UJA Federation

Local Jewish social service agencies are talking about increasing their employee workloads and making other changes to absorb expected government funding cuts as a result of Congress’ inability to agree on a new budget.

Marc Miller is hoping to start a venture involving hydroponics, the process of growing fruits and vegetables in nutrient solution rather than soil.

Michael Takiff, a published historian, has already begun a new business in which he’d put together oral histories or biographies for companies, nonprofit organizations and families.

And Lisa Blank is looking forward to the day when she opens a small restaurant in Harlem that would offer fresh, locally produced food at what she hopes will be reasonable prices.

The clients she sees “are all over the map” in terms of how hard they’ve been hit by the recession, said Peggy Jaeger, Nassau County director of Connect2Care, UJA-Federation of New York’s program to help members of the Jewish community who are unemployed or underemployed.

In 1945, my grandfather was listed as “Mr. A. — a specimen Orthodox Jew” in Milton Steinberg’s book “A Partisan Guide to the Jewish Problem.” The interview with him is summarized in these words: “The misgiving that haunts him most persistently is over his children. … His great fear is that they will depart from the way he walks, either repudiating his postulates or rebelling against the hardship he gladly endures, or simply refusing to be different from almost everyone else. Against such eventualities he is putting up a game fight.

So common are endowments in the private school world that the National Association of Independent Schools, an accrediting organization, uses these funds, whose principle cannot be touched but which generate annual investment income, as a key benchmark for measuring a school’s stability and viability.

UJA-Federation is studying recommendations from a security consultant’s review of its donor transaction processing system after an employee’s arrest last week in a $2 million fraud-ring bust. But the agency is confident existing security measures are stringent and the recommendations may not have prevented the fraud by a trusted employee who was authorized to access financial data but allegedly betrayed that trust.

The speeches atUJA-Federation of New York’s annual Wall Street Dinner this week included references to the economic fear and uncertainly among the city’s financial professionals, many of whom are expecting large reductions in their end-of-year bonuses. Even the event’s emcee, actress Susie Essman, couldn’t help but touch on Occupy Wall Street, greeting the nearly 1,200 professionals, business leaders and philanthropists who came to the dinner as the “1 percent — or, should I say, the 0.1 percent.”

In a move being hailed by advocates for interfaith families, UJA-Federation of New York — the largest Jewish federation in the country — is launching its first-ever initiative specifically focused on welcoming the intermarried and engaging them in Jewish life.

 It turns out that some things really are universal.

When a delegation of four young Ethiopian-Israelis from Rehovot recently visited Westchester Hebrew High School in Mamaroneck, any initial awkwardness or formality soon dissolved when the groups began talking about dating and socializing, where to find the best falafel in Israel, malls, television shows, and, of course, Facebook.

John Shapiro ends his tenure as president of UJA-Federation of New York at the end of this month. He will be succeeded July 1 by his partner in office, current chairman Jerry Levin. During an interview at his sleek, modern Fifth Avenue office where he heads Chieftain Capital Management, Shapiro reflected on his “extraordinary three years” at the helm of the world’s largest local charity during a time of dramatic change.