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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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For the Jews of Venice, an uneasy history of scapegoating and grudging tolerance
The First Ghetto: Venice and the Origins of Modern Antisemitism
By Alexander Lee
Basic Books, 432 pages, $34
When one thinks of Venice and the Jews, the first figure that probably comes to mind is Shylock, literary history’s famous Jewish villain, a moneylender who demands a “pound of flesh” from the titular character in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice.
In Alexander Lee’s new book, The First Ghetto: Venice and the Origins of Modern Antisemitism, Shylock is mentioned just twice, both times in the introduction, but his ghost hovers over the pages of the book. Much of Lee’s historical account of Jewish life in Venice is devoted to Jewish moneylenders, and the key role they played in keeping Venice’s economy afloat.
The First Ghetto centers on the uneasy and guarded relationship that the Venetian government and its Christian people — first as the Venetian Republic and later as part of the Italian nation — always had with its Jewish population. According to Lee’s account, Venice didn’t want the Jews, but it needed them, largely for their ability to provide credit.
As he tracks the rise and fall of the Venetian Ghetto across more than six centuries, from Venice’s first Jewish visitor in 1315 through the fateful deportation of its Jewish citizens in the Holocaust, Lee’s focus is so narrowly limited to the fluctuations of finance that he very nearly makes the word “Jew” synonymous with “moneylender” or “pawnbroker.”
That’s a pity, because readers can be left with the impression that the primary role Jews played in the life of the city nicknamed “La Serenissima” — the most serene place — was financial.
“More than once, the Ghetto’s Jews helped keep the Venetian economy from collapse,” writes Lee, an Italian Renaissance scholar at the University of Warwick who has previously published four books, including Machiavelli: His Life and Times. “They founded no fewer than eight glittering synagogues, each a masterpiece of its kind, founded innumerable charities, and administered their own affairs with democratic probity.”
There is, of course, validity to the argument that the Venetian brand of capitalism that emerged in the late Middle Ages and sustained the city through the 20th century was reliant on Jewish labor. Since the mid-12th century, the Catholic Church had prohibited usury, loans offered with interest. But this rule only applied to Christians lending to Christians. They could, however, take out interest-bearing loans from Jewish moneylenders, who were permitted to lend and borrow without, apparently, incurring sin.
The precarious arrangement proved, over time, to be mutually beneficial for the Venetians and the Jews. As long as they were supporting the city’s financial needs, Jews were tolerated — even as they were isolated, overtaxed and frequently attacked. When the Venetians had less of a need for Jewish resources, cruelty against them spiked. They were blamed for most of the city’s woes, including the Black Death, the loss of wars, and various forms of spiritual corruption.
Even if Jews’ contributions were valued by some, the majority of Venice’s Christians “still harbored a horror of moneylending in Venice itself — and almost all regarded Jews with unconcealed hostility,” Lee writes. To balance this necessity against their antipathy, Jews were permitted to live in Venice, as long as they remained apart. Thus the Venice Ghetto was born.
Beginning in 1516, they were segregated to an island of their own on the dilapidated site of a former municipal cannon foundry, Ghetto Nuovo, surrounded by high walls and an iron gate. They were constrained in cramped conditions, and allowed to associate with Christian residents only for business purposes, in daytime. They were marked as outsiders wherever they traveled within the city by a yellow circular patch on their clothing, and an oddly shaped yellow hat.
“The Ghetto was simply the easiest way of allowing Jewish loans to keep flowing,” writes Lee, “while keeping the spiritual ‘risks’ [of associating with Jews] to a minimum.”
Although Jews had been segregated and harassed in other settings for centuries, Venice’s Ghetto was a precursor of the many Jewish ghettos that would later be created throughout Europe. The word ghetto, borrowed from Venice, later “shed its purely Jewish connotations,” Lee writes, and became “shorthand for vulnerability, poverty and powerlessness,” in the living conditions of any minority group.
The first 150 pages of The First Ghetto track the vicissitudes of the explotive financial partnership between Venice and its largely captive population of a couple thousand Jewish residents. The periods of time when Jewish life could be conducted with some sense of security and ease were offset by periods of blame, harassment, and threats of expulsion. But, as Lee argues, the story of Venice’s Jews is one of resilience and survival.
