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Metamorphosis
Netty Gross
The venerable Jewish women's organizations are fighting for their lives. Their volunteers are aging; the pool of potential recruits is too busy climbing the professional ladder and building families to donate their limited time; and those who do want to be involved are demanding more than the old Donna Reed image has to offer. So these formidable groups, like their publics, are desperately evolving in a bid to keep pace.
Rhonda Blitz is sitting in a windowless conference room at Washington, D.C.'s Hyatt Regency Hotel. Waiters are clearing cups off pink-cloth covered tables. Tall and articulate, Blitz is in town from Montgomery, Alabama, for the National Council of Jewish Women's Washington Policy Institute.
She's just attended the "Rolling Back Civil Rights" workshop, where African-American activist Rene Redwood lectured on the dangers facing civil-rights legislation. Blitz now has an hour to unwind before the banquet dinner, when NCJW president Nan Rich will present the Institute's "key issues": child care, school vouchers and international family planning.
Blitz declares herself to be a wreck. "My son's bar mitzvah is in two weeks," she moans in a Southern drawl, while running a nervous hand through her neatly coiffed hair. "I must be out of my mind for being here." But she adds quickly: "I wouldn't miss it for anything. It's not easy being a Jew and living in the South, where the Christian right is big, strong and has money. In my book, being Jewish means caring about the plight of my neighbor. I mean, this Institute is invigorating."
Founded in 1893 by Reform women, the Council claims a membership today of 93,000 across the U.S., heavily but not exclusively Reform. Its mission - shaped in part by Reform's "prophetic" view that Jews should be a "Light unto the nations" and, increasingly, by feminist canon - is, and has always been, the pursuit of social justice and protection of individual rights for all Americans. By being concerned with the general good of others, especially women and children, goes the NCJW credo, you're being an exemplary Jewish woman. Or as Nan Rich puts it: "American Jews have every door open to them today. The barriers are gone. We are privileged and we therefore have a responsibility."
Local chapters focus on fundraising for causes such as battered women's shelters and programs for poor kids, and for the national organization's lobbying efforts in Washington on social issues. The Institute, which takes place every three years (this time in late February) and is run with air-controller precision, is by far the Council's most important national event. This, in large part, because it attracts the likes of a Talmud-quoting President Clinton - who delivered a 30-minute address on child care to rousing applause - and, in part, because it reflects the essence of what NCJW is.
From Sunday to Tuesday 700 women, most of whom appear to share the same upper middle class-liberal background, attend round-the-clock workshops on issues ranging from "Preventing domestic violence" to "Targeting sweatshops," while bestowing awards on human-rights activists like Catholic-born Kate Michelman, who heads the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League.
But mainly, the women are drilled in the art of being "advocates" of the key issues. On Tuesday afternoon they fan out on Capitol Hill, holding color-coded copies of "talking points" prepared by the Washington office, and lobby their state representatives. Israel, though the subject of much attention at the Institute, is emphatically not part of the Hill agenda. Item No. 4 on a pink sheet, headlined "How to Visit Your Legislator," firmly warns advocates of politicians who "insist on limiting the discussion to their strong support for Israel... Be gracious but firm. Remind them that NCJW... has a domestic agenda."
Yet the NCJW has gradually begun to sing a different, distinctly more Jewish tune - part of its response to the crisis hitting the women's organizations that have long been a central part of American Jewish life. Though the food at the Institute is not kosher, a formal motzi over the bread opens each meal; and Rich inaugurates the Institute with a commentary on Purim (in NCJW exegesis, it's a celebration of "women's empowerment" in which Vashti and Esther are both feminist heroes).
The Israel part of the Institute program is unprecedented in scope this year. It includes invitations to five Israeli women (including this reporter) from influential fields to fly to Washington and observe the Institute, and attend a three-hour "Israel at 50" symposium. For top Institute donors, there's also a dinner at the Israeli Embassy - to which Ambassador Eliahu Ben-Elissar fails to show up, leaving the stunned but hyper-polite NCJW donors in the embassy dining room eating with his wife, who herself rushed out in the middle.
