The hundreds of religious communities were revived or created on the post-soviet space in the last 15 years. Israel Zelman, the rabbi of the Moscow Shomrei Hadas community speaks to the Community Life about the problems that the contemporary rabbi faces as a manager.

 

 

- We have to consider two situations - how it is and how it should be. There are many technologies, connected with the community-building, with the sponsors, for example, as the money problem is crucial for any community. As a person, who is working in a Jewish religious organization - may be the only one in Russia that does not use foreign financing and is still (thank G-d) is pretty successful from the budgetary point of view - I can tell you about some new technologies that have to do with the community fundraising.

 

The first rule is the following - until the community members start donating something, all that keeps being a 'Judaism that somebody pays for', that is major drawback. If a person does not understand that it is useful and important for him to be a part of a community that means that the community manager - a rabbi -has not explained him why is it good to be in community. The first task of a community leader as a 'spiritual manager' is to explain the community members that they should be not the consumers, but the participants. In this respect we are the pioneers, I think, as our community members pay the fees that are comparable to international standards, not the highest ones, of course (it is about 500 USD per month). Of course, these fees constitute only a small part of our budget but their pedagogical role is tremendous - people themselves pay for the Shabbat, they partially finance the holidays. The first steps on this path are hard to make. In the beginning (2000-2001) we had just a regular kollel, with the students who received large stipends. Then, for various reasons, we have closed that program. For the Pesach 2001 we have rented a sanatorium and there everything was still paid for by the sponsors, the participants went for free. But already for the Sukkoth the people started paying gradually and from that moment the fees started entering the life of the community.

 

But the fees are usually not enough for the community. There are young families for whom the fees have to be reduced and who even need help, there are old people who need medical assistance, etc. So we need the sponsors. The rabbi will never be able to create a community if he  is not capable of beautiful and delicate communication with the trustees. You cannot work with them as a simple manager, who put the o pragmatic interest in the foundation of everything. We should not manipulate a guy to get the money from him. Every donor has to see two things (and the order is important): that the money will be spent on the right thing and that he himself will ge some use from it.

 

You cannot work on the 'donate and go' principle, you have to look at the man as not just a sponsor but a community member. He has to be moving towards tradition, even if he will be making just small steps at first. And if he just wants to ransom himself from the Lord, this is an unhealthy situation. If this right practice is used, a man sees from inside what his money is spent on, they participate, give various advices, make suggestions, etc.

 

Another important difference of a religious leader-manager from a standard bureaucrat is the problem of his private life an authority. The regular manager's private life (outside of rare exceptions) is his private problem. And it is impossible to hold a Jewish community together without a personal example and a personal authority. The 'manager' has to behave decently, the people should have no questions about him or about his private budget. I will give an example from the life of our community. We have spent this Pesach in Jerusalem, in the 'Netiv Arye' yeshiva that is right t the opposite from the Western Wall. We came to Moscow and in three days I have sent all the community members a detailed report that explained how the huge amount of money, collected for the trip, was spent. In this case the community members are calm as they understand what is going on. The people have to know that even the smallest abuses are impossible. If the community leaders do not satisfy at least a minimal ethic requirement, there will be problems in the community. The 'regular' manager works for himself. Jewish community manager is first of all working for his authority, not for the money. If he is a good worker the people will flow in. From the other pint of view one has to remember that you need decades to create an authority that can be destroyed in just one minute.

 

 

-There are some points that have to do with fundraising in Jewish communities. The technique that I find acceptable is, for example, the following one: I come to the sponsor before Pesach (this holiday is the most expensive event) and tell him that here I have a hole in the budget, it has to be fixed and I promise that after that I will not disturb him for another year. This does not mean that he will not see me -I will come, we will speak about different issues (learn Canon Books, discuss personal and private topics), but I will not touch the money issue any more. And next year, having experienced the year that has just passed, it will be easier for him to donate.

 

At least beautiful example. A rabbi, being in a Holy Land, finds the grave of, say, a grandmother of an important sponsor, calls him right away and says: 'I will fix it here, put everything in order, clean'. And in a week he comes to that sponsor and asks for money. Here we have a moral problem to decide - does one have to call a sponsor and tell him about taking care of a grave? May be in some outstanding situation (say, when somebody needs money for a surgery), such a technique may be used (but what kind of a sponsor is that you cannot explain him that the situation is outstanding without such kind of preparation). If no one is dying, one should just fix a grave to make a good deed, and keep silence about that.

