We are One but I am Many
Rice, James P.
WE ARE ONE BUT I AM MANY JAMES R RICE A WEEK IN THE LIFE0FA FEDERATION DIRECTOR PHOTOGRAPHED BY CHARLOTTES. LEVEE I believe it was William James who maintained that the present is a moment...
...Scabs are still on his wrists where he had been bound...
...Quantitatively, my report could be brief...
...Now the ball is in our court...
...The luncheon speaker is a local, non-Jewish newscaster, who relates warmly his experience in Israel during the Yom Kippur War...
...But the Round Table is composed of business and professional men...
...The news from Washington is still ominous...
...The issue of "Jewish money" only for "Jewish programs" is a disturbing one for me...
...Yet they are...
...There is a lull in the conversation, the men nod and exchange glances...
...We are sensitive to the recent rash of well-orchestrated activities that in one way or another denigrate the Jewish people and the State of Israel...
...When I ask if there is a specific threat, the police reply only that they are "not getting adequate answers from Washington...
...How remote this seems from Roumania...
...Louis, at the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Fund quarterly board meeting, which was held March 10-13...
...We are convinced that the study is long overdue and well justified, because of a growing indication of service overlap between the two agencies and possibilities of improving service and achieving significant economies from a consolidation...
...It is agreed to open the next morning with special precautions...
...We send to JDC relief team encouragement and support as they work with you to rebuild community facilities...
...It brings back some memories: Of my introduction to shmura matzoh in the winter of 1945-46 when, as a JDC representative in Austria, I helped concentration camp survivors prepare for their first Passover since liberation, and of my unforgivable miscalculation in apportioning the special food and wine...
...How far from the "front lines" of my postwar years overseas...
...Ends with an effective plea for contributions...
...Federation is especially gratified by the Vocational Service's effectiveness in aiding Soviet Jews to find jobs in Chicago...
...I send the rabbi a thank-you note for the matzoh, expressing my warm appreciation for his thoughtfulness and concern for tradition...
...I juxtapose that percentage to our American Jewish population of 6,000,000...
...Students had discussed a boycott of Butz's classes, and he is reportedly in disgrace on campus...
...I cannot help but wish the agency would cooperate a little more closely by following Federation guidelines for budget proposals...
...Butz's travesty, terrorist activity in Washington, and other anti-Semitic and anti-Israel activities in the United States and elsewhere—an ominous parallel to events of four decades ago...
...Since most of us on the Committee share a similar, potentially contradictory position, my prognosis for the group's success is, at this time, guarded...
...Every Passover since then the memory of his contemptuous stare, wordlessly reminding me where he was during the Hitler years, has sufficed as bitter herbs for me...
...Some were longdistance calls to Federations across the country, and to national agencies in New York and Washington...
...answered 48 of them, had my staff prepare answers to 15, and read through all the others, filing 25 of them away for future reference...
...It is a bureaucracy created to control a bureaucracy...
...It's a supermarket of Jewish philanthropy and community organization, and I am proud of the growing participation of Chicago lay leaders in top CJF positions—including the respected, internationally involved immediate past president of CJFWF, Ray Epstein, and current CJFWF treasurer, Bob Adler, self-styled "organizational nymphomaniac," who successfully balances more national and local leadership posts than anybody I've ever known...
...special service to our adolescents with problems of venereal disease, pregnancy, and drug abuse...
...He pours out details of those ghastly forty hours...
...In response to the news of the Roumanian earthquake, I cable Rabbi Moses Rosen in Bucharest: "Chicago Jewish community offers its deepest sympathy for tragic suffering caused by earthquake...
...Within three days, I learn that they will...
...I tell Rabbi Frimer how pleased we are with Rabbi Marc Gellman, Hillel Director at Northwestern University, who had been handling student and faculty reactions to the outrageous book by Northwestern University professor, Arthur Butz, which denies the facts of the Holocaust...
...Our chairman and I make no comment on the president's implied criticism...
...The "unscheduled Jewish holiday" is observed...
...Included among my special recollections are: • Our relief in learning that the hostages at B'nai B'rith Headquarters in Washington had been released, and my surprise that there was no reference to this in official CJF sessions, as if the whole unpleasant event were part of another world...
...Paula greeted him: "You don't look Jewish...
...5:10 p.m.: Our lobby guard summons me to the lobby pay phone...
...Now, he says, he will have the time to write an entire book about our failings...
...I am a CJF loyalist and have been for over twenty years...
...My admiration for Bar-On increases as he talks, and he'll certainly have my help in Chicago...
...Our informal session ends with some of the Round Table members indicating that perhaps they should organize a fund raising meeting at the Club...
