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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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My irrational, possibly problematic obsession with an $85 yarmulke
Growing up, we had a rule of thumb about yarmulkes: the closer yours was to your forehead, the more strictly religious you were. The frum bochurim placed theirs practically on their noses; the boys from Conservative families bobby-pinned their kippahs on the back of their heads, like climbers gripping a rockface. The cool kids, of course, stuffed theirs in their pockets.
The Jewish skullcap, in other words, was a signifier of much more than the religious precept it embodied. Over the years not only a yarmulke’s positioning but also its style, size and material have come to place its wearer somewhere on a continuum of Jewish identity. Trends in yarmulke wearing, then, may tell us a story about where Judaism is — forgive me — headed.
So what kind of Jew wears an $85 yarmulke, and what kind of Judaism demands it? These questions gnawed at me when I first learned about Rubenstein Paris, a new kippah couturier whose ads found me on Instagram. Available in a range of expensive-looking solid colors (copper, cream, sapphire) and fabrics (velvet, corduroy, even horsehair), these kippahs are here to replace your tattered souvenirs.
“Everybody’s just walking around with their kippot from — I don’t know, Mendel and Rachel’s wedding, 2019,” Jonathan Hirsch, Rubenstein’s German-Israeli founder, told me recently. “I was like, ‘It’s such a sacred item, you know? Why isn’t there any beautiful kippah, that you can really acknowledge for what it is?’”
He’s onto something. Even as an image-conscious, Shabbat-observant millennial, I had largely neglected the yarmulke; when I wanted to look sharp, I ditched it. I was not completely out on Jew-caps, to be sure — like every other frat boy who thought Mac Miller was Moses, I went through a vintage snapback phase in college. But when I’ve had to clip up, I’ve made do with whatever I had lying around — usually something suede, dark, and folded more times than an origami fortune teller.
Hirsch offered to send a freebie, but at $85, accepting it felt compromising. The loaner we agreed to instead came in a branded drawstring bag, which was accompanied by a sleek black storage box. Though I’d secretly hoped for the horsehair model, the kippah Hirsch sent was more utilitarian: a ribbed velvet, golden brown, with the rise and structural integrity of one of those dome-houses you see in Architectural Digest. Velvet piping twisted around its circumference; its cloth inner lining depicted a globe and a shofar.
I put it on.
Skullcap semiotics
The story of the kippah begins in the Talmud, when 3rd-century sage Rav Huna proclaimed that he never walked more than four cubits without his head covered to symbolize that the divine presence was always above him. After rabbinic law codified the practice in the 1500s, the kippah evolved into a marker of Jewish cultural mores.
For example, 20 years ago, most Modern Orthodox boys wore black suede kippahs, but today, as people debate whether Modern Orthodoxy is dead, suede is disappearing, replaced by black velvet, the standard among Haredi Jews, and the kippah sruga — the crocheted yarmulke associated with the Israeli Religious Zionist movement. Pluralism out, orthodoxy in.
But it’s also a fraught moment to be displaying any marker of Jewish identity. Wearing a kippah in public makes you subject to a certain type of attention these days: the glare of being Jewish at a time when the Jewish state is embroiled in enormously unpopular and destructive wars. Hirsch, who is 29 and lives in Berlin, knows this firsthand — these days he doesn’t feel safe wearing a kippah in public.
And yet I suspect that growing Jewish isolation also puts the lie to our assimilation fantasies; it makes us more likely to wear the things that attach us to each other. Indeed, there is a renaissance in Judaica today driven by new designers and younger consumers finding joy in their heritage. The name Rubenstein is a play on Hirsch’s middle name, Reuven. But he also just thought it sounded cool.
All about the Benyamins
First ironically, then with some resignation, I found that the Rubenstein was the only kippah I wanted to wear — my fancy kippah became my everyday kippah. Putting it on was a daily treat — I was humored by the upgrade. I began picturing how gloomy and shallow life would be without it. I debated the unthinkable — ponying up to keep the loaner.
