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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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Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear criticizes Gaza ‘genocide’ discourse ‘litmus test’ for Democrats
(JTA) — Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear declined to label Israel’s actions in Gaza as “genocide” in an interview with Politico published Sunday, instead critiquing the question as a litmus test among Democrats.
“That’s becoming one of those new litmus tests that we said we would never do as a party again,” Beshear told Politico’s Dasha Burns after being asked if he agreed with the label. “It’s trying to throw out a word and, ‘Are you going to raise your hand or are you not going to?’”
Beshear is the Democratic governor of a solidly red state and a potential 2028 presidential contender. His remarks come as Democratic candidates increasingly grapple with their stances on Israel amid record low support for Israel among its base.
While several lawmakers, including Vermont’s Jewish Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent, have called Israel’s actions in Gaza a “genocide,” the label has not gained mainstream support in the Democratic party. Last October, former Vice President Kamala Harris declined to use the “genocide” label, which Israel had long rejected, but said, “We should all step back and ask this question and be honest about it.”
Some Democrats have embraced the question, with a New York congressional candidate telling the leftist streamer Hasan Piker this week that she is “100%” comfortable with the issue serving as a litmus test in her party.
Others have acted as though the litmus test is already in place. In January, for example, California congressional candidate Scott Wiener announced that he believes Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute a genocide after drawing scrutiny for declining to answer the question during a debate.
While Beshear told Burns that Israel “has the right to exist as a democratic country, as a Jewish country,” he added that he feelings about President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s conduct during the war in Gaza and ongoing war in Iran were “a different thing.”
“I believe the United States needs a strong Israel, but not one with decisions being made in the way that Netanyahu is making them,” Beshear said.
Beshear also critiqued President Donald Trump’s response to the crisis in Gaza.
“I believe that it could have been done without a lot of the suffering, but I put a lot of that blame also on Donald Trump,” he said. “If he’d said we are coming in and we are bringing food and aid and you are going to make sure that we’re safe, it would’ve happened.”
Last week, a spokesperson for Beshear told Politico that “AIPAC has never contributed to Governor Beshear and they’re never going to — ever,” a response that dovetailed with a host of other potential Democratic presidential candidates, including California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who are increasingly distancing themselves from the pro-Israel lobby.
“I think that’s up to each and every Democrat,” Beshear answered when asked whether he thought his fellow Democrats should take money from AIPAC.
“In the end, I think people need to be clear about their stance on these issues,” Beshear said. “And for me, it’s one where I believe that we need a future with an ally in Israel. But we need decision makers there that are not acting the way that Netanyahu is and we need a president that will push when we are seeing humanitarian crises to actually do something about it.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Passover’s 4 cups of meaning
What if the answer to the ‘Meaning Crisis’ is sitting right in front of us, around our Passover tables?
The Meaning Crisis is a term coined by philosopher John Vervaeke to discuss the constellation of mental health, political and cultural crises that, in his words, derive from people “feeling very disconnected from themselves, from each other, from the world, and from a viable and foreseeable future.” It is, Vervaeke argues, at the root of such seemingly disparate phenomena as the opioid crisis, the rise of right-wing nationalism, and off-the-charts reports of despair and anxiety, particularly among young people.
There are at least two meanings of ‘Meaning’ in this context.
First, over the last few hundred years — but especially in the last few decades — there has been a rapid erosion of the structures and communities that gave human lives meaning for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Traditional religious values and structures are far less coherent, attractive or attainable. Familial and communal structures have rapidly shifted. Fewer and fewer of us live in the places where we grew up, surrounded by extended family. The civic bonds many of us once took for granted are frayed as we fundamentally disagree about what American democracy even means. And in the last few decades, the atomizing effects of technology have made us more isolated from one another, with less in-person human contact and even less physical intimacy.
This is also a literal crisis of meaning: who we are, how we understand our world, the concepts by which we organize our lives — all of these are rapidly changing, and with the potential of AI to reshape our economic order and wipe out half of white-collar jobs, it’s possible we ain’t seen nothing yet.
Some of these changes are for the best. To take one personal example, the word ‘marriage’ connoted a very specific form of social arrangement for hundreds of years: a man, a woman, a lifelong union blessed by a religious authority, and the raising of children. The parameters of marriage were never as stable as traditionalists like to claim — just look at our biblical ancestors polygamous marriages, or the deeply unequal access and expectations around extramarital sex stretching through the Mad Men 1950s. But with the progress in women’s rights (e.g. not being considered the property of their husbands, being able to have careers) and LGBTQ equality, obviously the nature and rates of marriage have changed significantly. As someone in a same-sex marriage, I’m very grateful for that.
But it is still a change, and, together with other transformations, it has challenged some traditional notions of masculinity, leading to a resurgence of misogynistic, hyper-conservative models in the so-called ‘manosphere.’ And that’s but one example of many.
