Uncategorized
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.”
—
The post Synagogues are joining the ‘effective altruism’ movement. Will the Sam Bankman-Fried scandal stop them? appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
Antisemitism and ‘The End of History’ That Never Came to Pass
Roses are placed on a sculpture of Mikhail Gorbachev in memory of the final leader of the Soviet Union, at the “Fathers of Unity” memorial in Berlin, Germany August 31, 2022. Photo: REUTERS/Lisi Niesner
In the summer of 1989, a few months before the Berlin Wall fell, a political scientist named Francis Fukuyama published an essay that came to define a new understanding in the West.
Titled simply “The End of History?”, the piece described the defeat of fascism in World War II and the collapse of the Soviet Union and its socialist ideology. It appeared that Western liberal democracy and free-market capitalism had won the ultimate battle of ideas — at least for the moment.
Events in recent years have proven this thesis false. History didn’t end — and Fukuyama probably knew it never would. The battle of ideas will always return, and in many ways, it never went away.
During the last 40 years, Western civilization, capitalism, and nationalism have been under attack. Likewise, bigotry against Jewish people never went away. There is nothing new under the sun about Jew hatred except the delivery system. The traditional engines of antisemitism have largely been supplanted by a new engine: the social media algorithm.
The stark, un-sugar coated reality is that the Jewish people have been abandoned, and the illusion of modern safety is quickly eroding.
What stings the most is the profound sense of betrayal from communities that the Jewish people poured their hearts, souls, and resources into elevating.
Over the last century and a half, the Jewish community played an outsized, foundational role in championing civil rights, fighting alongside the African American community, the feminist movement, driving progress within academia and LGBTQ rights.
To watch significant factions of those exact same groups turn their backs, stay silent, or actively fuel hostility today is a heartbreaking reality to reckon with. It sends a crystal-clear message that must be internalized immediately: there ought to be a stricter balance between “fixing the world” and tending to the survival of one’s own community.
One cannot control what is outside one’s control, but one can focus on what is in their control.
The era of relying on the world’s collective conscience is officially over, and the path forward must be primarily inward, focused on self-reliance, self-defense, and resilience. It requires an unrelenting effort to tell our story and win the war for hearts and minds. We must unflinchingly call out the blatant hypocrisy of institutional and communal betrayal, as difficult as that may be.
It is no longer sufficient to excel exclusively in the boardroom or the classroom. True self-preservation demands a willingness to face physical reality. Security cannot be guaranteed by others, and protecting families and institutions means prioritizing physical fitness and the practical readiness to defend oneself on the streets, in schoolyards, and at the workplace.
With traditional institutions increasingly failing to offer protection, self-reliance becomes an absolute necessity. We must look at past fair-weather allies and actively seek new partners who offer mutual respect and reciprocal support. Survival and resilience demand that the Jewish community adapt, unite, and lead from a position of strength.
The peaceful illusion of “The End of History” never arrived; the battle of ideas has returned, and we must be ready for the fight.
Daniel M. Rosen is the chairman and Co-founder of IMPACT, a 501c3 dedicated to organizing, empowering and mobilizing individuals to combat Jew hatred on social media and beyond. He is a regular contributor to The Jerusalem Post, JNS, Times of Israel, Israel National News, The Algemeiner, and other publications. Follow us at @joinimpactnow
Uncategorized
Why Do We Read the Book of Ruth on Shavuot?
Shavuot. Ruth in Boaz’s Field by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, oil on canvas, 1828; National Gallery, London. Photo: Wikipedia.
All Biblical festivals and special days relate to time — whether it is daily, monthly, annually, or seasonally. Awareness of the natural world comes with awareness of oneself, our transience, and the ups and downs of life. Who are we? Where do we belong? All of this is the core of religious life, which helps us to live in the world in the best way that we can.
Shavuot started as a harvest festival. There are three. Pesach is the first, with the earliest barley crop. Shavuot celebrates the beginning of the wheat and fruit harvests. And Sukkot is the culmination of the agricultural year and the celebration of water and rain, which are essential for a successful agricultural year.
But as we became less and less of an agricultural society, other themes emerged to add to the message of Shavuot specifically. The rabbis added the theme of Torah. But why, then, did the rabbis choose the Book of Ruth to be read on Shavuot?
It is set against a background of harvests — and how unpredictable they can be. The failed harvest caused the emigration of Elimelech’s family from Israel. Then the cycle turned, and rich harvests in Israel enabled Naomi to come back. Ruth decides to stay with Naomi and become part of the Israelite people. In Ruth’s magnificent declaration “Where you go, I will go. Where you stay, I will stay. Your people are my people, and your God, my God … only death will separate us.”
The Book of Ruth illustrates the choices people make and their consequences. To leave. To come back. To change one’s religion and nation. To act with love and care. To be charitable and kind. The goodness of a person rather than genealogy or status. It displays the redemptive powers of women. But it also recognizes the drawbacks of societies, class systems, levels of wealth, and the limitations of conventions and rules.