I was still conflicted about the idea of the object, which felt like a metaphor for the sticker-shock that accompanies Jewish life, especially Orthodox life, in the U.S. today. There’s the skyrocketing cost of real estate in Jewish neighborhoods, the eyewatering day school tuition, even the price of kosher meat and grape juice. Was it an $85 kippah, or a yeshiva-league Sorting Hat?
I put the questions to Hirsch. There are very few ritual objects, he pointed out, from the kiddush cup to candlesticks to one’s tallit, that we pride ourselves on buying cheap. Why should kippot be the exception? “You’re giving your humility a bigger meaning,” he said, “by the fact that you’re wearing this on your head.”
It was true — I felt more humble than ever before, and expected others to acknowledge my commitment and my sophistication. I can see you are a man of taste, they would say, presumably lowering a monocle. (I would nod, then dip my double-dark chocolate Milano cookie into a steaming teacup.)
It was true my designer yarmulke was not the conversation starter I’d anticipated. Only one person complimented me on it unprompted — that singular infallible judge of quality, my mother. Everyone else, I’m certain, was stealing covetous glances. But they didn’t need to praise, ask about, or even notice my beloved yarmulke, which I’m sure I’ll return soon. The premium fabrics, the shofar in the lining and the devotion it all symbolized were between me and Hashem.
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How Iran is outsourcing terror plots against Jews
The prosecution of an Iraqi national in connection with thwarted alleged terror plots in the U.S. and Europe has put the behind-the-scenes role of Iran in the spotlight — part of what security experts say is a growing and hard-to-trace threat.
Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood Al-Saadi, a 32-year-old Iraqi national accused of ties to an Iran-backed militia, pleaded not guilty in Manhattan federal court this week to charges linking him to a series of attacks and alleged terror plots targeting American interests and Jewish communities in Europe and the United States.
Prosecutors allege Al-Saadi was connected to attacks, including the stabbing of two Jewish men in London’s heavily Jewish Golders Green neighborhood and an arson attack on a synagogue in North Macedonia. They also accuse him of attempting to recruit individuals online to firebomb synagogues in New York, Los Angeles and Scottsdale, Arizona.
He also reportedly planned to attack Ivanka Trump, who is both the president’s daughter and an Orthodox Jew — making her a “double target,” in the words of Oren Segal, vice president at the Center on Extremism at the Anti-Defamation League.
Iranian attacks on Jewish and Israeli institutions abroad are not new. Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran and its proxies have targeted diplomats, Jews, Israelis, political dissidents and others perceived as aligned with the West.
Matthew Levitt, director of the Counterterrorism and Intelligence Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, maintains a detailed database of such attacks. He told the Forward that since the current war began, such plots have significantly increased.
The Al-Saadi case is a prime example of what Levitt calls Iran’s “gig economy” model of terrorism. Rather than dispatching trained operatives directly from Iran, Iranian-linked actors and proxy groups are recruiting individuals online who live in the country they wish to target. Some are not even aware they are attacking on behalf of Iran or its proxies.
In court filings, prosecutors allege that Al-Saadi, who prosecutors link to the terror organization Kata’ib Hezbollah and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, sent maps and photographs of a prominent Manhattan synagogue and other Jewish institutions to an undercover agent he was attempting to recruit to firebomb them. He allegedly offered the agent $10,000 in cryptocurrency in exchange for carrying out the plot, and discussed whether the recruit should “set the place on fire” or use an improvised explosive device.
Iranian-linked operatives, who are either part of Iran’s security apparatus or within its network of terror proxies, reach out to potential recruits on encrypted platforms like Telegram.
According to Levitt, the operatives are ordered by “very senior” elements of the Iranian regime to find recruits. “It stretches the limits of credulity to think that plots like this in the United States could be done without very senior top-down instruction,” Levitt said. “These are not rogue actors.”
Those they manage to recruit online are often financially motivated, agreeing to carry out attacks like vandalism, surveillance, or assaults in exchange for cryptocurrency payments. Others appear driven by ideology or online radicalization. Over the years, Iran’s recruits have included teenagers as young as 13.
“These are inexpensive plots,” said Levitt. “It requires just a few people to sit at a computer and try to recruit people and direct people.”
