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Synagogues are joining the ‘effective altruism’ movement. Will the Sam Bankman-Fried scandal stop them?
(JTA) — A few years ago, Adam Azari was frustrated over how little he could do to alleviate suffering in the world with his modest income as a writer and caretaker for people with disabilities.
He kept thinking about a set of statistics and ideas he had encountered during his graduate studies in philosophy. For example, he remembered reading that for the price of training a guide dog for the blind in the United States, one could prevent hundreds of cases of blindness in the developing world.
This hyper-rational way of thinking about doing good was called effective altruism, and it was growing into a movement, known as E.A. for short. Some proponents were even opting to pursue lucrative careers in finance and tech that they otherwise might not have chosen so they would have more money to give away.
Azari, meanwhile, had become a believer who was stuck on the sidelines. Then, one day, he had what he calls a “personal eureka moment.” Azari would return to his roots as the son of a Reform rabbi in Tel Aviv and spread the word of E.A. across the Jewish denomination and among its millions of followers.
“It suddenly hit me that the Reform movement has this crazy untapped potential to save thousands and thousands of lives by simply informing Jews about effective giving,” he recalled.
He badgered his father, Rabbi Meir Azari, and, for a moment, thought of becoming a rabbi himself. But he abandoned the idea and focused on pitching E.A. to the Reform movement’s international arm, the World Union for Progressive Judaism. Azari found an ally in WUPJ’s president, Rabbi Sergio Bergman, and the organization soon decided to sponsor his efforts, paying him a salary for his work.
Over the past year, Azari’s Jewish Effective Giving Initiative has presented to about 100 rabbis and secured pledges from 37 Reform congregations to donate at least $3,000 to charities rated as the most impactful by E.A. advocates and which aid poor people in the developing world. Per E.A. calculations, it costs $3,000 to $5,000 to save a single life.
“Progressive Judaism inspires us to carry out tikkun olam, our concrete action to make the world better and repair its injustices,” Bergman said. “With this call we not only do what the heart dictates in values, but also do it effectively to be efficient and responsible for saving a life.”
This charitable philosophy appears to be gaining traction in the Jewish world just as one of the figures most associated with it, who happens to be Jewish, has become engulfed in scandal.
Sam Bankman-Fried built a cryptocurrency empire worth billions, amassing a fortune he pledged to give away to causes such as artificial intelligence, combatting biohazards and climate change, all selected on criteria developed by the proponents of effective altruism.
A few weeks ago, Bankman-Fried’s fortune evaporated amid suspicions of financial misconduct and revelations of improper oversight at his company, FTX, a cryptocurrency exchange that was worth as much as $32 billion before a run of withdrawals ultimately left it illiquid. The situation has drawn comparisons to the implosion of Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, and authorities investigating the situation have said Bankman-Fried could face criminal penalties over his role.
In the wake of FTX’s collapse, Bankman-Fried has suggested that his embrace of E.A. was insincere, a tactic to bolster his reputation.
But Azari and the organizer of another initiative, a growing reading and discussion group called Effective Altruism for Jews, are undaunted and don’t believe the scandal should taint the underlying principles of the movement.
“Whether you call it E.A. or just directly donating to global health and development, it doesn’t matter,” Azari said. “The basic idea is to support these wonderful charities, and I don’t think the FTX scandal changes any of that. Malaria nets, vitamin A supplements and vaccine distribution are still super cost-effective, evidence-based ways of helping others.”
Azari added that he has had several meetings with rabbis since the news about Bankman-Fried broke and that no one has asked him about it.
“I don’t think people are making the connection,” he said. “And to me, there is no connection between us and FTX.”
When talking to rabbis about why E.A. would make a good fit with their congregation’s charitable mission, Azari cites the Jewish value of tikkun olam, a mandate to “repair the world” often used to implore people to care for others. He explains that donating to charities with a proven track record is a concrete way to fulfill a Jewish responsibility.
That kind of thinking proved attractive to Steven Pinker, the prominent Harvard psychologist, who has endorsed Azari’s initiative. In a recorded discussion with Azari and others last year, Pinker recalled his Reform upbringing, which included Hebrew school, summer camp and synagogue services.