...Answer—an affable affirmative...
...His last words, like so many of his earlier ones, bitterly denounce the shortcomings of the Jewish "establishment...
...My wife, Paula, advises me that the Police Department had been trying to reach me, but could not, because the evacuation necessitated closing our switchboard...
...We applaud President Carter's action in dispatching emergency aid...
...When I was on the JDC staff resettling Holocaust survivors, I came to know those who risked their non-Jewish blood to shelter our youngsters and to protect our people...
...They ask for a 51.9 percent increase, but indicate that 7.8 percent would cover anticipated cost increases on current program...
...I like this enthusiastic, direct and honest guy—even if I have doubts about the success of his mission, primarily because of past failures to understand problems of American olim...
...It's a strange relationship we have with this paper, ironic really, since it depends for local news heavily on Federation and JUF releases (plus occasional ads), and for national and overseas news on JTA, which is supported largely by subsidies from Federations...
...It is four days after Rabbi Frimer's release as a hostage at B'nai B'rith Headquarters in Washington...
...I reach the Police Lieutenant, who "suggests" that everybody leave the building...
...As Rabbi Frimer leaves, he thanks me for taking the time to listen____ Noon: I attend a session of the Federation Social Welfare Committee, which has met to review the budget and program of our Jewish Vocational Service...
...Substantively, my report takes a more sprawling form...
...According to that philosophy, journeys can never be completed...
...I have mixed feelings about my role here, for I must balance a personal and professional obligation to protect consumers, while at the same time representing the special interests of Federation hospitals and homes for the aged...
...I especially recall Allen Pollack's incisive speech on the importance of preparing American Jewish leadership for its crucial supportive role in the upcoming Israel-Arab negotiations, when we shall need as broad community support as possible...
...We also discuss various options for maintaining and cataloging Federation archives...
...Later I meet with Bernie Wax, executive of the American Jewish Historical Society...
...11:30 a.m.: Terrorists have invaded B'nai B'rith's Washington headquarters, my secretary reports...
...Ninety-one are dead, the cable said...
...It explains our summer intern program for college students and advises him that...
...My next letter goes to the head of a Federation hospital...
...Well, there's no way around it, and we'll have to depend on the strong support of the Federation Board and the underlying sincerity of those who may feel threatened by the change...
...Noon: The Federation Budget Committee meets in one of our first floor conference rooms to review the 1977-78 budget application of a national service agency...
...Others found their way into the circular file, and a few to "file 13...
...I turn out the lights, wondering if our policy of not answering his inaccurate and distorted attacks has been correct...
...They move on...
...He urges us not to brush aside Breira members, although he disagrees with their premise...
...I make a few suggestions for funding and hope that they will go along...
...We are one...
...We well remember your warm hospitality last October when we visited Bucharest...
...They appear mildly concerned...
...In friendship----" Among the letters I sign is one to a new Federation Board member...
...It's business as usual at the Federation Building—once you've signed the newly installed "guest register" in our lobby...
...It wasn't until five minutes after her subsequent apology that the blood returned to my face, I tell him...
...Sunday Evening, March 13 On the return trip and at home in Chicago, I catch up on my reading, aware of the accumulation of Friday and weekend mail waiting on my desk...
...2:00 p.m.: Back at my desk...
...I made major presentations at three of these meetings, was involved in discussions of a controversial nature of which I estimate my persuasive batting average at .666, and took cabs to only one—preferring to walk briskly to meetings in the Loop, as a means of keeping fit, and working up my generally good appetite for tuna salad lunches and chicken dinners— consistent with kashrut and low cholesterol...
...4:20 p.m.: The Chicago Police Department telephones to "suggest" we evacuate the Federation Building immediately...
...outpatient service to the storefront operations of the Federation-supported ARK, and of the Mount Sinai clinic in Rogers Park, the neighborhood with the largest number of Chicago's 250,000 Jews...
...Good—our professionals like to receive V.I.P...
...She is a veteran of crisis .. .ten years as a JDC wife and mother in post-war Europe, and in recent years, occasional midnight calls from Chicago's Nazi lunatic fringe...
...How many less would we be without the heroism of people like the gentile widow of Gaston Cremieux...
...1 conclude that we did the right thing...
...Another letter, two memos...
...His answer: "We were forbidden to talk but we did whisper about the possibility...
...During a meeting of rabbis and Federation executives, I convince a Chicago rabbi and Federation board member that most of our top givers are active in synagogue affairs—including several in his own congregation...
...This one was called by the Search Committee of a Federation agency, which has been attempting for several months to find a new Executive...