Shakespeare penned The Merchant of Venice between 1596 and 1598, in a period that Lee describes as the Ghetto’s “Golden Age, 1589-1630.” Yet precisely why the character of Shylock emerged in England in this period or how the play related to the true conditions of moneylending and commerce are unfortunately never discussed.
Culture and humanity are strikingly absent from Lee’s account of the history of the Venice Ghetto. Lee notes that the inhabitants of the Ghetto were “poets and scientists, musicians and philosophers; they put on plays and held festivals; and they transformed Venice into the greatest center for Hebrew printing in the world.”
But, apart from a detailed account of the genesis of the book trade, Lee offers little description of these poets and scientists or philosophers, nor does he provide much insight into the daily life experienced in the Venice Ghetto. I yearned for a more vivid sense of how the Ghetto’s people passed their time, what they ate, how they socialized or practiced religious observance — and how they responded to the discrimination they faced.
The book’s subtitle, Venice and the Origins of Modern Antisemitism, suggests that Lee might dive into the genesis of antisemitic tropes or ideas — why did Christian Venetians believe that Jews ate babies, for example? — but this kind of analysis isn’t provided. Instead, Lee seems to regard antisemitism as a given, a force of nature that merely fluctuates depending on the conditions of the time.
“By 1630,” writes Lee, “Venice was the best place in the world to be a Jew.” And, “Anyone could see that the Ghetto was indispensable to Venice.” The bright moment didn’t last long, however, as that same year, the city was hit by a plague that took about a third of its population. Because they were still relatively isolated, the Jewish community lost only about 15% of its residents, but the larger city’s “glory days were now numbered,” Lee writes. “There would be no recovery — only a gradual slide into irrelevance.”
In 1797, Napoleon Bonaparte marched into Venice and forced its leaders to abdicate, effectively ending the Venetian Republic, and declared all its residents equal. The walls of Venice’s Ghetto were finally torn down; its gates were carried to the town square, smashed to bits, and burned. A member of the national guard, Raffaele Vivante, jumped up and gave a speech. “Here you have toppled the terrible doors which held our Nation as if locked up in a prison,” he cried, and then, as Lee writes, “The dancing went on till dawn.”
In the 1930s and 40s, under Mussolini’s fascist reign, the Venetians’ long-simmering hatred of its Jews rose to a boil. As the Jewish community was still small and somewhat contained, in spite of early 20th-century integration, it was easy to identify and decimate. The emptying of the Ghetto, handled here in about ten pages, resulted in the removal of around 2,100 people in 1943 and 1944, of whom hundreds were murdered.
In the 21st century, while the waves of antisemitism have once again crested, the notion that to be Jewish is to be linked to moneylending, banking, and usury has, sadly, gained new currency. Although this is not the only issue Lee touches upon, I wondered while reading the book if it was truly useful to hammer home this connection once again.
As I read Lee’s history, waiting for a better sense of the dimensions of humanity in the Ghetto, a line from the Merchant of Venice kept popping into my mind: “If you prick us, do we not bleed?” I would have liked to have seen a slightly more sanguine touch on these pages.
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British Museum postpones a Jewish Culture Month lecture, citing ‘disruption’ concerns
(JTA) — The British Museum has canceled a lecture titled ‘‘Ancient Israel and Judah” that was scheduled to take place today on its premises.
In a statement on Wednesday, the museum said the decision was made because it was informed in recent days that “a significant proportion of registered attendees were individuals intending to deliberately disrupt the event.”
The event was supposed to be jointly led by members of the museum’s senior curatorial team alongside organizers from Jewish Culture Month, with the lecture presented by Dr. Paul Collins, the museum’s Keeper of the Department of the Middle East.
Jewish Culture Month is the first event of its kind in the United Kingdom, organized by the Board of Deputies of British Jews. The festivities opened on May 15 and run through June 16, and include more than 100 events celebrating Jewish heritage, creativity and culture across the U.K.
Major British institutions including the British Library, Tate Modern, Victoria and Albert Museum and the BBC are participating.
The British Museum said it was only postponing and not canceling the event, stating the decision was a joint one “made following conversations with organisers and security partners.” The museum added that the decision was made “to protect the event — not diminish it.”
British Museum Assistant Press Officer Lucy McDonald told JTA that the museum could not comment on “operational or security arrangements” and referred to the statement saying that the event would be rescheduled “to a later date when it can take place in an environment that properly safeguards both the audience experience and the integrity of the programme itself.”