“The thing I remember most is how much of my so-called religious education was like a university course in moral philosophy,” Pinker said. “We chewed over moral dilemmas.”
As an adult, Pinker returned to Jewish teachings on charity and, in particular, those of the medieval philosopher Maimonides, examining these ideas through the lens of E.A. He began to wonder about the implications of Maimonides’ focus on evaluating charity based on the motives of the donor. That focus, he concluded, doesn’t always lead to the best outcomes for the beneficiary.
“What ultimately ought to count in tzedakah, in charity, is, are you making people better off?” he said.
Also on the panel with Azari and Pinker was the man credited with authoring the foundational texts upon which E.A. is built. Peter Singer, who is also Jewish and whose grandfather died in the Holocaust, teaches bioethics at Princeton. Starting in the 1970s, Singer wrote a series of books in which he argues for a utilitarian approach to ethics, namely, that we should forgo luxuries and spend our money to save lives. The extremes to which he has taken his thinking include suggesting that parents of newborn babies with severe disabilities be permitted to kill them.
From Bankman-Fried to Singer, the list of Jews who have either promoted E.A. or lead its institutions is long. With their estimated fortune of $11.3 billion, Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and his wife Cari Tuna have eclipsed Bankman-Fried as the wealthiest Jews in the field. There’s also popular philosopher Sam Harris and New York Times columnist Ezra Klein, who have each dedicated episodes of their podcast to the topic.
The website LessWrong, which defines itself as “a community blog devoted to refining the art of rationality,” is seen as an important early influence; it was founded by Eliezer Yudkowsky, an artificial intelligence researcher who grew up in a Modern Orthodox household but does not identify religiously as a Jew anymore. Two other Jews, Holden Karnofsky and Elie Hassenfeld, left the hedge fund world to establish GiveWell, a group whose research is considered the premier authority on which charities are deserving of E.A. donations.
The prevalence of Jews in the movement caught the attention of E.A. enthusiast Ben Schifman, an environmental lawyer for the federal government in Washington, D.C. About two years ago, Schifman proposed creating a group for like-minded individuals in hope of helping grow the movement. In an online post, he laid out the history of Jewish involvement and wrote a brief introduction to the topic of Judaism and charity.
Today, Schifmam runs a group called Effective Altruism for Jews, whose main program is an eight-week fellowship involving a reading and discussion group with designated facilitators. Schifman said about 70 people spread across 10 cohorts are currently participating. There’s also a Shabbat dinner program to bring people together for informal meetings with funding available for hosts.
Participants discuss how ideas that are popular in E.A. might relate to Jewish traditions and concepts, and also brainstorm ways to popularize the movement in the wider Jewish community, according to Schifman.
“There’s a lot of low-hanging fruit with regards to the Jewish community and sharing some of the ideas of Effective Altruism, like through giving circles at synagogues or, during the holidays, offering charities that are effective,” Schifman said in an interview that took place before the Bankman-Fried scandal broke.
Asked to discuss the mood in the community following the collapse of Bankman-Fried’s company and an affiliated charity, FTX Future Fund, Schifman provided a brief statement expressing continued confidence in his project.
He said, “While we’re shocked by the news and our hearts go out to all those affected, as an organization EA for Jews isn’t funded by FTX Future Fund or otherwise connected to FTX. We don’t expect our work will be impacted.”
Even if Schifman and Azari are right that their movement is robust enough to withstand the downfall of a leading evangelist, a debate remains about what impact E.A. can or should have on philanthropy itself.
Andres Spokoiny, president and CEO of the Jewish Funders Network, wrote about the question with skepticism in an article published more than two years ago. He argued against “uncritically importing the values and assumptions” of effective altruists, whose emphasis on the “cold light of reason” struck him as detached from human nature.
In a recent interview, Spokoiny echoed similar concerns, noting that applying pure rationality to all charitable giving would mean the end of cherished programs such as PJ Library, which supplies children’s books for free to Jewish families, that may not directly save lives but do contribute to a community’s culture and sense of identity.
He also worries that too strong a focus on evidence of impact would steer money away from new ideas.
“Risky, creative ideas don’t tend to emerge from rational needs assessments,” he said. “It requires a transformative vision that goes beyond that.”