But most significantly, NCJW leaders are talking about Jewish texts and their connection to social justice these days. Marcy Lowenstein of Miami Beach says she came to Washington for "tikkun olam purposes. I was born on the right side of the tracks. I want to give back. So many American women and children have less. I want to be their advocate."
"Pursuit of justice, treating people fairly," ticks off Robin Boehler, a board member from Seattle, "it's all in the Book. I mean affirmative action comes straight out of the Talmud. Bava Metzia 39b."
The pronounced new Jewish tilt at NCJW has everything to do with the organization's survival. Carol Katzman, editor of the Jewish Press of Omaha, Nebraska, and an NCJW board member, points to the new logo, which now has a distinctive black stroke above the "J," meant to emphasize the "Jewish." "This is all new," she says. "We realized that a young, Jewish woman today interested in pro-choice activities can join Planned Parenthood. If she wants to aid the disadvantaged, there's Junior League. We're driving home the message that NCJW's commitment to social justice is a Jewish issue."
"It's a response," adds NCJW executive director Susan Katz, one of the few women in her field to have gone from a non-salaried position at NCJW (she was president) to a paid one, "to what young women seem to want today, which is advocacy and Jewish content, Jewish spirituality."
This scrambling to recalibrate their agenda reflects the fact that the organizational grandes dames of American Jewish volunteerism - like NCJW, Hadassah, ORT - which for almost a century was the core of Jewish identity for millions of women, are suffering a fluctuation of fortunes. This process mirrors the crisis in intermarriage-wracked, ennui-battered U.S. Jewish organizations as they struggle to remain relevant to the so-called "New Class" of Jews, consisting of highly educated, moneyed, unaffiliated and often single professionals.
Over at Hadassah, where the Israel focus has long held sway, there's also a drastic shift - in the opposite direction, toward an agenda that encompasses American issues. A 1997 Hadassah survey of activists' interests listed Zionism as the sixth-most urgent issue on their minds, after anti-Semitism, women's health, Jewish education, assimilation and intermarriage, and stereotypes of Jewish women in film and literature - all domestic concerns.
So Hadassah, the largest of the women's organizations with 320,000 members (50,000 are active), opened its own lobbying office in Washington in 1996. And its greatly expanded American Affairs department puts out a quarterly journal, a compendium of reports and domestic policy statements. One of his press kits has nine color-coded information cards indicating the group's very different spheres of interest, ranging from "Protecting the Earth" through "Preventing Genetic-Based Insurance Discrimination" to "Freeing the Agunah."
"I think the magic word these days is diversification," says Hadassah president Marlene Post, a personable woman who makes no bones about the fact that she runs what she calls a "billion-dollar corporation" without a penny in salary and is supported by her physician husband. These days, when Post talks about the eight trips she's made to Israel this year, she's quick to point out that she's also been repeatedly invited to the White House for conferences on racism and on child care. And while Hadassah has yet to snag President Clinton to keynote a convention, Health and Urban Development secretary Donna Shalala did address a recent gathering, saying that she's sure that one day a "Hadassah member will be president of the United States."
"Organizations have to have an evolving agenda and be adaptable to the needs of each generation," said Post in an interview in Jerusalem. "American Jewish women wanted to see Hadassah active in their local communities, in their lives. Women were telling us, 'Look, you have this big, fantastic hospital in Israel. Great. But what's it doing for us? Why can't we enjoy the fruits of its research?' It turns out we can. Just the way we can work on voter registration drives."
Also adapting itself to the new approach is Women's American ORT, with an estimated 65,000 members. Traditionally very Israel-oriented, ORT has embarked on an ambitious new overhaul, focusing on such issues as immigrants' rights and its new professional training schools in the former Soviet Union. "We're very lucky," asserts Rosina Abramson, executive director of WAORT, an affiliate of World ORT, "because we are relevant. Our mission, teaching people to be economically self-sufficient, is straight out of President Clinton's State of the Union goals." Abramson, a lawyer, was hired a year ago to help breathe new life into WAORT.
