An allocations process usually is a MEGO (My Eyes Glaze Over) story, as it is often about numbers and statistics.
But the Milwaukee Jewish Federation’s allocations process for fiscal year 2014-15, completed this past summer, is anything but that. This year it is a story “about a profound change,” as MJF President and CEO Hannah Rosenthal said in a recent interview.
“The profound change was a wise recognition” that the Milwaukee Jewish community is enduring two pressures: Increasing local needs, and a pool of allocable dollars from the last annual campaign that fell more than $300,000 short of last year’s about $6 million because of some deaths of donors, Rosenthal said.
Therefore, the MJF executive committee and board decided — a decision that was “overwhelmingly supported,” Rosenthal said — to hold steady the allocations to local MJF partner agencies this year, and make up the shortfall by reducing the funds to the Israel and overseas side.
And this situation is not unique to Milwaukee, said Rosenthal. Jewish communities of similar or larger size all over the U.S. are encountering the same pressures and responding in similar ways.
“We’re not the only community doing this,” said Rosenthal. In fact, up to now, Milwaukee was “way out of the range of where other federations were,” she said.
What are the local needs that are increasing? They span the gamut from education to health care to poverty to the rapid growth of the senior population, Rosenthal said.
Agency leaders report seeing these needs grow. For example, Sylvan Leabman, president and CEO of Milwaukee’s Jewish Family Services, told The Chronicle about increased demand at the JFS outpatient mental health clinic.
“We’ve seen an increase in the number of sessions from 1,900 in 2010 to 8,300 in 2014,” he said. Moreover, in the past year, some 25 percent of those clients have Medicare, Medicaid or have no insurance and pay out-of-pocket, and “the reimbursement doesn’t cover the costs,” he said.
In fact, said Leabman, JFS wrote off $289,000 in 2011 — and $530,000 this past year.
JFS has tried to meet the demand by increasing productivity; and it has opened more satellite operations (including at Bayshore Town Center in Glendale and Bradley Crossing in Brown Deer, and it will be opening a mental health clinic in the Jewish Home and Care Center near downtown Milwaukee soon. But it has not increased its staff, Leabman said.
“We are being asked all the time to expand our services, and there’s just a limit,” he said.
Debbie Zemel, director of Chai Point Senior Living, told The Chronicle, “We are witnessing a huge increase in the older population and we need to plan on how we’re going to meet [their] needs.”
Among the problems she is seeing, she said, is “an increase in young onset dementia.”
She also talked about Chai Point’s Senior Enrichment Program, which also houses the Milwaukee County Meal Program from the county’s Department on Aging.
“This program reaches out to individuals in the community who need socialization” and provides them with “a hot kosher meal,” Zemel said. “There are people who have been coming [to this program] for over 30 years. For some of them, it’s the reason they get up in the morning.”
And “with the dwindling of outside financial resources, such as government funds” for this program, “the MJF allocation is so important,” she said.
Elana Kahn-Oren, director of the MJF’s Jewish Community Relations Council, also told The Chronicle recently that she is “seeing alarming trends” in local anti-Semitism.
“Before this summer, we have seen a steady trend of incidents that dance on the edge of being clearly anti-Semitic,” she said. “Particularly, we hear from a lot of young people that either encounter incidents and don’t know how to deal with them or don’t know how to identify what crosses the line to being hateful.”
Then during the summer occurred Operation Protective Edge, Israel’s battle with the Muslim fundamentalist terror and anti-Israel organization Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
That sparked both a rise in local anti-Semitic incidents and “assaults against the legitimacy of Israel,” Kahn-Oren said.
“Once people criticized Israeli policies,” she said. Now, “there is a narrative that has taken hold that uses criticism of Israeli policies to undermine the existence of the state altogether.”
“We know we need to focus on two areas,” she continued. “One is bringing together the community, helping people from all across the spectrum to connect to the Jewish community.”
The second is “being a strong voice in the community at large” in fighting anti-Semitism and discrimination generally, “increasing understanding about Israel and fighting forces that seek to harm Israel,” developing alliances and partnerships outside the Jewish community, and “taking leadership roles on issues of social justice,” she said.
“Our capacity is limited to do all this work,” Kahn-Oren said.
Rosenthal acknowledged that some community members believe the decision to alter allocations in this way was a mistake.
Said then MJF board member and past general campaign chair Jody Kaufman Loewenstein to The Chronicle in a telephone interview this past summer: “Institutionally, the Milwaukee Jewish Federation was formed and developed to be an organization that addresses global needs” and “to raise money for Jews who have no voice and can’t advocate for themselves” in countries around the world.
“A lot of us are not sure what the answer is” to the problem of declining revenues and increased local needs, but “we know this was not the correct answer or the correct direction,” she said.
And a past MJF president, Jerry Benjamin, told The Chronicle that he felt “so disappointed” by the decision.
“I believe this decision of the board has cut the cord that has bound us with previous generations of generous contributors to our campaign,” he said.
Still many others have approved. Milwaukee attorney Robert Habush is a former MJF campaign chair and board member. He told The Chronicle that while “my concern and love for Israel have not abated,” the truth is “our priority now has to be taking care of our local population.”
But there is another issue here that Rosenthal emphasized: What she and many other perceive is a growing disaffection of younger Jews from Israel and from Jewish federations.
Therefore, the MJF budget allocates new funds to efforts to develop local engagement with Israel — a topic for a separate article in next month’s Chronicle.
The following budget and allocations (in rounded figures) were approved by the Milwaukee Jewish Federation’s board of directors on July 8:
Total allocable dollars: $5.7 million
Local agencies and programs: $2.4 million
Israel and overseas: $1.4 million
MJF/Jewish Community Foundation: $1.3 million
Other allocations: $760,000
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