But Spokoiny also sounded more open to E.A. and said that as long as it does not try to replace traditional modes of philanthropy, it could be a useful tool of analysis for donors.
“If donors want to apply some of E.A. principles to their work, I’d say that is a good idea,” he said. “I am still waiting to see if this will be a fad or buzzword or something that will be incorporated into the practice of philanthropy.”
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Long Island school district pays $125K to settle lawsuit over erased pro-Palestinian student art
(JTA) — A Long Island school district agreed to pay a $125,000 settlement to a former student whose pro-Palestinian artwork was painted over in a high school parking lot.
The lawsuit stemmed from a September 2024 incident at Half Hollow Hills High School West, which permitted seniors to decorate their campus parking spots. A Muslim-American student, who was a senior at the time, painted a watermelon featuring a keffiyeh pattern alongside her name in Arabic and the phrase “Peace be upon you” on her space.
At the time, protests against the war in Gaza were at a peak, and the watermelon and keffiyeh, the traditional Palestinian headscarf, are both widely used symbols of Palestinian solidarity. The school painted over the artwork after it drew outcry from some Jewish parents in the district, determining that it had run afoul of the district’s rules barring political designs.
“For the school district, neutrality is the single most important issue when it comes to limiting speech,” the Half Hollow Hills School District’s attorney, Jacob Feldman, said at a school board meeting at the time, according to a contemporaneous Newsday report.
The student, who has not been identified publicly, testified at that meeting last year. “I was told by my principal that the watermelon was being interpreted as antisemitic by anonymous adults,” she said, according to the Newsday footage. “I feel deeply offended that the word antisemitic was used to describe a piece of my artwork.”
In March 2025, the New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations filed a lawsuit on behalf of the student alongside Stoll, Glickman & Bellina LLP, alleging that the district had violated her free speech rights and caused her emotional distress.
“The whitewash of Plaintiff’s pro-Palestinian speech was not to prevent substantial disruption of any school activity or threatened harm to the rights of others, as Half Hollow permitted and even amplified speech on other equally, even more, controversial issues,” the lawsuit stated, according to the Associated Press.
In court filings, Steven Stern, an attorney appointed by the district’s insurance provider, wrote that the watermelon image “symbolized anti-Semitic hate speech,” arguing that the district should be able to dictate art allowed in the parking lot.
“Any student, teacher, or member of the public could have driven into the parking lot and reasonably understood the school was endorsing a political message — or worse, anti-Semitic hate speech — by allowing it,” Stern wrote, according to Newsday.
The settlement, which was approved by the Half Hollow Hills school board at a meeting on April 21, will be paid by the district’s insurance carrier, according to Superintendent John O’Farrell.
In a statement obtained by Newsday, O’Farrell said that students were no longer allowed to paint their parking spaces “following the incident and the disruption it caused.”
The lawsuit was not the first time that the school district had courted controversy over Israel-related issues. Last year, the district drew scrutiny after a study guide distributed to some 10th graders described Zionism as “an example of extreme nationalism,” prompting condemnation from Rep. Elise Stefanik.
Christina John, a staff attorney for the New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which filed the lawsuit alongside Stoll, Glickman & Bellina LLP, welcomed the outcome in a statement.
“This settlement sends a clear message that viewpoint discrimination and the censorship of Palestinian expression cannot be justified under the guise of neutrality,” John said. “No student should be interrogated, silenced, or punished for peacefully expressing their identity or solidarity with oppressed people.”
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Assad Regime Remnants on the Ground in Lebanon Helping Hezbollah
Hezbollah fighters walk near a military tank in Western Qalamoun, Syria, Aug. 23, 2017. Photo: REUTERS/Omar Sanadiki
Senior officers from the former Assad regime in Syria are currently in neighboring Lebanon helping the terrorist group Hezbollah, raising tensions between Damascus and Beirut as the two governments seek to deepen their fragile cooperation.
The extensive coordination between Iran-backed Hezbollah and remnants of Assad’s security apparatus, which was also supported by the Iranian regime until its fall, has fueled fears of an emerging dynamic that could undermine Syria’s new government and deepen regional instability.
Last week, Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam met with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa in Damascus as the two countries work to expand bilateral cooperation and engagement, with talks centered in part on former Syrian regime figures in Lebanon amid fears of emerging forces that could destabilize the new government.
