Bryan Schwartzman: From my home studio, welcome to Evolve, Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations. Lila Corwin Berman: Once I realized I have benefited from this system of American Jewish philanthropy, doesn't that require me then to think about the terms of how I benefited? Bryan Schwartzman: I'm your host, Bryan Schwartzman, and our guest today is Lila Corwin Berman. We'll be discussing her essay, "Philanthropy In A Time Of Crisis And Why History Matters". This essay is based on professor Berman's new book from Princeton University Press, the American Jewish Philanthropic Complex: The History of a Multibillion-Dollar Institution. This work has been described as the first comprehensive history of American Jewish philanthropy and its influence on democracy and capitalism. So this show is going to be about Jews and money, always something of a controversial topic because of antisemitic stereotypes about Jews being rich, controlling the banks, et cetera. So we might be tempted to just avoid this topic entirely, but charitable giving is just too important to ignore. It's a major way that American Jews shape the society we live in. And it's played a huge role in the development of American Jewish institutions, synagogues, Jewish community centers, Federations. Bryan Schwartzman: So buckle up, we're going to be talking about things like endowments and donor-advised funds. But don't worry if you think it's going to be a lot of financial nitty-gritty stuff, what we're really talking about are ways money is used to shape the Jewish community and American society at large. Like our guest, my own life has been shaped by Jewish philanthropy. Jewish philanthropy funded my first trip to Israel, my graduate studies, even the books on my kids' shelf. So it's really important and something worth examining and knowing the history of. Okay, so before we get to the interview, as a reminder, the essays discussed on this show are available to read for free on the Evolve website, which is evolve.reconstructingjudaism.org. As always, the essays are not required reading for this show, but we recommend checking them out. Okay, let's get to our guest, professor Lila Corwin Berman. Bryan Schwartzman: She's a professor of history at Temple University in Philadelphia, where she directs the Feinstein Center for American Jewish History. She's also a fellow at the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. For at least the past five years, Berman has been writing about charitable giving in publications like The Forward, as well as academic journals. Professor Berman has been sparking conversations, raising eyebrows, and yeah, she's become something of a critic of business as usual in the Jewish philanthropic world. So Lila Corwin Berman, welcome to the podcast. It's wonderful to have you here. Lila Corwin Berman: Thanks. It's great to be here. Bryan Schwartzman: I'm really interested in this topic you've written about for a couple of years now. I'll try not to geek out too much, especially so our listeners can follow along. But I know you've written and talked about how you see yourself as a product on some level of Jewish philanthropy. And I think that's, maybe not to the same extent, but true for a lot of people that are involved in Jewish life in some level. So I was wondering if you can just explain why and how that is. Lila Corwin Berman: Sure. Well the truth is, it's not something I'd been all that self-conscious of. I'd not thought a lot about the ways in which so much of my life was frankly funded by Jewish philanthropy. But once it struck me, as I was kind of in the very early stages of this book, it really struck me. So from a trip to Israel that I went on when I was a teenager that was partially funded by the Federation in my town and by a few other donors, to my graduate education that was paid for by a private Jewish foundation, to the salary that I draw that in part is paid for by Jewish donors including Jewish foundations, to the books that my children read through PJ Library, which is paid for by Jewish funders, it really struck me that I am completely immersed in this system of economy, of politics. And I hadn't given it a huge amount of thought in terms of how it relates to the history of American Jews. And I'll just add that it's certainly not just American Jewish philanthropy that my life is immersed in, philanthropy more generally, right? The museums I go to, the public radio station I listen to, the newspaper I read. I think that most Americans would be hard pressed to think of ways in which their life is not touched in some ways by private philanthropy. Bryan Schwartzman: Your book is called "The American Jewish Philanthropic Complex". So I guess just for our listeners, what are we talking about when we describe that term? What kinds of organizations are we talking about, and is there any way to put a present-,day financial value on it? I mean, my sense is there isn't because a lot of religious organizations don't have to file publicly, but I guess, just to orient, what's the ground we're covering? Lila Corwin Berman: Right. So people value American Jewish philanthropy in tens of billions going all sorts of ways. And the truth is I'm not so interested in the empirical answer to that question. In part, it really