...I stay with a few of my top staff members to telephone Federation agencies throughout the metropolitan area to initiate security measures...
...I sign a letter reminding JDC of a woman we had recommended for their Board, an outstanding Federation Board member, and past president of our Women's Division...
...Bar-On and I swap stories about Paula Ben Gurion, a noted pro-Semite...
...Because of cutbacks in government funding, the agency has special problems...
...We advise our people to report to work at the regular time the next day unless contacted during the night...
...Later that night and early the next morning, I walk a public relations tightrope as I answer queries from Chicago's major media, who have somehow learned that our building closed early...
...I cannot help but wonder what reaction he would have received had his audience known that he originally refused our invitation to speak until a fee was offered, and that our usual policy is to pay speakers only travel expense...
...It's a legitimate point of view...
...My own responsibilities at the meeting include chairing a new HIAS National Professional Planning Committee concerned primarily with the resettlement of Soviet Jews in the United States...
...I tell him about the Ben Gurions' visit to Chicago in March, 1967, when Paula told the Irish head nurse at Michael Reese Hospital that she never liked or trusted Catholics...
...The meeting ends on a happier note, as I tell Rabbi Frimer that Federation has growing confidence in Rabbi Joel Poupko, Hil-lel Director, now officed in the Federation building, who will eventually take over the direction of our College Age Youth Services from our Jewish Community Centers...
...Noon: Our Women's Division meeting literally swings into action with a performance by five sprightly, smoothly rehearsed members who tell our story in a smashing series of songs, ranging from ironic reference to spoiled Jewish American princesses, to Women's Lib, to local needs, to the plight of Soviet Jewry: "I am a Jew and I want you to know, it's time that you let my people go...
...He subsequently agrees to postpone the meeting...
...Louis...
...During the week I answered scores of phone calls, some initiated by Federation leaders, some by Federation agencies, many from Federation staff and staff of Community Fund and other community based agencies...
...I go on to draft a reply to the officer of a day school who complains that Federation cannot meet all their growing needs, despite our total allocation of $2,250,000 to Jewish education agencies...
...It's all right," Paula says, "my son married a shiksa...
...After nearly three hours of staff discussions, telephone calls and handling mail and phone calls, I finish notes for my Round Table presentation...
...Shall Joseph fight his brothers...
...The back of his head has a four-inch gash from being pistol-whipped when he didn't respond quickly enough to a terrorist command...
...After more than four decades as a Jewish civil servant, residues of earlier moments seep into consciousness unnoticed, until I am asked to catalogue and analyze actions...
...Cremieux, our landlady while I was with the JDC staff in Paris, took tremendous personal risks to rescue Jews all through the Nazi occupation of France, only to be degraded, while making her first trip to Israel, for being a "goya...
...We listen to the news, startled, unbelieving at first until old patterns come to mind...
...Thursday, March 10, a.m...
...But could we have ignored the warning and risked the safety of clients and staff...
...I can't help it if I had a German Catholic mother...
...Tuesday, March 15 a.m.: Rabbi Norman Frimer, National Director of Hillel Foundations, keeps an appointment made weeks ago, to discuss our College Age Youth Services program, which we are successfully developing in close collaboration with Hillel on campuses throughout Illinois...
...WE ARE ONE BUT I AM MANY JAMES R RICE A WEEK IN THE LIFE0FA FEDERATION DIRECTOR PHOTOGRAPHED BY CHARLOTTES...
...until I recognize that any act can be broken down into parts so minis-cule that it becomes devoid of meaning...
...Returning to the office, I find a box of shmura matzoh from the Assistant Director of a Federation-supported education agency...
...When I sense that most of their pertinent questions have been raised and answered, I tell them about the situation in Washington—their first news of the break-in...
...Wax is alert and knowledgeable, with a contagious zeal about our responsibility to maintain the fascinating, but too often forgotten, records of American Jewry...
...Noon: The Covenant Round Table wants to know why Federation spends "Jewish money" for Michael Reese and Mount Sinai Hospitals since they only take care of "schwarzes...
...4:30 p.m.: I leave directly from the office for the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds sessions in St...
...I make a mental note for Joe Winston—another memo in the offing...
...we must find mutually satisfactory consultants and establish study plan parameters...
...As for service to blacks and Latinos, I make the point that Federation receives $2,700,000 from the Community Fund, which is 11 percent of its total allocations, although Jews constitute less than three percent of the metropolitan Chicago population...
...My calendar tells me that I also participated in 12 meetings in Chicago that week, some of them held outside of the Federation building at 1 South Franklin Street, Chicago...
...His announcement that he is donating part of his honorarium draws great applause...