For Iran, this method is particularly strategic amid wartime. “Iran can’t go toe to toe with the U.S. or Israeli militaries, but it can engage in these asymmetric plots to show that they can still reach out and touch us to increase the cost of continuing to prosecute the war and to make people feel afraid,” said Levitt.
By relying on online recruits and loosely connected operatives, Levitt says Iranian-linked actors can obscure their involvement and maintain reasonable deniability. The calculation, he explained, is that authorities will be satisfied with arresting and prosecuting the individual carrying out the attack, rather than blaming Iran. This allows Iran to limit the risk of direct military escalation with the United States while continuing to conduct operations against it.
The Online Battlefield
According to Segal, Iranian influence increasingly permeates online.
“The threat to Jewish communities right now is multidimensional — Iranian-linked plots, cyberattacks, online propaganda,” he said. “They’re all converging at once, making it one of the more complex threat environments for the Jewish community in a long time.”
For years, Iranian state media outlets such as Press TV have targeted Western audiences with antisemitic content, including Holocaust denial, claims that Zionists control world events and other extremist narratives. A 2023 report by the ADL and the Center for Countering Digital Hate found that Press TV receives roughly one million monthly visits, with more than half of its traffic coming from Western countries.
Segal said Iranian-linked propaganda networks also increasingly operate in online spaces that overlap with broader activist communities. One such example is Resistance News Network, a Telegram channel with over 150,000 subscribers frequented by members of pro-Palestinian activist groups like Students for Justice in Palestine. The channel is filled with official Hamas, Hezbollah, and Houthi propaganda that is then reshared by American activists on mainstream social media accounts.
“What that does is enable the exchange of ideas, of propaganda, and of narrative that we then see show up at actual events on the ground,” he said.
Segal argues that exposure to such propaganda can make recruitment efforts easier.
“Our concerns are not only from somebody who may have been placed here or somewhere in Europe,” said Segal, “but from individuals who are animated by the propaganda they ingest every single day.”
Levitt agreed, stating that rising antisemitic and anti-Israel sentiment since the outbreak of the Gaza war has created a larger pool of individuals who may view attacks on Jewish or Zionist targets as justified.
“A lot of people are going to be much more willing to do something … especially if it’s not actually killing someone, but fire bombing something and/or targeting property that has symbolic value,” he said.
But the threat is not limited to physical violence.
Since the war began, Segal said Iranian-linked cyberattacks have “gone into overdrive.”
He says Jewish organizations and media outlets have faced hacking attempts on their websites, while Jewish individuals have had their identities stolen, with personal information being exposed online in mass doxxing campaigns.
Many such attacks are conducted by Iranian hacking collectives. One of the most notorious among them is Iranian hacker group Handala Hackers, which has conducted several attacks against Jews, Israelis and Americans. The FBI reported that in March, the group claimed to have stolen 851 gigabytes of confidential data from Sanzer Hasidic Jewish community members, which the hackers described as “documents of financial cooperation, witchcraft ceremonies, and secret correspondences with Netanyahu …” They added, “We warn the leaders and members of the Sanzer Hasidic community: No place is safe for you. Betrayal of the oppressed leads to nothing but disgrace and shame. Expect more documents to be revealed.”
Despite the growing number of plots, experts say the relative lack of successful attacks inside the United States reflects the effectiveness of American counterterrorism efforts.
Still, Jewish communities across the United States are investing heavily in security upgrades. Asher Lopatin, director of community relations at the Jewish Federation of Greater Ann Arbor, said synagogues in Michigan have increased security following a March attack on Temple Israel in West Bloomfield by a Hezbollah-linked man. Communities are installing bollards, expanding surveillance systems, and hiring additional guards.
“People are definitely doubling up on security,” Lopatin said. “Everyone is traumatized.”
Levitt says that even after the war concludes, he does not expect the plots targeting American interests and Jews to cease.
“I do not think that when the war ends, these necessarily stop,” Levitt said. “The pace may change, but Iran has a distinct interest in exacting revenge for all the damage that was done to it.”