varies depending on what one considers to be part of American Jewish philanthropy. So if a Jewish person gives something to the State of Israel, is that always Jewish philanthropy, even if they gave the same exact kind of gift in the United States, it wouldn't be Jewish philanthropy. So there's all sorts of kinds of acrobatics. But what has really interested me and the way I came to the idea of talking about it as a complex, are all of the kinds of intersecting forces of American policy, of American law, that have shaped this large, no matter how we want to empirically value it, it's a large kind of landscape of philanthropy that touches American Jews in so many ways. Lila Corwin Berman: And that connects the institutions of American Jewish life to the institution of the American state. It seemed to me that when other researchers had talked about American Jewish philanthropy, they had tried to demark it, right? They try to create a set of boundaries around it so they could say, "Yes, aha. This is distinctively Jewish." Whereas the more I was reading and studying different institutions and different elements, the more I saw that it was all kind of woven together, that it was really a part and parcel of American state development and policy over the 20th century. And so the idea of the complex was really to sort of show these often very complicated interactions among Jewish institutions and American lawmakers and American policies that over time strengthened the mode of private giving and gave it a kind of heft, certainly not just Jewish philanthropy, but private giving more generally in the United States, gave it a kind of heft that was really enriched by the American state, right? Lila Corwin Berman: So when Eisenhower gave his military-industrial complex speech in the early 1960s - and this was obviously on my mind as I titled the book - his point was that there was a kind of feedback loop developing among those who were in government and those who were in arms manufacturing and military life. And that it was unclear at every point who was calling the shots - it had become a kind of feedback loop that was reinforcing a certain kind of worldview about militarization. Well, the same way I think that there's become over the 20th century, a kind of feedback loop among the process of American public government and the process of private capital and also private giving. So that at each turn there's been a kind of reinforcement of private power, right? Lila Corwin Berman: And so this was really what was on my mind when I decided to use the term complex to talk about American Jewish philanthropy. That, and the fact it's very complicated, right? All this stew of acronyms and also navigating charitable tax law, and the final piece of "complex" that was interesting to me was the psychological, where you talk about having a complex, a kind of heavy set of psychological ideas that form your consciousness in a way. And I think that as I traced 20th century American Jewish philanthropy, I saw that psychological dimension, especially in relationship to the Holocaust and the trauma of the Holocaust. So that was the last piece. Bryan Schwartzman: So you write about how the development of endowments was the sea change in how philanthropy functions in this country. I guess, can you first talk about how Jewish organizations functioned prior to World War II and then how and why endowments came about? Lila Corwin Berman: Sure. So one of the big shifts that I trace in the book has to do with this kind of tension between the circulation of charitable capital and the accumulation of charitable capital. And what I was able to find, especially by looking at some specific institutions, right? So Federations, right? These umbrella charitable organizations of Jewish life that would be kind of clearing houses for people to give donations, and then they would parcel out that money to different agencies. Federations were some of the most important structures of American Jewish philanthropy, especially as they developed into the beginning decades of the 20th century, really kind of defining how Jews would, in a sense, kind of govern themselves in the United States insofar as there was this kind of form of communal governance. So as I started to dig into those institutional papers, it was really striking to me that in many cases, federations put into place a set of disciplines that when they raised money, they expected to spend that money, to circulate that charitable capital immediately, right? Lila Corwin Berman: That there were urgent needs, that there wasn't so much surplus to hold onto or to gather, and that the mechanism of kind of legitimating these kinds of philanthropic organizations was taking the money in and spending it out. And then the donor could look and say, "Oh, this is doing good. I'm going to give again next year." Right? And there was a certain kind of authorizing that happened in that process of philanthropy meeting these kind of immediate and urgent needs by being circulated. And in fact, when I read through the different institutional documents of the New York Federation (which was not the earliest one, but it became the largest one), in their bylaws, they were really, really clear. "We're not going to try to get bequests or trusts to be