Over at Amit Women, a 73-year-old modern Orthodox organization with 80,000 members and an all-Israel focus, the problems are similar - but unlike its sister groups, a change in the agenda has been rejected. While most of the membership is between 45 and 64 and Amit, according to president Evelyn Blachor, is grappling with ways to attract younger members, it has steadfastly refused to alter its mission to help disadvantaged Israeli children.
This was its explanation, for instance, for their controversial decision not to support the second Conference on Orthodoxy and Feminism, held in New York in February. At the conference, women argued that Amit had rendered itself irrelevant by turning its back on problems crucial to young American Orthodox women. "They're committing suicide," said one disappointed Amit member, who asked not to be named.
The question of how to remain relevant and attract young, professional members is challenging the mega-groups, which have always been sustained by armies of volunteers. "We were never just a check-in-the-mail type thing," says Hadassah's Post. "We were always about women for women. To survive, we need warm bodies to carry on our projects."
And the need is desperate. The Hadassah survey showed that nearly 80 percent of its activists are over 45. NCJW's Rich admits her organization's membership is "older than younger." At ORT, executive director Abramson acknowledges that they've virtually given up on chapter life. "These days, we just ask our members for money, not time."
"It's definitely a time of serious transition for these organizations," says Brandeis University Prof. Sylvia Barack Fishman, who has done research on U.S. Jewish women at the Hadassah-endowed International Research Institute on Jewish Women (bankrolled in large part by Barbra Streisand). "The vast majority of Jewish women who, as a group, are the most highly educated women in the U.S., are working for pay. That's the new norm. And most working women don't want to get out of the house in the evening to attend a chapter meeting to meet other women. Most working women with children want to be home with their kids after a day at the office. Anyway, they definitely won't leave to go stuff envelopes."
As one Manhattan lawyer puts it: "Between work, volunteering at the local synagogue and getting my son to barmitzvah lessons, I'm exhausted. I'm sure there are young people joining these organizations today - I can't say I know anyone who belongs to any of them." Perhaps giving a scrap of hope to recruiters, she adds: "I'm not saying I can't be persuaded."
But the dramatic increase in the number of working Jewish women is but one threat to the survival of these organizations. Feminism's disapproval of the full-time career official who works for no pay, for example, has left them with a dated image.
The fear of dying out is leading these groups to innovative recruiting strategies. For example, men and non-Jews are welcome as members at NCJW, Hadassah and ORT. Hadassah's Post says they have at least one lesbian chapter. She also notes the "concern for how to keep the non-Jewish daughter-in-law committed."
Still, few gay women, or non-Jewish women married to Jewish men, tend to join. And single women, whose ranks are swelling, would rather not join a predominantly women's group. "My daughter," says one NCJW member from Utah, "would never join. She's 29 and wants to get married. She wants to meet men."
There is also widespread dissatisfaction with the hierarchical structure of the organizations. "You cannot tell a female executive today that in 10 years' time - after she climbs up the rungs of the ladder, after she's been on the bazaar committee and worked her way up to membership chairwoman of her chapter - then she'll have some influence," says Fishman. "She wants influence now. Today. Older women who have spent their lives working through the chapter system are often resentful."
Feminist writer Letty C. Pogrebin is pessimistic about the future of the monolithic women's organizations, although she insists that they are necessary because "women are second-class citizens in major Jewish organizations." (The point is backed up by a recent study by three CUNY professors, which found that women are grossly underrepresented on the boards of major American Jewish organizations: Of the 2,315 members of boards, only 25 percent were women.)
A lifetime member of Hadassah and NCJW, Pogrebin is also active in newer organizations such as the New Israel Fund which, she says, are making a serious bid to dislodge the larger groups by targeting the more discriminating "New Class" Jews.