Following the fall of long-time Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in December 2024, many officials in his regime are believed to have fled to or sought refuge in Lebanon, a development that has intensified diplomatic friction and security tensions between Damascus and Beirut.
Hundreds of pro-Assad military and intelligence officers and other security officials had reportedly entered the country through illegal border crossings in the Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon and via northern border regions.
In an interview with Saudi broadcaster Al Arabiya, Salam dismissed claims that most senior Assad-era officials have sought refuge in the country, while reaffirming the government’s commitment to help preserve Syria’s security interests.
“Most are in Russia and other countries, with just a small number still on Lebanese soil. But the government will work to ensure Beirut is not used as a base to undermine Damascus or to facilitate any political or military activity against it,” the Lebanese leader said.
During last week’s talks, Lebanese and Syrian officials agreed that any extradition of anti-regime forces would proceed under a joint legal framework to be coordinated through the justice and interior ministries in both countries.
The Syrian government has urged Lebanese authorities to arrest and extradite former Assad-era officers amid fears they are joining forces with Hezbollah and allied Alawite networks, where they have reportedly found refuge as part of a renewed effort to destabilize the country.
“We will not allow anyone on Lebanese soil to act against the Syrian government,” a Lebanese security source told Al Arabiya. “Lebanon will never serve as a platform for remnants of the former regime or militias operating against Arab states.”
Last year, al-Sharaa became Damascus’s president after leading the rebel campaign that ousted Assad, whose Iran-backed rule had strained ties with the Arab world during the nearly 14-year Syrian war, with an offensive spearheaded by al-Sharaa’s Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group, a former al-Qaeda affiliate.
After years of intervening in Syria’s civil war to support Assad, the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah significantly expanded its political and military influence across the country as Iran’s chief proxy force.
However, the fall of Assad’s regime cut off Hezbollah’s key overland supply corridor through Syria, dealing a major setback to Iran’s “Axis of Resistance” and disrupting one of the group’s most vital strategic lifelines.
According to intelligence assessments, Assad regime supporters who fled into Lebanon have not simply gone into exile but are believed to have formed an organized network described by Syrian officials as the “operational brain” of Assad’s army on Lebanese territory, according to Arab and Israeli reports.
More than 200 former officers and senior figures from Assad’s military and intelligence apparatus have reportedly taken refuge in Hezbollah strongholds and heavily Alawite areas in northern Lebanon, where, Syrian officials warn, they are working to preserve the military infrastructure and strategic assets of the Iran-backed Shiite axis.
Arab media networks report that Hezbollah has provided former regime officers with protection and safe houses in exchange for intelligence expertise and operational support, aimed at helping establish armed cells and Alawite militias inside Lebanon.
Recently, Syrian authorities identified a covert Hezbollah-linked network allegedly plotting attacks against senior figures in the new Syrian government, with Damascus suspecting exiled Assad-era officers based in Lebanon are playing a central role in efforts to undermine the country’s stability.
Last week, Syria stopped a Hezbollah terrorist cell that was plotting to assassinate senior government officials, according to the Syrian Interior Ministry. With raids at multiple locations, Syrian security forces made 11 arrests and seized a cache of weaponry.
In April, the same Interior Ministry announced five arrests in another assassination attempt plotted by Hezbollah. The terrorists targeted Rabbi Michael Khoury in Damascus, with authorities identifying a woman who attempted to plant an explosive outside his home. The suspects later confessed to authorities they had drones supplied by Hezbollah they intended to use in an attack.
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1912 Yiddish operetta tackles class conflict and women’s rights
One of the smash hits of New York’s thriving Yiddish theater scene in the early 20th century grappled with socio-political issues that still resonate 100-plus years later. It’s coming back for a very limited run and you don’t have to speak Yiddish to enjoy it.
The production — a concert of songs from the 1912 Yiddish operetta Khantshe in Amerike — will be performed twice this month, first at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York and then at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in Manhattan.
The protagonist, Khantshe, is a young working-class woman who dresses as a man, working as a chauffeur for a nouveau-riche immigrant family. Khantshe flirts with and romances the women she works for — mother and daughter alike. The operetta grapples with class conflict, women’s rights, gender fluidity and cars.