held. We don't want to," and they use this language. "We don't want to be a kind of menacing or powerful charity trust organization." Lila Corwin Berman: And they were thinking specifically of things like Carnegie or Rockefeller Foundations, right? Which in that period there was a real backlash against that kind of accumulated wealth from the Gilded Age. And part of the progressive movement was really about stopping that kind of massive economic inequality that seemed to characterize the Gilded Age. And so these leaders put into place a set of policies saying that they would spend down that money every year and they would only hold a very small set of emergency funds. So this was the culture that was in place. And it was a very, I would say compelling culture, right? That this was really why people thought Federations worked because they met immediate needs every year and they circulated capital. Lila Corwin Berman: And it took a lot of changes that have to do with, first of all, the fact that there were, by World War II and by the decades after, more American Jews who had solid socioeconomic footing, right? Who were gaining material wealth. There were changes happening because you had far fewer new Jewish immigrants coming into the United States. So those kinds of immediate needs to fulfill like shelter and clothing and professional training had decreased and you started to have more governmental programs with the New Deal. And then the Great Society programs where the government was paying for some of the kinds of things that agencies had provided. All of that starts to shift the conversation. We start to see Jewish philanthropic organizations loosening the discipline on charitable circulation and starting to experiment more with accumulation, with building endowments. Lila Corwin Berman: And then the last piece that I think was really important in the shift as it starts to slowly happen in the 40s, but really not till the 50s, till the 60s, is a sense of what had happened in Europe, right? And the destruction of the Holocaust that I think created this very present psychological fear of survival, right? Of American Jews being really concerned about their future and starting to see the way that money, that capital could be used to create a sense of perpetuity, right? Which is what endowments are supposed to do, right? They exist in perpetuity that there was comfort in that idea. But the culture of circulation was really one that was strongly held. And even into the 1960s and 70s, there are people who are working at Jewish philanthropic organizations who become really frustrated because these organizations are very slow to give up on the idea that money taken in should be spent out immediately. But then that change gradually happens. And one of the big transformations I traced is by the final decades of the 20th century, much more of a commitment to charitable capital accumulation in endowments than had ever been the case prior. Bryan Schwartzman: All right. Short time out here. I hope you're finding this a powerful, really cool interview. Do you want others to experience this kind of conversation? Please take a moment to give us a five star rating or review. Positive ratings and reviews really help other people find out about the show. All right. Now, back to Lila Corwin Berman. So in my professional life, I've worked for a fundraising consulting firm and also work with our development folks at Reconstructing Judaism. And I know one of the first things you look at when you look at the health of a nonprofit organization is the size of its endowment, which is money that it, I mean, maybe you could define it, but I believe it's money that you have, that you've invested, that you're only required to spend. I believe it's 5% of it each year. Maybe- Lila Corwin Berman: If you're a public charity, you have no requirement to spend it. It's only private foundations that are required to spend it, but yeah. Bryan Schwartzman: Correct. Okay. Right. So but you look at how big is this endowment, what's the relationship between the endowment and the annual budget, and consultants have different formulas over what the ratio should be. So I guess my sense is if you don't find the existence of large endowments morally wrong, at least you find them, if not concerning, things about them that should be examined or rethought. So I guess what's the issue with having organizations that see themselves as fiscally responsible and have these kinds of rainy day funds? Lila Corwin Berman: Right. Absolutely. I mean, I tell my kids to save their money, right? I don't say, "Go spend today, there'll be more tomorrow. Don't worry." Absolutely. So I would say the first goal I have in telling that particular trajectory of the history of American Jewish philanthropy is actually very basic: just to let folks know that there's a history to it. So when you're in the thick of it, right? When you're working with an organization or you're in an organization, you can start to feel like the rules we have now governing things like how endowments work and how they should be spent, right, that you should never spend more than 5% of an endowment, better to just spend 3%. That you need to have a certain kind of ratio between the endowment and the operating costs, whatever it might