 

Some techniques, justified by the highest motivation, are still unacceptable to my mind. I speak about the techniques that are supposed to impress the public, like the broken ceiling in one room or some other show-off troubles - it is not nice and often leads to real troubles in the end.

 

Of course, sometimes Jewish community turns to the secular management methods - when the sponsors and the community know everything very well and are abusing the situation. The sponsors understand that the money is not spent on work, but 'laundry' them in this way, and the community also understands what kind of sponsorship that is. But this can hardly be called a religious activity; it is a commercial enterprise that uses a Jewish title. Concerning those who use sacred, eternal values for their own profits, the, if these people, God forbid, exist somewhere, they of course have to be prepared to answer for that - in this life or in the next one.

 

 

- For a business manager to 'drown' a competitor is a big luck and, actually, the main objective. In the religion the situation is of course, different. But there are nuisances. Before the middle of the 18^th century the Ashkenazi and Sephardic communities existed that were not competing with each other, while having some Halachic differences. In the middle of the 18^th century Chasidism emerged and the Ashkenazi communities were split. Roughly speaking, a member of a non-Chasidic orthodox community thinks that for a man to be in Chasidic community is good, but: not god enough. The Chasid, who firmly holds onto his position, thinks about the other guy in the same way. (Of course when we speak about the closed religious communities the competition is minimal - mainly because such a community is an entity that is reluctant to open up and is not looking for new members. And the competition comes about here when one Tzadik has two sons (or there are two big rabbis in one yeshiva) and they compete for the followers.

 

So when a man comes to me who is a member of a Chabad community I do not tell him: 'Don't go there, come here'. But I have to articulate the opinion that a traditional Orthodox Judaism has of the Chabad Lubavitch. If I do not do that I am not doing my job, as my task is to attract the people to the direction in Judaism that I consider a right one. The Chabad rabbi will do the same and it is easy to understand. But it is not right for such discussion to use the reasons that have nothing t do with the matter, discussed (N is not trustworthy, he is not paying to his workers, etc.), because Jews have to treat each other like brothers and should calmly and frostily discuss the essence and meaning of a problem, and not slander, God forbid.

 

Of course when competition comes about everything gets complicated and the limits of what is allowed and what is not are pretty subtle. For example in Moscow there are now several significant Litvak organizations - the rabbi Aizenshtat's structures, 'Migdal Or', our community. We are in good relationships but if a man comes to r. Aizenschtat from me the rabbi will, probably, say: 'Don't go there, go here'. Why? Because he thinks we are not orthodox enough and it is his serious position. Our reason is that a Moscow Jew is usually not ready (at least, tight away), to stay in the orthodox environment in its most radical version, therefore so, minor relief (of course, without breaking the G-d's law) are allowed. Of course on the way that the people follow some will be left out, some stay in the middle for a long time but usually the people are moving forward.

 

This is an essential discussion and both sides have a right and even an obligation to protect their position and act accordingly. But, unhappily, we are all human beings and sometimes the arguments fall into personal sphere and it is already a violation of Jewish 'code of honor' (It is also true that using such techniques rarely leads to success - people usually prefer to stay with the one who is becoming a victim of the 'unessential reasons').

 

Another important moment is attracting the people to the communities or, speaking more generally, to Judaism - it cannot happen through defying the G-d's law. As an example - one of the members of one of the Moscow communities has organized a project where young Jewish men and women travel to Europe together - they go to the beaches, discos and have interesting Jewish excursions. Of course the secular guys and girls can do that even without our help but if we help they think this is Judaism, that our religious laws allow that and this is a profanation that can not be justified by any high objectives: speaking of bringing young men and women closer to Judaism while placing them at the beaches and discos is completely unacceptable (as the main Holy Torah principles are being contaminated).

 

You should just bring a person to the community for Shabbat and if it is celebrated well (kosher and in high spirits), if the words of Torah are said at the table and the traditional songs are heard then even the Jews who are very far from tradition become interested in what's going on (I have checked that.

 

There are also such methods of attracting the people to the community as a free distribution of something - for example, juice, Matzos or Mezuzah. From one point of view such distributions are a good thing to do if they allow the poor people to receive those things. But when then the people come who have normal income that looks at least strange. In our community we know those who need help and, to my mind, such practice is more effective than 'charity without borders'.