But Naomi and Ruth are destitute. Biblical laws required redemption. When a family fell on hard times, and sold their property, the relatives had a legal obligation to redeem the loss and try to reinstate them. The poor also had legal rights to glean fields as they were being harvested, and landowners had to leave corners of fields to the poor, all the poor, even foreigners.
The Torah set the tone for a just society, one that guaranteed that the weakest and most disadvantaged would be helped. If the Torah imposed commandments that connected humanity with God, it also required, just as much, that humans connect with each other. As the Prophet Yeshayah said repeatedly, God wants kindness more than sacrifices or hypocritical prayers.
The most popular explanation of the link between Shavuot and Ruth is that Ruth actually chose to live a life according to Naomi’s Israelite customs and ideals. She made the commitment that the Israelites made at Sinai. As Boaz said to her when he met her, “May the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to trust, reward you.”
It does not matter where you come from as much as who you are. And this challenges us to think about what our commitments are today, and what we value and spend our time on.
Ruth’s story is of how life is unpredictable and often tragic. And yet, through human kindness — which the Bible stresses — we can find redemption and build a better world.
That’s true no matter what is happening around us; the Torah’s messages for us and our people are as important today as ever.
Happy Shavuot and Chag Sameach.
The author is a writer and rabbi, currently based in New York.
Uncategorized
The Limits of Campus Solidarity: Why Are Some Issues Seemingly Ignored By Campus Activists ?
University of East Anglia in Norwich.. Photo Credit: .Martin./ Flickr
Student activism on university campuses often presents itself as part of a broader global struggle for human rights and liberation. Students organize campaigns and protests under the belief that they are standing on the side of justice. Universities themselves have also long been spaces where political movements grow, and where students engage with wider global issues.
But if campus activism is truly rooted in the goal of human rights, it is worth asking why some movements receive enormous attention while others receive little to none.
Activist movements often present themselves as universal movements for justice, but in practice they are shaped by ideology and institutional campaigns. This does not necessarily invalidate these movements, but it does challenge the idea that campus activism is merely a neutral response to injustice.
An example of this contrast can be seen through the differences between campus mobilization around Gaza, and the relative absence of sustained activism in support of issues like the situation in places like Sudan — and also in Iran, including supporting Iranian students who actively protest their own government.
At the University of East Anglia (UEA), as at campuses across the UK, the past number of years has brought visible and sustained pro-Palestine organizing with protests, encampments, and marches of more than 400 students calling for divestment. It also involves motions brought before the Students’ Union resulting in a longstanding institutional boycott policy against Israel.
Over the same period, Iranian students and civilians have protested against the political repression and government-sponsored violence in Iran, most noticeably during the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement. This past January, it’s reported that tens of thousands of innocent protestors were murdered by the regime, and many more were jailed.
Yet at UEA, as at most British universities, this did not translate into encampments, sustained protest weeks, or motions to the Students’ Union. The same is true for many other conflict areas around the world — and the contrast is difficult to ignore.
The point here is not that students should protest every global issue equally. That would be unrealistic. Student movements naturally focus on certain causes more than others. But this contrast does raise an important question: what determines which global issues become campus movements and which do not?
I believe part of the answer lies in activist infrastructure. Some causes already have established student organizations and national campaigns with clear institutional mechanisms. At UEA, campaigns related to Palestine, for example, often involve established movements such as Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), which provide students with clear actions to take, such as lobbying student government and hosting annual protest weeks where official language is promoted. There are funding networks and experienced organizers behind the scenes who help translate political concerns into sustained campus activism.
By contrast, Iranian dissident movements do not have the same level of organized support. There are fewer established student campaigns, fewer institutional demands directed at universities and fewer organized networks translating concern into campus activism. A student at UEA who wanted to organize meaningfully around Iran would find considerably less infrastructure available to them than one organizing around the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
Another factor may be related to how students interpret global politics more broadly. On many campuses, political activism tends to be framed through narrow ideas like decolonial theory and the history of Western imperialism. Within this framework student activists tend to focus on issues where Western powers are seen as solely responsible for global injustice. Whether this is introduced or sustained in classrooms or in college group meetings is a subject for another piece, but in this context it doesn’t really matter.
What this contrast suggests is that campus activism is not guided by moral principles alone, but is instead shaped in large part by the existing political frameworks.
Recognizing this does not require assuming bad intentions on the part of student activists. Many student movements are motivated by genuine concern. But like all political movements, individuals must be wary of manipulation and groupthink.
Individual action and anger become tools for someone else’s ideas, so it’s important that we are all responsible with what we choose to put our energy towards. If campus activists at UEA claim to stand for universal human rights, then they must also be willing to ask the difficult question of why some struggles seem more important than others.
Skye Phillips is a final year International Relations and Modern History student at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England. She is a 2025/6 fellow for CAMERA. Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of CAMERA.