. All very corporate.
Keeping with that trend, the two big umbrella organizations of American Jewish life, the Council of Jewish Federations and the United Jewish Appeal, are finishing up, what else, a merger.
Again, very corporate and very in step with the business climate of our times with firms merging all over the place to consolidate operations.
And if some people get hurt in the process, well, we’re sorry about that but hey, that’s corporate life in the ’90s. Reduced work force equals better bottom line.
And there’s no doubt that by merging CJF and UJA, money will be saved. As for at what cost, we can’t be bothered with that.
And so it is with the CJF and UJA merger, which has already led to the departure of some of the finest Jewish public servants this community has ever had.
But they are out because they are old-timers, more Jewish than corporate. And while that may make the new entity more efficient, it also will make it less menschen like.
The merger means a new way of doing business is coming. A way that is more business than Jewish organization.
If you look back at Jewish organizations 30 or 40 years ago, you see how haimish they were, how much workers put up with because they so believed in what they were doing.
There was a pervasive atmosphere of Yiddishkeit and menschlichkeit. Were they the most efficient of places? Did they raise the most money? No. But there was a beauty about them.
That is long gone, given way to a more cutthroat way of operation, one far more efficient. Are we raising more money? You bet. The question is at what cost.
And yet we’re not stopping to ask that question. We are moving into the corporatization of Judaism with a full head of steam.
If I asked you who were the three most influential national Jewish leaders today, who more than any others are determining what is important and what is not, who would you say?
Scary thing is that you probably don’t know, which is understandable since it’s all happened very quietly.
But somehow three men have basically assumed control of the American Jewish agenda.
They are Edgar Bronfman, Michael Steinhardt and Leslie Wexner.
And what do these three men have in common?
They are all, you guessed it, business types. Jewish leaders not schooled, as it used to be in the old days, in the ways of the Jewish community or in Jewish teachings.
Bronfman is the head of Seagram’s, the giant distiller of alcoholic beverages. Steinhardt ran one of the most successful hedge funds on Wall Street. Wexner is the top guy at The Limited, the huge chain of clothing stores.
Each is a very, very wealthy man. Each is incredibly successful in the world of business and finance.
And all three are now, to an amazing extent, determining the future of Jewish life in this country.
I am not exaggerating.
Bronfman will have by far the loudest voice in determining the purposes for which the $1.25 billion we’re getting from the Swiss banks will be used. He is, after all, the one who put the Swiss issue at the top of the Jewish agenda.
Steinhardt wants to strengthen secularism within Judaism. He believes the key is to build Jewish day schools around the country and send kids on free trips to Israel for 10 days.
Wexner’s pet cause is training the next generation of Jewish leaders with the values he most cherishes.
What’s scary is that while these guys definitely have their hearts in the right place, you also have to wonder if the corporate way of doing things is what Judaism needs right now.
Indeed, if we were looking for someone to run our business, we’d be glad to have them. But to run Judaism?
As if that wasn’t enough to give one pause, there’s a fourth macher about to play a key role on the American Jewish scene.
Surprise, surprise, he doesn’t come from the world of Jewish learning.
Rather, he’s a corporate guy. His name is Ronald Lauder and he’s the head of the giant cosmetics firm, Estee Lauder. Until about two years ago, Ronald Lauder had virtually nothing to do with the Jewish community.
Now, he is its official representative.
Lauder recently became the new head of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the macher of machers. He will be the guy the White House and the Israeli prime minister turn to for the official American Jewish view of things.
He’ll be our leader, not because of his breadth of Jewish knowledge or Jewish involvement. But because he’s a corporate head and Judaism is now a corporate world.
One small taste of what that means can be seen in a speech recently given by Bronfman in which he called for the rewriting of synagogue services.
That’s right, the rewriting of synagogue services, something we used to leave in the hands of rabbis, scholars, tradition.
But not Bronfman. No, good corporate chief that he is, he said synagogue services are “long, boring and repetitive to the young Jews of today.”
And so, they must be changed, just as his company introduced spritzers when it became clear young people weren’t going in for the hard stuff.
And he warned, “Our synagogues and temples don’t belong to the rabbis.”
After all, how many shares of Judaism do they control?
There you have it. A glimpse into what the future holds.
This means that as the small shareholders, we had better keep an eye on things before our billionaire Abraham, Isaac and Jacob produce a Judaism that is neither religion nor nation.