be can start to believe that these are natural rules, that they are just the way that things are. They've always been like that. And should we deviate from them, there will be catastrophic implications. Lila Corwin Berman: Now, first of all, you can go talk to economists who have widely divergent views about endowment spending, right? So they do not across the board, agree with the 5% rule, which again, for public charities, that rule is not a matter of law, it's a matter of practice that you try not to spend more than that amount. For private foundations, it's a matter of law that you have to spend a certain percentage in order to continue to have your tax status. But really my first goal in illuminating this history was to basically illuminate the history right? To let people think about the fact that the way that these things operate today are not the way that they've always operated. Lila Corwin Berman: It has not always been clear to American Jews or Jewish organizations or Americans more generally that endowments have to be in place for nonprofit organizations to succeed. That charitable work depends on having this kind of aid of money that is invested in the market economy for growth, but is not spent out, right? So that is part of what my goal is. And I also think it's really important then if we're talking about the fact that this has a history, to ask, what kind of history is it? And it happens to be a history that maps alongside a growing investment in ideas of private capital and private wealth at the expense of public dollars, right? A history that maps on shifts that happened in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, downgrading the kind of social welfare commitments of the American state, of doing a lot more of the government kind of outsourcing itself and saying, "We'll give tax credits, we'll give exemptions. We'll kind of contract ourselves in certain ways and have private actors deal with the public good." Lila Corwin Berman: And it maps on to the growing inequality gap in the United States, right? The fact that you have a very, very few people who control a lot of capital and a lot of people who control a very little bit of capital. So it's important not only then to trace the history to say, "Okay, there's a history to this. It's not always been the same," but it's also important to ask, well, what are those historical forces? And have they developed in ways that we think are the best when it comes to ideas of justice or when it comes to ideas of equality or when it comes to ideas of democracy? Bryan Schwartzman: So certainly one of the most significant trends I'm aware of over the last 40 years in Jewish life, certainly on the Jewish Federation level is that the number of folks supporting these publicly minded charities have declined as the overall dollars have increased and what you call the mega donors or other have gained influence. And my sense is that's brought a lot of different consequences. It's brought us what some would argue would be more innovative responsive philanthropy. It's brought us PJ Library, it's brought us Birthright Israel, it's also brought us, I know you've written about influential donors getting away with bad behavior. So I guess what's a more complete way of understanding the implications and the problems of having sort of mega-donor-centric Jewish philanthropy? Lila Corwin Berman: Well, I might start to sound like a broken record, because again, my chief goal is really to say that there's a history to this, right? I would submit that a Michael Steinhardt or a Charles Bronfman or a Les Wexner is different from a very wealthy, powerful philanthropist of the 18th century in Europe, right? And we could find ways that they are quite similar, but that there are some really measurable differences that define that space. And part of that has to do with shifts that have happened in American tax law. So that, dollar for dollar, the money that a mega-donor gives, even if a mega-donor say decides actually just to make a $36 donation to a Federation. And if somebody who's not in that kind of class decides to make that same $36 donation to a Federation, those dollars are different, right? Lila Corwin Berman: Because maybe the mega-donor is using his donor-advised fund. And maybe he put I'm gendering the donor as a he which is a whole other conversation we could have - Okay, so maybe he put the money in a donor-advised fund that was for appreciated securities, and maybe therefore he didn't pay capital gains on those securities, right? So dollar for dollar that mega-donor because of policies of the American state and in part due to the kind of dialogue that American Jewish philanthropy and other philanthropic organizations have been in with the state to get this really beneficial treatment for private philanthropy, that mega-donor's money is valued at more money than those individual kinds of small donors that you were talking about. We have to understand that. Bryan Schwartzman: So since you mentioned donor-advised funds and we didn't define them for the audience, I'll ask You wrote a piece about Norman Sugarman, who I believe is largely responsible for us having donor-advised funds and maybe the most influential tax lawyer we've never heard of. So what's the story there? How did