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They helped elect Los Angeles’ first Black mayor; but to him, they were just Bob and Shirley
When Joshua Silverstein, a Black Jewish theater artist, was growing up in Los Angeles, he recalls one Ashkenazi couple, to whom he refers as Bob and Shirley, that had a particularly profound effect on him.
Bob and Shirley were the type of people who greeted everyone they saw on the street; Silverstein grew up going to their get-togethers that were welcome to everyone in the neighborhood. They loved music and literature, they were “way into Theodore Bikel,” and they had a plethora of Billie Holiday records.
Bob and Shirley were also instrumental in the fight to elect Los Angeles’ first Black mayor, Thomas Bradley.
“LA’s Bob and Shirley,” which Silverstein wrote and is performing as part of a new theater compilation of Jewish stories, begins in 1946 when the couple moved to the west coast from New Jersey. Bob was a carpenter — he had wanted to be a professor, but his Jewish background made it challenging to get hired at a university. Instead, he constructed buildings across Los Angeles, only to find out that the same apartments he worked on didn’t allow Jews or other minorities to live there.
The couple ended up near Central Avenue, an epicenter of African-American culture where they rubbed shoulders with legendary Black performers and intellectuals — Duke Ellington, Langston Hughes and W.E.B Dubois. The neighborhood was in danger, though; real estate agents were pressuring residents to leave so their properties could be refurbished and sold to white homeowners.
Together, Bob and Shirley co founded the Alta Loma Democratic Club, where Thomas Bradley began to show up to meetings. At the time, he was a lieutenant in the police department who, as a Black man, experienced bigotry of his own. Bradley had a vision to preserve the neighborhood, and inspired by Bradley’s vision and spirit, Bob and Shirley encouraged Bradley to run for city council.
“At first he said no,” Silverstein said. But Bob told Bradley, “If you do it, we will get you elected.”
If it hadn’t been for the Alta Loma Democratic Club, “Tom Bradley would not have then gone on to be mayor,” Silverstein said. “LA being this place where we feel like it’s diverse took a lot of work, and this is because of what Tom Bradley did.” His 20-year term was the longest in Los Angeles’ history.
Silverstein’s piece is just one of the many stories told in L’Chaim America, a commemoration of the United States’ 250th anniversary produced by The Braid, a Los Angeles theater company with the mission of telling Jewish stories.
“Our show is really a celebration of the diversity that makes up what America is. It is this beautiful love letter to the hope for the future,” Silverstein told me.
The Braid is a story-telling theater, and L’Chaim America is a minimalist production. Armed only with binders and their words, performers share stories commissioned by writers or solicited from community members: Author Emily Bowen Cohen explores her dual Jewish and Native American identities, Solomon Dueñas, an El Salvadoran immigrant, reconnects with his Jewish roots. Silverstein is the only writer performing his own work.
Silverstein told me his mission was twofold: He hoped to share an untold piece of Los Angeles’ history and, having Black and Jewish identities himself, to shed light on the historic Black-Jewish alliance.
“What people don’t hear often is how there were Ashkenazi Jews who were radical in their support of Blackness and other marginalized voices,” he said.
Until he started researching his piece, Silverstein never fully understood the role Bob and Shirley played in Los Angeles’ history. For him, and for members of the audience who knew and loved people like Bob and Shirley, Silverstein’s piece was a way of appreciating what they managed to achieve.
“The coalition that came together to get him elected to mayor was a coalition of Jewish people,” Silverstein said. “This wasn’t about religion. It wasn’t about culture. It wasn’t about ethnicity. It was about human beings recognizing that this is a city they love and to come together to change it for the good.”
Silverstein believes his work is significant in how “it recognizes the ugly,” but does not shy away from it in order to reveal a more realistic, yet more inspiring, picture of America. This America requires looking “at the areas that have been challenging — at the areas that have been hard and terrible — and not closing our eyes to it, but promising to do better.”
“L’Chaim America” is being performed in theaters in and across Los Angeles through June 17. On June 7, the Skirball Cultural Center will host a special production of the performance as part of a community-wide celebration in partnership with other Jewish organizations, including the Jewish Federation of Los Angeles and the Jews of Color Initiative. Additional performances will be held in Irvine on June 28 and in New York City on July 12.
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