...Not many, compared to 6,000,000 Holocaust victims, but it's 91 out of the remaining 60,000...
...How much easier it would be not to rock the boat, to maintain the status quo, to avoid the natural resistance to change...
...Thoughtfully concerned, he approves the actions taken and our plans for increased security...
...But Frimer and I see this as only a tactical victory...
...He needs it and so do I. I finally ask the question: "Norman, didn't you think about trying to overcome the terrorists—after all, they were only six...
...The six of us go, leaving only the usual solo uniformed guard on duty...
...Why are we spending so much to raise the money...
...It confirms a prior discussion in which I explained why we cannot authorize a fund raising event for his favorite Jewish organization during our campaign period—and handed him my own check...
...it comes out to over 9,000...
...In my letter I write of the need to stretch dollars because there are never enough and...
...I reply to phone calls from staff and board members, while monitoring the worsening reports from Washington...
...They are pleased and reassured by the seven percent figure...
...I knew they would be, since many philanthropic agencies spend 20 percent or more on fund raising and Illinois is considering legitimizing a 50 percent fund raising cost...
...treatment at least once a year...
...And I ask myself, is it good that he is retiring...
...We get back to "business...
...Lest it be thought that Federation executives sit around waiting for the phone to ring, it should be known that I initiated calls, most of them to Federation leaders and staff...
...2:00 p.m.: The chairman of the Budget Committee and I go right to another meeting...
...At the CJF Board dinner, I sit next to Mordecai Bar-On, formerly head of Youth and Helcha-lutz Department, Jerusalem, Israel, now on special assignment in the United States to develop aliyah from America...
...Suppose B'nai B'rith or the District Building in Washington had been similarly warned...
...His position that Breira adherents, such as Irving Howe, are not to be simply "read out of the community," has validity...
...No adequate candidates are available, he says, because the professional community is aware of a pending Federation study to consider consolidating that agency with another agency performing some possibly similar functions...
...and the newly created Review Committee studying CJF's purpose, function, program and organization, under Ray Epstein's chairmanship...
...Police increase protection for a Women's Division fund raising function at the Palmer House, despite advising me that the Chicago situation is "under control...
...I am asked...
...Monday, March 14 a.m.: After conquering the accumulated mail, I receive a staff report that the rabbi of a prominent congregation sharply criticized us in his sermon for closing our office in the face of a possible terrorist threat: by remaining open Federation would have given more courageous leadership to the Jewish community...
...That phrase kept recurring to me as I attempted to describe, for moment magazine, a week in the life of a Federation executive...
...I later learn that our request probably will not be honored...
...Brief consultation with Joe Winston and our Campaign Chairman, Bill Levine, to ask Bill to host the upcoming brunch for the Social Welfare Agencies division of the Jewish United Fund at the Standard Club...
...You're right," I answer, "but everything is expensive today—fuel, food, printing, paper, postage, telephone, labor costs and it adds up to seven percent of what we raise...
...LEVEE I believe it was William James who maintained that the present is a moment at the conflux of the past and the future...
...I send the Board and Federation agency presidents and executives a memo detailing the security arrangements...
...We push the ugly implications from our thoughts so that we can function...
...treatment of the 350 patients in our two Homes for the Aged, as well as hundreds of aged living independently with the aid of our Council for Jewish Elderly...
...My disappointment in learning that, while our 1976 campaign set the highest per capita achievement for any American Jewish community with population of over 200,000, our 1977 campaign is lagging behind, thus far, in percent of increase—nine percent as compared to 13 percent nationally...
...Bar-On tops me with the story of his first trip to Sde Boker to see Ben Gurion...
...Midafternoon: I attend the meeting of the Advisory Committee of the Chicago Health Systems Agency, established by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (in the wake of mounting national concerns about burgeoning health costs) to develop plans for improving health services and for analyzing and controlling costs at hospital and long-term care institutions...
...A sense of absurdity comes over me...
...at this point, every social and health service agency affiliated with the Federation is taking an intern except your institution...
...Just before I retire for the night, I read the farewell column of the managing editor of an independent Anglo-Jewish Chicago periodical, who is retiring for good...
...Finally, having advanced the practical answers, I suggest it is not inconsistent with tz'dakah for Jews to aid the neediest among us regardless of their faith...
...I explain to the Round Table that services rendered to Jewish patients cost the two hospitals at least as much as the $925,000 they receive from Federation: medical care for about 1,000 Soviet Jews who have emigrated to Chicago in the last four years and are not eligible for government aid...
...The weekend is a succession of many other meetings, forums and informal gatherings, including: • relationship with United Way campaigns and Community Funds, • efforts of Federations to bolster American aliyah, • plans for the CJF General Assembly in November, • campaign reports, • regionalization (Guidance and aid to small communities from large Federations), • government funding of Federation programs...