this tax lawyer give us donor-advised funds and what the heck are they? Lila Corwin Berman: So yeah, let's talk about donor-advised funds because it is apparently one of my favorite things to talk about. So Norman Sugarman, who you mentioned, he's a mid-century Jewish tax lawyer born in Cleveland. He goes and he works at the IRS in DC for a couple of years in the 1950s. And while he's there, he already starts to develop an interest in charitable tax law. And it seems that he's already kind of developing a fundamental philosophy that what the goal of tax laws should be is to allow as much private freedom for the individual, especially when the individual or the private actor is doing good. And this becomes really his kind of overarching philosophy that he brings back with him. We go back to Cleveland and he enters into private practice. And what he says to the folks who are Cleveland's Federation is "Each year you're doing an awful lot of work to go to donors and get them to give money, and then you're giving that money out, and the next year you're starting it all over again," and there were other ways to do this. Lila Corwin Berman: And one way would be to have those donors create private trust funds within the Federation that they could use to give philanthropic money to the Federation, but also to other charitable causes that they care about. And part of what he ends up devising are these structures that we start to call donor-advised funds sometime in the early 1980s, that a public charity will hold what really amounts to a private person's foundation, a batch of money that a private person gave. And that person decides how and when that money is spent, it's irrevocably charitable, but there's no spending rule on it. So when you have a private foundation, there are certain rules that you have to spend a certain amount, that you have to report each and every gift you're giving through the name of your individual private foundation. Lila Corwin Berman: And you even have to pay certain kinds of small taxes, but on the investment income. By creating donor-advised funds, an individual has the ability to have essentially a kind of private foundation, but with far more beneficial tax treatment and still with a great deal of authority about where that money goes. So that's the gist of how a donor-advised fund works and they're used in all sorts of ways, right? So many of them are used just kind of as checkbooks in a way. Every year I, say I know I want to give $10,000 to charity. I park that money at the beginning of the year in my donor-advised fund, I write my charitable checks and I spend that $10,000 and the next year I put that money in. But there are lots of other ways that these donor-advised funds can be used. And there's billions and billions, 60 or so billion dollars that are in donor-advised funds. And they do not have the same kind of regulation or transparency as other kinds of private foundations would have. So I'm happy to stop here on donor-advised funds and see where you want to go with it. But that's the gist. I could obviously say too much more. Bryan Schwartzman: I guess I'd ask, I mean, are there examples or case studies of how access to these funds and, going along with this direction, how it impacted the behavior of a Jewish organization, a Federation? Lila Corwin Berman: Yeah, absolutely. So it ends up by, I think it was 2013 ,when you look at the total endowment dollars in the Federation system - which I think was about $13 billion, but I'd have to look and check to make sure my numbers are right - that about a third of them are in donor-advised funds. So there's a complicated thing that happens, which is that these Federations start to be able to say that they have these pretty big endowments, right? Kind of notable endowments, but actually when it comes down to it, they're very, very restricted, right? By law, once you give your money and put it in a donor-advised fund, it's actually no longer your money. So by law, the Federation could decide that it's going to spend it on what its priorities are. By practice, that does not happen. Lila Corwin Berman: Occasionally a Federation will deny an expenditure because it's not to a legitimate organization, or very infrequently, because it's way off mission. That happens very, very infrequently. And the reason that Federations come then to almost be like financial services companies, in that they're holding that money, they're maybe taking some fees, but they're letting you spend it out how you want, is twofold. One, because there are financial service companies like Fidelity and Schwab that are now competing to hold these donor-advised funds. And two, because these Federations know that it's to their benefit to be able to say that they have these endowments, that they're getting still some benefit from holding onto this money. But it really ends up meaning that these private individuals, especially like if you look at Chicago, for example, it's a very large Jewish Federation in Chicago, a huge amount of the money that the Federation in Chicago claims is its endowment money, is actually Crown family money. One particular family's money. Lila Corwin Berman: So what does that mean for the nature of the communal process, when it is not just the private family foundations