The Board of Deputies of British Jews responded with a statement saying, “It is highly regrettable that individuals have sought to deliberately disrupt a Jewish Culture Month event celebrating Jewish cultural heritage at the British Museum.” A spokesperson for the Board told JTA they could not comment further.
At the launch earlier this month, Board of Deputies Acting President Adrian Cohen said the events were designed for Jewish and non-Jewish community members alike because “British Jewish culture is not something that exists in isolation.”
Board of Deputies Director of Culture, Education and Communities Liat Rosenthal added, “Jewish culture has never been something sealed behind glass. It is a living culture. An argumentative culture. A hospitable culture. A culture of memory and reinvention. Of stories carried across borders and generations, then remade anew.”
The museum’s postponement of the event is a blow to London’s Jewish community, which has weathered rising antisemitic incidents since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel.
Shimon Cohen, the campaign director for Shechita UK, an organization that advocates for the Jewish ritual of kosher animal slaughter, told JTA in a statement, “Why has our country descended into mob rule? Why are we signaling that intimidation, vitriolic abuse, and violence against Jews works?”
“The British Museum can ‘celebrate the contribution of our communities’ except the Jewish community,” said Cohen. “Instead, their message is clear: let them cower, be cancelled, and be exposed, through the cowardice of our passivity, to ever more hatred, and why? Simply because Jews don’t count!”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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In Miami, rekindling the Black-Jewish alliance that Clarence Jones insisted never died
The day before the March on Washington in 1963, a man who embodied much of what that civil rights action was all about left this world. The march went on, and changed history, in dedication to the life and work of W. E. B. Du Bois. During it, the NAACP’s Roy Wilkins told the crowd, of Du Bois, that “his was the voice that was calling to you to gather here today in this cause.”
A similar scenario is unfolding in Miami today with the start of a major convening of groups committed to the Black-Jewish alliance. It comes in the shadow of the death of Clarence B. Jones, a lawyer and speechwriter for Martin Luther King, Jr., who embodied that alliance and its cause for much of his life. He died last Friday at 95.
Chairman emeritus of the Black-Jewish alliance group Spill the Honey, and long cemented in history as the legal mind behind King’s protest strategies who also contributed passages to the “I Have a Dream” speech, Jones would vociferously argue that despite endless fissures, the alliance never ended.
That is a position I too have long maintained, particularly because a major part of the alliance is acknowledging the existence and power of Black Jews. As I and so many others tirelessly repeat, the two groups are not mutually exclusive. It’s a misnomer to say “Blacks” and “Jews” when each group overlaps with the other.
And if the alliance did die sometime during the last 30 or 40 years, did my existence and that of every other Black Jew not get the memo?
Our reality hasn’t stopped others from restarting the alliance with all the patentability of reinventing the wheel. I’ve lost count over the years of how many times a new Blacks-and-Jews group — again, usually ignoring Black Jews — would form as if it alone had the answer to whatever discord was then going on, from disputes over affirmative action after the Supreme Court’s 1978 Bakke decision to the latest over Israel’s horrific actions in Gaza and Lebanon.
That led me and Bruce Haynes, author of The Soul of Judaism and an African American professor who recently discovered his Jewish ancestry, to wonder last February if it was time to form an umbrella organization for all the organizations so dedicated.
While we discussed it, others were mobilizing.
An influential — and funded — group was already working on exactly that, calling for the National Convening of the Black-Jewish Alliance in Miami this week. Organizers include the Redstone Family Foundation and the EXODUS Leadership Forum, founded by CNN commentator Van Jones.
At 95, Clarence Jones would not have made the trip. But Spill The Honey, the organization he recently chaired and for which Haynes and I both serve as board members, is also among coalition partners.
Nearly 100 Black, Jewish, and Black Jewish leaders (this time, we’re being heard) will gather in what will be a show of unity merely in all of us being together, even if we don’t agree on everything. No coalition does, and those that do succeed (think of the not-always-comfortable bedfellows of the civil rights and labor groups that pulled off the March On Washington) do so despite their differences. What’s important is that we’ll be in the room together.
Will it work? Who knows. The alliance has always been rocky, even if it has also always survived.
And don’t count Clarence Jones out yet. His spirit will definitely be with us, which he foreshadowed in a conversation we had in the Forward three years ago.
“When I die, I’m coming back Jewish,” he said.
“But still Black?” I asked.
“Absolutely!”
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