"And the time crunch is definitely the No. 1 issue" in the survival of these women's groups, she says. Pogrebin points to her own daughters as examples. One is a writer for The New York Times and the other a producer at CBS TV's "60 Minutes," and neither belongs to any Jewish women's organization. "Both have time-consuming jobs, husbands they adore and new babies. If they had an hour a month to spare, they'd come to see their parents."
And, on top of this, she adds: "We live in a different world. Women don't need these organizations to meet other people." The social component, so much a part of these groups for so long, is no longer a drawing card.
Pogrebin argues as well that the Vatican-like structures of the large organizations make the end product, the actual act of charity, seem inaccessible. "A working American Jewish woman with a free hour a month to volunteer is definitely not interested in coming to a meeting to plan an event to raise money which she, in turn, has no control over. She wants to dole out soup in a soup kitchen, to be actually involved in the act of hesed. Or if she's a lawyer, she wants to be directly involved using her talents, offering legal counsel."
As for Israel, according to Pogrebin, it's become a hard item to sell. "The controversy over the conversion law and the feeling of delegitimization that non-Orthodox Jews, especially women, feel," she says, play badly to liberal American Jewish ears. Hadassah was smart to diversify."
Hadassah HQ is an immaculate building with a black granite lobby on 58th Street in Manhattan, just up the block from Bergdorf Goodman, the luxury clothing emporium, and across the street from the legendary Plaza Hotel. Like both the store and the hotel, Hadassah is a famous brand name. But just how much value that name has in the marketplace is a question Hadassah leaders, to their credit, continue to explore. "We haven't hidden our heads in the sand," says Hadassah board member Karen Venezky, who says she received her leadership training at Hadassah, emboldening her to run successfully for city council in Newark, Delaware. "We are confrontonting the new realities."
In 1995, gripped by fear that few young women were joining their ranks, Hadassah launched a study known as Voices for Change. It concluded that "the majority of Jewish women yearn for a sense of warmth and community in Jewish organizational settings... However, many feel disconnected from the organized Jewish community." That was three years ago.
Now the national leadership is gathered around a polished wood conference table eating a modest buffet lunch on paper plates and explaining who they are and what they do. As with the NCJW leadership, it's hard to figure out who is volunteer, who is staff. Vice president Jane Zolot, a well-spoken woman with an aristocratic bearing, has a corner office next door to that of Hadassah public affairs director Roberta Elliot. They work together. Elliot gets a paycheck; Zolot doesn't.
"It's true," says Zolot, "it's getting harder to find women willing to work without pay. The solution is simply to pay salaries. And that's what we are doing."
And as at NCJW, the Hadassah women are articulate, focused, friendly, married. They speak for hours about the future. Despite the difficulties, the new lay of the land, they are optimistic. Programming is better, tighter, attracting more members. Younger Jewish women, says one leader, want breast-cancer research, advocacy in Washington, dialogue with Muslims. And Hadassah is providing all that. The older members, says another, want continued support of traditional activities, the hospitals, promoting Zionism - and Hadassah comes through on that as well.
Like NCJW's Rhonda Blitz, who proudly wears the NCJW necklace strung with gold balls indicating the number of years she's been active in the organization, (as well as a tiny, gold, pro-choice clothes-hanger charm), Hadassah women have their own badges and pins. Nobody thinks this stuff is silly. The jewelry is another cultural component in being a Jewish organizational woman that goes with the erudition, the caring, the poise, the tailored suits, the Hints-from-Heloise camaraderie (there's a scale Hadassah women can weigh themselves on in the bathroom), and the references to their Jewish husbands.
Unexpectedly, there's something impressive, even moving, about this commitment. Many appear to have lived the good life, but they've also shared the wealth, given of themselves in time and money. Do you consider yourselves to be good people, I ask, a question that strikes them as amusing. "Certainly," says a woman who has just finished talking about the obligation privileged women have, as she twirls her diamond wedding ring. "It has been a wonderful life. Both in terms of having and giving. Nothing to be ashamed of."
1998
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