that, okay, we know that those family names are slapped on them, and those are some powerhouse families, but it's even these ostensibly communal organizations that are really driven by the fact that their endowments, which they're so reliant on, are, are essentially controlled by, or at least restricted by just a few particular families, right? So there's all sorts of examples of how this kind of particular vehicle. and I think the take home point is that this particular vehicle ends up really increasing the power of the private giver, right? And does it at the same time actually help the public, right? And that's always... The public consents to this, we all consent to it. It's our laws. And is it at the end of the day in the interest of the public good? Bryan Schwartzman: So speaking of the public good, you use the term "citizen philanthropy". Is this a term from our past, from our history? Are you seeing examples of it now and saying, "Hey, this is maybe what the world could see more of," so what is citizen philanthropy and where are we seeing it? Lila Corwin Berman: Right. So I used that term in the essay I wrote for Evolve. I talked about citizen philanthropy. And there's a very good historian of American philanthropy, Elisabeth Clemens, who uses the term, and I think to really fruitful ends, to talk about the ways that everyday Americans became involved in giving to lots of different charitable or what we would call nonprofit entities. And that this was sort of part of how American democracy worked right? That people participated certainly by voting and by being involved in other kinds of civic activities. But giving every year to an array of organizations that matter to them created a certain kind of democracy in the United States that had a very strong element of pluralism to it because different interest groups would be interested in funding different kinds of things. And part of her point and part of my interest is what happens when those acts of citizen philanthropy are so overshadowed by the few mega-donors, the foundations, the large and very, very wealthy structures of philanthropy? Lila Corwin Berman: And if, what happens, as I have traced in my book, is that the citizen philanthropist, in fact, doesn't go away, right? We know that Americans across the board continue to give at roughly the same percentage to charitable causes, right? So there's not really a decrease in charitable giving. But there's certainly a decrease in the kind of power in the democratic process that those small donors might have a chance of accessing, right? There's just less need to court those small donors, less need to think about how to kind of have a participatory mode of philanthropy. At the end of the day, it's much more important to kind of land those big, big donors. And so that kind of shift, it's not to say that Americans have stopped giving charitably because that's really not the case, but to ask a question about how philanthropy has affected the nature of our democracy, right? As you have the kinds of patterns of inequality being inscribed in philanthropy, and in certain ways being inscribed by philanthropy, right? If philanthropy ends up being a system that actually kind of, calcifies wealthy people having and holding wealth, and having and holding power, then it's certainly difficult to square that with any kind of aspiration of democracy. Bryan Schwartzman: All right. So maybe you'll find this ironic since this is a show where we're talking about philanthropy and some of the issues with how it's practiced today, but we are here asking for your philanthropic support. If you'd like to support, champion these groundbreaking conversations of Evolve that happened on the podcast, right on the website, in our online conversations, you can engage in citizens' philanthropy, and support us. Every gift matters. There's a donate link right in our show notes for your convenience. Thank you for listening, and thank you so much for your support. All right. Now, back to Lila Corwin Berman and Jewish philanthropy. So I wanted to acknowledge that 2020 has been a difficult year for everybody, but documented very tough for a lot of Jewish organizations. There's been mass layoffs. Maybe it hasn't been as catastrophic yet as some feared in terms of the contraction of the sector. I guess I'm wondering what historical parallels or lessons might be pertinent now as we're facing this real uncertain future? Lila Corwin Berman: Yeah, it's a good question. So in the book, actually, one of the chapters starts with 2008. Well, it starts with Bernie Madoff and his arrest and it documents the kind of cascading effects that his arrest and the revelation that there was kind of no there there, when it came to the good investments that he seemed to be offering all sorts of clients, including nonprofit organizations, including family foundations, that had a lot of money invested in his portfolios. And that there was a kind of reckoning that happened really quickly. So he's arrested in December and in January this group of Jewish leaders of foundations and Federations get together to meet, and it does seem like there's this kind of reckoning - like it's not a great system if the malfeasance of one individual, the criminality of one individual causes so much of it