The tanking of the stock market and the broader economic downturn provide the backdrop for this week’s JCPA annual meeting. Getty Images
by James D. Besser Washington Correspondent
As anxious voters shift their focus to a fragile and frightening economy, a major Jewish umbrella group’s new anti-poverty push could gain traction and thrust the economy — which has been strangely off the Jewish community’s radar screen — to the top of the communal agenda.
While a glut of bad economic news will not be on the official agenda of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA) plenum, which starts on Saturday in Atlanta, it will likely galvanize participants around the group’s “Confronting Poverty” initiative, already planned as the centerpiece to this year’s conference.
And many delegates will arrive with deepening anxieties about the impact of the downturn on a vulnerable middle class, including many Jews, and on already overburdened Jewish human service agencies
that could face devastating government funding cuts if the economic downturn continues.
“There is awareness that things are precarious in the economy,” said Hadar Susskind, JCPA’s Washington director. “There is a real increase in middle-class anxiety — we see it with the home foreclosures, the big increase in bankruptcies, the way the credit crisis has moved from the subprime market into the broader market.”
Economic angst is “higher than we’ve seen anytime in the recent past,” Susskind said.
And that could give this year’s plenum a very different flavor from meetings in recent years, when the buzz centered on issues such as Iran, Sudan divestment, Jewish continuity and the Arab-Israeli peace process.
The focus on poverty in a deteriorating economy could create a mood of unusual amity at an annual meeting often dominated by ferocious debate over policy resolutions meant to guide Jewish community relations agencies for the coming year.
But there is also the potential for conflict if the debate veers off into dangerous territory.
“Where it could get somewhat controversial is on the issue of tax cuts,” said Bob Horenstein, community relations director of the Jewish Federation of Portland, Ore. “To many of us, it’s unconscionable, what the president is proposing in his budget: cuts in health care, Medicaid, housing, and at the same time proposing making tax cuts skewed to the wealthy permanent.”
A top Jewish anti-poverty activist in New York said that in his community the combination of a worsening economy and government cutbacks is creating a “perfect storm” for Jewish agencies and the Jewish poor.
“Here in New York, we have more than 200,000 Jews living in poverty, but we are facing cutbacks at every level: state, federal and local,” said William Rapfogel, executive director of the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty. “More and more people need services because of the economy, but because of cutbacks, those services are harder to provide.”
He added, “I hope it doesn’t take a recession to drive our community to want to help poor people. Even in the best of times, there are hundreds of thousands of Jews living in poverty.”
Even though many activists fear extending tax cuts could undercut JCPA’s anti-poverty initiative, there are no policy resolutions on the issue, he said — in large measure because of a few community leaders and donors who support administration policy.
Several JCPA participants say the issue could be raised on the floor of the plenum, although the two member agencies that have spoken up on the issue — the Union for Reform Judaism and the National Council of Jewish Women — say they have no plans to do so.
Fight Over Identity Charter Schools?
Economic uncertainty will be an unplanned sub-theme at the JCPA plenum, but it is far from the only issue on delegates’ minds.
Delegates will attend workshops on everything from “Jewish Security and The Bill of Rights” to mobilizing the broader faith community on the issue of Iran.
Nancy Kaufman, director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston, said that for her, the conference is less important for the resolutions it debates and votes on than for its function as an intensive seminar for activists from her group.
“We have our own focus when it comes to poverty; we’ve been dong it for years,” she said. “But the plenum is very useful as an educational tool.”
A number of policy resolutions will be debated and voted on. Continuing a trend in recent years, few will generate much controversy.
One early exception: a draft resolution on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Early drafts were criticized for language that some local groups felt expressed too much sympathy for the Palestinians. The most recent version begins with a more generic assertion that “Israelis and Palestinians suffer tremendously” and goes on to praise the Bush administration for its renewed peacemaking efforts.