In this context — the meaning crisis and the reactionary responses to it — I find the observance of Passover, and the Passover Seder in particular, to be a much-needed antidote to disorientation on one hand, and oppressive traditionalism on the other.
Fittingly, for a holiday obsessed with the number four, I want to explore this in four ways — if you like, the Four Cups of Meaning that can be part of the Passover Seder.
1) Community
For many people, gathering with families of origin can be extremely stressful in our politically polarized time. It was bad enough when it was just the proverbial ‘racist uncle’ we had to endure at Seders. He might’ve been annoying, but he could also be ignored. Now, however, even well-meaning, sincere and committed Jews passionately disagree over a number of subjects, especially a certain country (or two) in the Middle East.
Yet there is a profound value gathering as a family — even as a tribe — and feeling a sense of kinship and belonging to it. Despite real and painful differences, Jews congregating together are connecting to a heritage and an ancestry that cannot be taken away by those who seek to put us outside the tent. That is something very old and very rich. You are not an atomized, isolated individual, separate from a history and a people and a tradition — a tradition which specifically includes the value of disagreement, argumentation and wrestling with the divine.
2) Centering our core values
Within the Jewish family, there are radically different iterations of core values. For me, the meaning of the Exodus is that oppression, slavery and injustice are morally wrong in the highest possible sense. As Exodus 23:9 teaches, “Do not oppress the stranger, for you know the heart of a stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” From our experience of oppression — real, imagined or historically projected — we extrapolate the emotional and ethical value that it is wrong to oppress those who are different from us.
I know others have different views — for example, that the story of the Exodus is centrally about something that happened to our tribe, and that our group must never allow to happen to us again. But in terms of the meaning crisis, the debate is part of the solution. We are called at the Passover Seder to discuss the meanings of freedom, to reenact in our lived ritual experience the passage from servitude to liberation.
And not only that. We are invited to cultivate gratitude — in the Dayenu song and elsewhere — for all the blessings around us. We are invited, over and over again, to value questioning, curiosity, even challenging the texts of the Haggadah that for many are the very foundation of the Seder. These values are placed at the center of the Passover symposium. And while we disagree about how these questions are to be answered, just asking them is a retort to the emptiness and nihilism of so much of online culture and political cynicism. Values matter.
3) The power of myth
Human beings are creatures of story. Some linguists believe that it is in the telling of stories that human language itself — and thus human consciousness — evolved. Personally, I don’t regard the biblical narrative as a historical document; I see it as a shared myth of national self-creation, one which we can embody in ritual — in what the scholar of religion Clifford Geertz called “deep play.”
Sometimes the play is quite literal. Last year, my friend Shoshana Jedwab, a marvelous Jewish educator, led a bibliodrama performance in which, drawing from Sephardic traditions, we whipped one another with scallions to mock the servitude of Egyptian slavery. It’s fun (and worked really well with my eight-year-old) but it’s also a way of making myth into embodied, living experience. The myths, and their reenactment, bring us into intimacy with the past.
But ritual play may take many forms. Why do we dip our vegetables twice? Why the charoset? Why the orange on the seder plate? Why this? Why that? The inquisitiveness of the Four Questions is modeled by the youngest participant of the seder, but is invited on behalf of all of us. These often inscrutable, embodied, crunchy, weird rituals connect to the myth of the Passover story and make it alive in a way that mere retelling could never do.
As you prepare for your own seders, I invite you to create your own questions based on the themes embedded in the order of the Seder. And to lean into the weird. Which brings me to the final cup of meaning:
4) The non-rational
Passover, like many Jewish holidays, has multiple layers — seasonal, agricultural, mythic — and they all mash together in an often strange, and often charoset-like, mixture.
Particularly this year, the non-rational, emotional, and spiritual content of the Seder feels resonant for me. I cannot sequester the grief I feel at the crumbling of the American experiment in multicultural democracy, or at the ascendant far right in Israel. I feel perhaps a little closer to that pre-redeemed consciousness of my mythic ancestors in the land of Egypt. I am certainly not enslaved, but I do feel the sense of precarity that the Seder invites us to cultivate.
And so I find myself yearning for a miraculous deliverance — maybe not one involving frogs, lice, and boils, but from some unknown, mysterious, sacred source. Perhaps salvation will come from what we do not know. Perhaps there is room for a desperate hope, despite ample reasons not to hope.
As the Hasidic masters noted (and for a wonderful presentation of this, consider downloading the ‘Four Cups of Consciousness’ Haggadah supplement created by the Jewish psychedelic organization, Shefa), the Passover Seder is in large part about consciousness change: using the four cups of wine, the emotional arc of the seder, and the long night of singing, arguing and talking over a festive meal that stretches to midnight to shift our consciousness and open us to the possibility of internal freedom, even when external circumstances are antithetical to it.