The performances, made possible by material reconstructed from archival documents, will feature students from Bard accompanied by piano. There will be no dialogue; instead the singers will deliver brief plot summaries in English before each song. A translation of the lyrics will be included in a booklet for the audience, who will also be able to follow along watching English supertitles.
The operetta first opened on Dec. 31, 1912 at Sarah Adler’s Novelty Theatre in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and was a runaway hit. It was mounted in Warsaw just six months after the New York premiere.
“This is one of the shows that were in dialogue with all of the political and social issues that people were talking about,” said Alex Weiser, director of public programs at YIVO and a member of the trio that reconstructed the performance materials. “They were made because the masses needed the cultural material in their language that spoke to the specificity of their milieu.”
Khantshe in Amerike was also a turning point in the career of both its composer, Joseph Rumshinsky, and its star, Bessie Thomashefsky. The previous year she had left her renowned husband Boris Thomashefsky, the titan of the Yiddish stage, known as a compulsive philanderer.
At the height of their influence, the Thomashefskys owned theaters in and out of New York, published their own magazine, The Yiddish Stage and wrote columns in the popular Yiddish newspapers of the day. When Boris Thomashefsky died in 1939, some 30,000 people lined the streets of the Lower East Side for his funeral.
“This show was a star vehicle for Bessie when she first left Boris,” notes Weiser. “They were a power couple and this was a really important turning point in her career. She left him, she went out on her own and there was a big question: ‘Is this it for her?’”
The angry, wily, rebellious and militantly feminist character that Bessie Thomashefsky portrayed became the prototype for a series of heroines she played going forward. They were tough, brassy, usually working-class fighters, endowed with chutzpah.
Bessie Thomashefsky also produced the operetta.
The musical was a watershed moment for Rumshinsky, as well. He went on to dominate the American Yiddish musical for the rest of the decade. It marked the first time that “American rhythm” had been incorporated in Yiddish music, a euphemism for acknowledging the influence of African-American music on the genre.
“Nothing had ever happened like that in Yiddish theater before,” said Ronald Robboy, who was part of the team that reconstructed the performance material. “Yiddish theater then quickly started incorporating elements of Tin Pan Alley. It also became interestingly more self-consciously Jewish, as smarter and better educated composers learned how to manipulate Jewish modal material, the scales that came from liturgical music and klezmer music. So the music was at once more American and at the same time more skillfully Jewish in its self-identity.”
Robboy’s connection to the material is a lengthy one. For five years he served as researcher for the Thomashefsky Project, an homage to the legacy of Boris and Bessie Thomashefsky instigated by their grandson, the late conductor Michael Tilson Thomas. The culmination of the project occurred in April 2005 with the premiere of The Thomashefskys: Music and Memories of a Life in the Yiddish Theater at Carnegie Hall. A recording of a subsequent performance in Miami Beach aired on the PBS series Great Performances in 2012.
Robboy worked with Weiser and Max Friedman, a law student in Memphis, to turn a number of archival documents into the printed matter needed to do the Khantshe performance. In 2023 the team reconstructed Rumshinsky’s Shir-hashirim operetta.
The documents for Khantshe came from YIVO and the American Jewish Historical Society, among other sources. They included a copy of the libretto that had been published as a bootleg in Warsaw.
Friedman got obsessed with Yiddish while studying for a master’s degree in music composition at Brandeis. For his master’s thesis he set to music sound recordings of Yiddish poets H. Leivick, Yankev Glatshteyn, Kadia Molodovsky, and Rokhl H. Korn reading their own work.
The last musical number in Khantshe in Amerike has the protagonist singing about herself. Soon the song Khantshe was played whenever Bessie Thomashefsky walked into restaurants and social gatherings. Tilson Thomas often played it as she made her triumphant entrance into the family living room.
Khantshe in Amerike will be performed on Thursday, May 14, in the Bitó Conservatory Building at Bard College from 7 – 8:30 p.m.
It will also be performed at YIVO on Monday May 18, at 7 p.m., as part of Carnegie Hall’s United in Sound: America at 250 festival. Admission is $15, $10 for YIVO members and students. Registration is required for the free livestream on Zoom.
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