...Her husband, a prominent French attorney, was among the first to be seized and executed by the Nazis in Paris because he was a descendant of the Cremieux, who, as French Minister of Justice in the late 19th century, promulgated the law which gave civil rights to French Jews...
...I try a few ideas on Joe for a presentation I am making that noon to members of the Covenant Club Round Table, a Jewish social club of business and professional men...
...The Committee recommends to the Federation Board a five percent increase, in accordance with our established guidelines for national agencies in 1977...
...Chicago is the headquarters of the Black Muslim organization and also has a cell of the Hanifi splinter group that was terrorizing Washington...
...As I read the shocking news, I visualize the elderly being carried from the Ne-gru Voda Nursing Home, and I sense the fatigue of the JDC team members as they worked round the clock to provide food and medical care and beds for victims...
...Wednesday, March 9, 1977 7:50 a.m.: I am riding to the office along Chicago's lakefront with Joe Winston, Associate Executive Director of Federation and Jewish United Fund Campaign Director, discussing campaign progress, ways of getting X to increase his gift, trying to find someone with enough influence to stop Y from cutting his gift...
...there was none left when a forlorn representative of a small group from a mountain village asked for their share...
...Louis...
...the Synagogue-Federation Relations Committee chaired by Bob Adler: Campaign Services Committee...
...In addition, my office initiated 28 letters and memos totalling 38+ pages, 80 percent of which were directed to Federation leaders and staff...
...I telephone immediately to Federation President Marvin N. Stone, who is out of town, to inform him of developments...
...The Northwestern president and board chairman, under pressure from our PAC, officially denounced the book, and scheduled a Holocaust lecture series featuring Elie Wiesel and other noted authorities...
...I keep a pocket list of our six-figure givers...
...Eight minutes later our building, which houses some 700 people and eight agencies, is almost empty...
...Because he represents a family gift that is among the highest in Chicago, I think twice before signing the letter, but I do sign it and send it off...
...participation in meetings of Executives and Presidents of large communities...
...he replied truthfully...
...As usual, their officers are well informed and deeply involved...
...In addition to the Chicago meetings, I attended 13 meetings in St...
...We discuss the newly developing Chicago Jewish Historical Society, a group which was sparked by the enormously successful Jewish Bicentennial Exhibit which Federation and the American Jewish Congress had recently co-sponsored at Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry, attended by tens of thousands...
...Paula always is annoyed when my private line is cut off—a standard procedure enabling me to dictate messages after hours—but she doesn't seem upset by the emergency and gives me the information calmly...
...The agency president announces with some frustration that he recommends terminating the search...
...Plans are discussed for shifting program emphases, developing new programs and modifying existing ones to qualify for support...
...I sense they have accepted my answer...
...Neither of us has any notion that by the end of the day we would be forced to observe what one of our employees facetiously referred to later as "an unscheduled Jewish holiday...
...The men are surprised...
...My secretary informs me that, during the week I have chosen— Wednesday, March 9, through Tuesday, March 15, 1977—I received 98 pieces of mail...
...2:00 p.m.: On the phone, Marvin Stone agrees that it is all right for Federation leaders and staff to proceed with original plans to attend a Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds meeting in St...
...To Israel: "They are not alone, we are not alone...
...Of course," I add, "seven percent of the $27,134,000 which JUF raised last year is not insignificant...
...of choices that have to be made, difficult and unpleasant as they may be, for all of us who share this world of Jewish community responsibility...
...Apparently we'll have to wait until next year on that one...
...They were well armed, had used their weapons on several people, and it seemed clear that to overcome them 25 or 30 lives would be sacrificed...
...That feeling is reinforced by my letter to the president of the agency asking him please to postpone a fund raising function for one of their day schools which had been set inadvertently (I hope) during our JUF campaign...
...p.m.: Back at my office, I read JDC's first telex on the effects of the Roumanian earthquake...
...Oh well, thanks for the matzoh...
...The Hillel Center has cooperated beautifully with our Jewish United Fund Public Affairs Committee as we dealt with the Northwestern administration, faculty and students, and the media...
...There were calls from rabbis, from the Jewish and general press...
...We have done much to negate the effects of the book locally...
...We had visited Bucharest on a Mission only last October, prior to the UJA's "This Year in Jerusalem" conference...
...So much for statistics...
...Sounds corny on paper—but it comes across beautifully...
...Our heartfelt condolences to families of dead and our sincere wishes for early recovery of injured...
Vol. 2 • June 1977 • No. 8