Another fight could erupt over a resolution dealing with the rise of “language and identity charter schools” such as the Ben Gamla Charter School in Florida, the nation’s first English-Hebrew public school, and the Khalil Gibran International Academy in Brooklyn, which has a focus on Arabic language and culture.
Language acknowledging the “understandable allure” of such schools was stricken, and the draft that will go to delegates next week calls for tighter government controls and oversight to “ensure that these schools fulfill their public mandates in all respects as secular institutions.” A proposed amendment adds a warning that such schools “do not foster the development of internal terrorists.”
Several JCPA activists said the resolution has generated strong reactions from communities around the country, both pro and con.
Other resolutions deal with gender identity discrimination and comprehensive sex education in public schools.
There are no resolutions on the Iraq war or the issue of torture and the treatment of foreign detainees on the agenda.
JCPA leaders drew criticism from a right-of-center group in Florida that objected to its inclusion of Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), the only Muslim in Congress, on the program. Ellison, who participated in last year’s “Food Stamp Challenge” with JCPA officials, will speak on the role of faith-based groups in fighting poverty. JCPA officials say the Muslim congressman has actively sought opportunities to work with Jewish groups on domestic issues like poverty.
Other sessions will deal with issues such as Iran and continuing efforts by some Protestant churches to punish Israel with economic divestment.
Lack Of Jewish Involvement
But it is the JCPA poverty initiative that will provide the real focus of the JCPA conference, a focus unexpectedly sharpened by the rush of bad economic news.
Deepening economic gloom — according to exit polls in Tuesday’s Wisconsin primary, 90 percent of Democratic voters rated the state of the economy “not so good” or “poor,” and 43 percent said it was the most important issue in this year’s election, swamping concerns about the war in Iraq and health care — could galvanize Jewish groups around the new JCPA focus, said Rabbi Steve Gutow, the group’s executive director.
“There was a real concern about the lack of Jewish involvement on the issue of poverty,” Rabbi Gutow said. “And there was a growing feeling in the community that this is something we can no longer ignore. The community is tired of watching itself not respond.”
Rabbi Gutow and other JCPA leaders also see the anti-poverty crusade as a way Jewish community groups can restore traditional coalitions with other faith groups — alliances increasingly frayed by bitter differences over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
He said there is a “feeling of nervousness about the economy, about the economic vulnerability of our community,” but that the focus on poverty at the plenum is “about poverty in general, not about any crisis in our own community.”
Other community relations officials take a slightly different tack.
“There’s always been a concern about aiding vulnerable populations,” said Ronald Halber, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington (D.C.). “But there is now more anxiety, more worry.”
Jewish human service agencies are “very worried” about government funding cutbacks “at a time of growing need,” he said.
At the same time, he said, there are rumbles of anxiety about what continuing economic uncertainty may do to Jewish giving.
In his community, Halber said he sees “a really heightened concern. There’s no panic, but people are starting to think twice about their investments and their contributions.”
“There will be a real focus at the JCPA plenum on making sure we can keep providing the services people need during difficult times,” he said.
Bob Horenstein, the Portland, Ore., community relations director, said communities in some regions have more to fear.
“Oregon always seems one of the hardest hit” during economic downturns, he said. “Our economy is not as diversified as others.”
He said the Portland group has been working on poverty for the past five years in coalitions with other groups, but that recent economic news has “heightened our concern about what may happen in the near term and the long term. We have a long way to go before we make a real dent in hunger and poverty. We’ve made progress — but that progress can all be reversed if the economy goes south.”
He said the JCPA focus on poverty at the national level — and on what Congress and the administration can do to address the problem — complements what groups like his own are doing locally.
Lori Price Abrams, director of community relations for United Jewish Communities of MetroWest New Jersey, agreed.
“We had a discussion at a recent CRC meeting with the Jewish family services director who raised concerns: how many people in our community are one significant event away from being homeless?” she said. “It’s hard to think about: Jewish homelessness. But people are thinking about it.”
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