THE JEWISH COMMUNAL FUND is one of the country’s largest donor-advised funds: a type of charity that collects often large donations, then lets the contributor direct the funds to nonprofits. Now, the Jewish Communal Fund has barred its members from directing their own contributions to the organization Jewish Voice for Peace, according to an interview with a Jewish Communal Fund member, backed up by correspondence reviewed by The Intercept. In December, Jordan Bollag, who uses the Jewish Communal Fund to organize his contributions, began making distributions from his accounts. As had always been the case, they all went through, except for the contribution to JVP, a progressive Jewish American group that criticizes Israeli human rights abuses against Palestinians. Bollag assumed there must be some mistake — the money is effectively his, after all. He contacted the organization and eventually got a call back in January from Rachel Schnoll, the Jewish Communal Fund CEO. Schnoll explained to Bollag that, in the wake of the October 7 attack on Israel and subsequent war on the Gaza Strip, there had been a policy change, and donors were no longer allowed to support JVP. (“I’m not going to comment on our grant-making, thanks,” Schnoll told The Intercept.) That left Bollag in a jam, as he had already moved his money to the fund — since moving money in bulk to a donor-advised fund is the reason the funds exist in the first place. “Jewish Communal Fund is blocking one of its Jewish fundholders from donating to Jewish Voice for Peace — how ironic is that?” Bollag told The Intercept. “And this is all just because JVP believes that everyone should have equal rights and a right to vote for the state that rules them — that’s it.” A donor-advised fund is a philanthropic innovation that provides donors with significant tax advantages relative to their charitable contributions. By giving to a donor-advised fund, someone can immediately write off the entire amount of their donation, even while the money sits in the fund. When the donor has identified an organization they wish to support, the donor directs the fund to transfer the money, much as one would with a bank account. Donor-advised funds generally serve as a pass-through entity and do not exert control over the funds parked in their accounts, though it is within their legal rights to do so, depending on their charter documents. According to its tax documents, the Jewish Communal Fund recorded just under $1 billion in revenue in 2022. In response to a request for comment, JVP said the organization had received other reports that the Jewish Communal Fund was blocking donations. Schnoll told Bollag that JVP ran afoul of at least one of three criteria an organization must meet to be eligible for donations made through the Jewish Communal Fund. If an organization is antisemitic, denies Israel’s right to exist, or engages in illegal activity, it is ineligible, she explained. JVP rejects Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish supremacist state — the group opposes Zionism, the ideological foundation of such a Jewish ethno-state — but not as a state in general. The group calls for a single state with universal civil and political rights for all, regardless of religion or ethnicity. (Bollag said that, as far as he knows, the Jewish Communal Fund does not restrict contributions from going to organizations involved with illegal settlements in the West Bank; Schnoll did not respond to a question regarding settlement donations.) Schnoll told Bollag that if, for instance, he attempted to contribute to the American Nazi Party, such a gift would similarly be barred. She quickly added, Bollag said, that she did not mean to compare JVP and Nazis. Still, she said, the decision was final. The money was stuck. The Jewish Communal Fund moves a lot of cash. After the March for Israel in Washington last November, Schnoll sent a letter to members — known as Fundholders — noting that more than $50 million had been passed through the group in support of Israel. Before October 7, Bollag had successfully moved his money from the fund to JVP. He also made other regular contributions that touch on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, including to the organization IfNotNow — which, like JVP, is committed to equality, albeit while “grappling” with Zionism rather than explicitly opposing it — and the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund. The donations to IfNotNow and PCRF went through even after October 7. Only Jewish Voice for Peace was forbidden. “By shutting down Jews who support equal rights for all, Jewish Communal Fund is transgressing the Jewish values of debate and social justice,” Bollag said. “They should cease calling themselves Jewish Communal Fund and start going by Apartheid Communal Fund. I am currently exploring options to take my money out of JCF into a fund that is either unbiased or aligns with my values. I support a boycott of JCF until they change their policy.”
The New York Times declares the death of Wokeism and Cancel Culture. This DEI bullshiat including "defund the police" pushed by progressives has croaked and needs to be taken out back & buried. New York Times Declares Wokeism Dead As ‘Polarizing’ Identity Politics Falter in 2024 Election https://www.mediaite.com/politics/n...ng-identity-politics-falter-in-2024-election/ The New York Times essentially wrote a eulogy for wokeism on Saturday, noting the “polarizing” identity politics of the far-left have faltered in 2024 while Vice President Kamala Harris has publicly bragged about gun ownership. Times reporter Jeremy Peters noted that moods and behaviors that were prevalent just four years ago – when Harris ran an unsuccessful campaign for president – have shifted dramatically. Peters’ piece reads like a postmortem on cancel culture, accusations of cultural appropriation, pushes for inclusivity in entertainment, the politicization of academia, and terms such as “Latinx.” He wrote: If some Americans thought the left’s code of conduct went too far, most were not willing to say so. Polls taken in 2020 showed that large majorities of people — including self-described Democrats and liberals — said that they did not always speak freely about their beliefs for fear of retaliation. Today, in this presidential election between Vice President Harris and former President Donald J. Trump, politics still burns hot, and voters are just as deeply divided. But the country is also in a starkly different place from four years ago. Case in point: Ms. Harris is boasting about protecting her home with a Glock, proclaiming her patriotism and campaigning with Republicans like Liz Cheney. Peters added that since the 2020 Democratic primary, candidates in that race have “fared poorly in many high-profile races” in areas that lean heavily Democratic – including Seattle, where a Republican won the city attorney race following the protests and riots from the summer before. In congressional races, discontent with progressive candidates was evident even before the defeats this summer of Representatives Jamaal Bowman of New York and Cori Bush of Missouri — two members of “the squad,” whose victories in 2020 seemed to signal the ascendence of progressive politics. In Oregon, the left’s favorite to win in the Fifth District, Jamie McLeod-Skinner, was handily defeated this spring by the party establishment’s candidate; in the Third District, an endorsement from Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was not enough for Susheela Jayapal, the sister of Pramila Jayapal, a squad member and chair of the Progressive Caucus. Former Barack Obama administration adviser and Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel told the Times, “The whole party is being shadowed by what happened in 2020, and now it’s trying to outrun that shadow.” Meanwhile, veteran Democratic strategist Mark Mellman told Peters he expects the progressive left will play a slow game to bring back a culture of extreme sensitivity and awareness of cultural issues. “It’s clear now that they have failed to take over the Democratic Party,” Mellman said. “They thought this was going to be a much quicker process… But I think they’re in it for the long term. The battle is going to continue.”