This is the freedom of which Viktor Frankl wrote. And while we are a long way from what Frankl endured, I would submit that part of the invitation of the Seder is to imagine the consciousness of freedom even when that freedom is threatened — to be in solidarity with those being oppressed as we gather for our lavish meal, reclining on real or metaphorical cushions and drinking cups of wine, and to hold those two sides together. To know that, as the Haggadah relates, there have always been threats to our physical and spiritual safety. And while our physical freedom can indeed be restricted — and has been — we retain the capacity for ethical and spiritual freedom even in circumstances far worse than our own.
This is the ultimate meaningfulness: that in a time when the structures and language that give our lives meaning are threatened, we can resist the slide to nihilism and despair. And the Seder is a celebration of doing so.
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Tensions flare at Passover Seder over Mamdani’s inclusion
(JTA) — New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani was briefly interrupted by a heckler during an appearance at a Passover Seder in Manhattan Monday night, marking a tense moment that highlighted ongoing strains between the mayor and segments of the Jewish community.
“The rising tide of antisemitism has caused enormous pain for so many Jewish New Yorkers. Doors are locked that used to be open, routine subway journeys felt fraught, synagogues that once felt like sanctuaries now require armed protection,” Mamdani said before he was interrupted by an individual in the back of the room who stood and shouted, “Every Jewish organization is a target.”
Attendees responded with a blend of shushes and a single voice shouting, “Stop the xenophobia, let him speak.”
“This is New York City, and we love to be here,” Mamdani said as the audience erupted in cheers. “I say it because we know that if there was complete decorum anywhere that we were, then we would have to ask ourselves if we had left the city that we love, and it is important to be here and to acknowledge that this is what it means to love and to lead the place that we call home.”
The episode, which took place at Jewish entrepreneur Michael Dorf’s annual seder at City Winery in the Meatpacking District, comes as Mamdani has faced scrutiny from segments of New York’s Jewish community over his responses to antisemitic incidents and continued alignment with pro-Palestinian activists.
“I have to say I didn’t vote for him,” one male attendee, who asked to remain anonymous for his privacy, said following the seder. “I have certain feelings about him that I think a lot of other people have, but that’s neither here nor there. But that was kind of surprising that a couple of people kind of went out of their way to heckle.”
While the mayor has previously marked Jewish holidays with Jewish leaders and organizations aligned with him on his criticisms of Israel, the event at City Winery involved a lineup of speakers and attendees with differing views.
“Mamdani was here, which is great, yeah, I guess, because he knows at the seder, you lean to the left,” joked comedian Olga Namer later in the evening. “A little bit about me, I’m a Syrian Jew, yes, so that’s good, because I know, at least I’m confident, that Mamdani likes half of me.”
Ahead of the evening, which also featured addresses by former CNN anchor Don Lemon, Israeli musician David Broza and Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie of the non-denominational Lab/Shul, observant Jewish comedian Modi Rosenfeld announced that he had cancelled his appearance, claiming that he had been unaware of the mayor’s inclusion.
“We were not told Mamdani was participating in this event until today,” Rosenfeld’s team said in a statement on Instagram following criticism from pro-Israel activist Shai Davidai. “Modi will no longer be participating.”
Davidai, the former Israeli business school professor at Columbia University, took aim at the Israeli participants in the seder, writing in a post on Instagram, “This is why we’re losing.”
“I have nothing against any of these individuals, but I do have a problem with giving Mamdani a kosher stamp of approval while so many of us are out in the streets fighting against is anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli policies, actions, and rhetoric,” Davidai wrote in an updated caption announcing Modi’s cancellation.
City Council Speaker Julie Menin, who has been seen as a counterweight on Mamdani, used part of her remarks to highlight the passage of her “buffer zone” legislation for religious institutions, which were introduced after a pro-Palestinian demonstration outside of Park East Synagogue in November.
“We all should be able to worship or not worship as we see fit,” Menin said. “We all should be able to go into, whether it’s a synagogue, a church, a mosque or any house of worship, freely without intimidation and harassment, so I’m very proud that we were able to pass this bill.”
Mamdani has not confirmed whether he will sign the legislation, with a spokesperson telling the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that he “wants to ensure both the right to prayer and the right to protest are protected here in New York City.”
Former Comptroller Brad Lander, who is currently running for Congress in New York’s 10th Congressional District, joked during his remarks late in the evening that he “did not tell the mayor that we were doing a live reenactment of the four sons during his speech,” making a tongue-in-cheek reference to a core element of the Passover haggadah.
“He gets heckled and, you know, and it kind of goes along with the territory, I thought he dealt with it very gracefully,” Lander told JTA. “As a lot of people said in here tonight, not everyone in that room agrees with each other.”
Indeed, at the conclusion of the seder, several attendees said that they were not aware that the mayor was slated to appear — and questioned his understanding of the holiday’s core narrative.
“If City Winery did not inform people of the politicians in particular, because he’s very polarizing, to have him up there really upset people,” said one attendee, who requested anonymity because she had participated as a private individual. “It feels inauthentic to have him speak about matzah or Judaism, when the whole holiday is about Jews that were enslaved by Pharaoh and then went back to the homeland of Israel.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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