L.A.’s United Jewish Fund Keeps Tradition of Giving Alive

The apartment where Maxwell Salter grew up in New York was so crowded that his widowed mother hung a curtain across the dining room to create a sleeping area for some of her five children.

But even during the Depression when she took in boarders to make ends meet, destitute strangers often gathered around the big family dining table or slept on mattresses that Salter’s mother rolled out on the floor.

Salter, chairman of the board of Beno’s family apparel stores, said his mother always offered a bed or a meal to the needy because she believed she had an obligation to care for those less fortunate.

Others attending a recent United Jewish Fund banquet with the Beverly Hills city councilman recounted similar experiences, and Salter said their early indoctrination into giving might explain UJF’s fund-raising success.

From a pool of about 600,000 Jews in Los Angeles County, the fund-raising arm of the Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles raised more than $44 million in fiscal 1985-86.

United Way Collection

By comparison, the United Way of Los Angeles, with a base of more than 8 million Los Angeles County residents, raised $84.6 million. During the previous four years, UJF collected an average of $39.4 million per year while United Way secured $67.2 million.

Of the $44 million raised last year, the UJF sent $18.4 million to social service agencies in Israel and other foreign Jewish communities and $14.7 million to domestic and local organizations. The largest local payments of more than $2 million each supported Jewish education, Jewish community centers and Jewish Federation Council programs including leadership development and community relations.

About $11 million of the $44 million remained undistributed. The drive budgeted $2 million for uncollected pledges and $4 million to pay for data processing, benefits administration and other functions for federation agencies. UJF also spent more than $5 million for campaign costs. This year’s campaign leaders hope to raise $50 million. The prime events of the drive are concentrated in 13 weeks ending next Thursday.

Leaders think they can reach their goal through a well-organized effort that capitalizes, in part, on Jews’ desire to support Israel. But the key to the campaign, said Wayne L. Feinstein, executive vice president of the Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles, is the Jewish tradition of giving.

‘No Glitzy Marketing’

“There’s no magic to what I’m describing and no glitzy marketing approach,” said Feinstein, 34, who joined the council eight months ago and lives in a Hancock Park home partially owned by JFC.

“We raise money exclusively among members of the Jewish community. While Jews are involved in other charities, I think many of our donors believe first and foremost in their obligation to aid the Jewish people.

“If there is such a thing as a profile of the average donor, the vast majority know they are performing a basic Jewish commandment to do acts of tzedakah , acts of righteousness. Jewish tradition holds that every Jew has an obligation to his fellow man.

“I think that is why traditional Jewish charities by any objective measure long outperformed other charities and why individual Jews, such as financier Jacob Schiff and Sears, Roebuck & Co. founder Julius Rosenwald, have distinguished themselves as philanthropists, and not just for Jewish causes.”

Rabbi Isaiah Zeldin of Stephen S. Wise Temple in Bel-Air said the Old Testament concept of charity begins with “the idea of tithing: that whatever God gives you, you owe one-tenth back to him.”

And Rabbi Harvey J. Fields of the Wilshire Boulevard Temple said that, “In the biblical tradition Jews were taught to leave the corners of their fields for the poor and the homeless and the widowed.

“This allowed the needy to enter the field in darkness and to retain their dignity while fulfilling their needs. According to the teachers, no one who is needy should be deprived of dignity.” Jews resonate to this tradition, Fields said.

“The Jewish community learns early the thoughtfulness of giving and the benefits that come to a community from giving,” said Francis X. McNamara, president of United Way, who has been associated with Jewish organizations for 38 years. “They have a history and a tradition (of giving) which is fantastic.”

Profile to Support Goal

To induce the community to give, UJF “continually scans social and cultural data to . . . find out what (social services) are required for the Jewish community and what it costs,” Feinstein said.

“We try to put that together in a coherent way . . . a profile that supports our goal.

“This creates what I would call a ‘needs-driven’ campaign. Our object is not to beat last year’s sales campaign but to satisfy social needs.”

UJF carries out this campaign in five districts stretching north-south from Conejo Valley to San Pedro and east-west from Rancho Cucamonga to the Pacific.

Furniture manufacturer David Finegood, general chairman of this year’s UJF campaign, said the drive appeals to neighborhoods and to about 40 business or professional groups including clothing, medicine, entertainment and real estate. UJF solicits funds from most of the professional groups through luncheons.

“A statement from a personal friend has tremendous impact on people,” Finegood said. “The person talks about why he’s involved. They respect and know this person.

“You also don’t want to look bad in the eyes of a big wheel in your business.”

Women’s Division

A separate women’s division also relies heavily on gatherings, women’s division chairwoman Terry Bell said, and UJF also honors donors at banquets. Salter joined 300 people at a recent dinner for $10,000 givers at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel.

As a band played dance music, entertainer Monty Hall recalled watching his impoverished mother in Winnipeg, Canada, raise money to bring post-Holocaust children out of Europe.

“If you observe your mom trying to save the remnants of post-Hitler Germany, that becomes your cause,” said Hall, who hosted TV’s “Let’s Make a Deal” for 22 years and has been active in UJF. “The commitment . . . starts early.”

Judge Joseph A. Wapner, who presides on TV’s “People’s Court,” said that even during the Depression his mother kept small cans in the living room of their modest downtown Los Angeles home to collect coins for Israel.

The retired Superior Court judge said his mother’s example taught him to enjoy giving. “It’s terrific how much joy I get from it,” Wapner said.

Even the contentment of many donors can not hide potential problems for UJF, however. Feinstein said 1,000 people give about 55% of the money, or about $24 million of last year’s $44 million total.

Gerald Bubis, professor of Jewish communal studies at Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles, said that although the Jewish population of Los Angeles County has increased from 500,000 in 1979 to an estimated 600,000 today, the number of donors has remained approximately the same.

There were 48,941 donors in 1979 and 47,905 last year. The apex was 51,122 in 1983, he said.

Drives in Other Cities

Bubis said that many small, tight-knit communities raise more funds per capita than Los Angeles. In Minneapolis, for example, 20,000 Jews collect about $10 million. Los Angeles’ community, 30 times larger, raises $44 million.

“Many people come out here from other communities and get lost,” Bell said. “Either they don’t want to affiliate with the Jewish community or for whatever reason, they don’t. We must reach them. This is a major program.”

More effort is being made to identify and solicit Los Angeles Jews, Feinstein said. On a recent evening at the North Ranch Community Center in Westlake Village, the United Jewish Fund held its first major fund-raising dinner in Conejo Valley. One hundred people gathered to hear Wolf Blitzer, Washington bureau chief of the Jerusalem Post, an English-language Israeli newspaper.

As guests sipped wine in the lobby before dinner, attorney Ken Rodman of Westlake Village said that he hoped to increase Conejo Valley contributions from $40,000 last year to $1 million in five years. The lawyer and his wife, Meredith, chair the Conejo Valley UJF campaign.

Rodman said that UJF was necessary to provide child, marital and family services that the growing synagogues in the area could no longer handle.

Sitting nearby, Westlake Village chiropractor Irving Jacobs agreed and explained why he felt compelled to donate to the services.

“If I don’t support them, who will?” he said. “You can not go through life taking. You have to give.”