to pull apart, and why were we so willing to accept these kinds of returns that frankly didn't make much sense? Lila Corwin Berman: That's not how the market had been working and it really didn't make much sense. And do we need to really reassess this kind of system? And what I ended up finding is that despite what seemed like a kind of early appetite to do some real rethinking, that really didn't happen, right? The goal was in a sense very similar to how the American government worked. There were bailouts and Jewish organizations offered these bailouts and good, because I think that helped people keep jobs. It certainly helped people, but it was not paired with a kind of appetite for much reform, right? And that was certainly the case after the 2008 kind of crash for American Jewish organizations. There was not much of a sense that because of Madoff and because of the recession that there needed to be a real shift, the goal was really just to build back up. Lila Corwin Berman: So thinking about our moment and the devastations that it has certainly brought, absolutely I'm weighing in the fact that these Jewish organizations, especially Federations and some of the private family foundations really quickly, in a matter of just a couple of weeks got together, capitalized the fund, put together a lending program. This is extraordinary. And it deserves praise, right? People who were saying, "These are real people's lives on the line, and we need to make sure that people are okay and people have jobs and have food." Whether or not that's going to be coupled with a fundamental rethink, it's really hard to say. If 2008 is any example, then I think not. Right? I think that what happens in crisis is like, it can cause people to see things in a totally different light, or I think it can be so unsettling that people just want to hold onto what felt normal, right? Lila Corwin Berman: They just want to kind of return to the way things were. Even if there's a bit of a sense like, "Oh, if things fall apart so quickly like this, maybe this isn't the best thing." Maybe we should actually be thinking about ways to have a state and a government that in more overt ways helps the public instead of outsourcing so much of that to private actors, right? Maybe we should think about why some other countries were able to respond to this pandemic, and I don't think it's just because we happen to have a president who was probably the worst person made for this moment. Why is it that other kinds of forms of government have been able to respond to this in a better fashion than the United States, right? And what does it say about our system, which has become so, so privatized? Lila Corwin Berman: So maybe people will start to ask some of those questions, right? Certainly after the Great Depression, the New Deal was a rethink. It was about building a social welfare state. And in fact, the New Deal was what allowed American Jewish philanthropy to build in a certain way, you could say, as a kind of counterbalance to it, right? Because you then had a social welfare state that took on a lot of the responsibilities that Jewish philanthropy had been taking on, allowed it to move in more directions. It allowed it to imagine accumulating endowments, right? So it's a complicated history. But we do have examples when crisis really causes people to think differently. Bryan Schwartzman: Lots of places to go with that. I mean, I am wondering, it does sound like on some level you're talking about a rethink larger than the philanthropy set up. You're talking about the state0-citizen compact, right? And what kind of democracy we have, right? I mean, putting that on Jewish Federations and philanthropists, is that fair? You're saying we have a role to play? Lila Corwin Berman: Yeah. It's totally fair. Come on, right? I mean, look, I'm not saying that those organizations alone have to solve it, right? But I think that insofar as, and this is where it feels very personal for me: once I realize I have benefited from this system of American Jewish philanthropy, so doesn't that require me then to think about the terms of how I've benefited, right? But what does that obligate me to do then knowing that there are so many ways that my own career, my own kind of ability to succeed insofar as I have, or have not, is because of being invested in by the structure? I also then am required to ask questions about at whose expense, right? And is this ultimately a system that should remain as it is, or by delving into the history and understanding choices made and consequences of those choices, could we free ourselves to ask some very, very different questions? Lila Corwin Berman: Now it does not mean that I alone now have to make that change, right? I can't. And it doesn't mean that American Jewish philanthropy alone has to make that change, it can't. But if what I ended up doing is saying, "It's so much bigger than I am." And if Jewish philanthropic organizations say, which people said to me, "Look, we recognize there are some of these problems, but we're downstream from the real issues. So we're just operating in this structure." I might say, "I have a great deal of compassion for that, and the fact that you're a beneficiary of the structure, requires or obligates you to ask these questions and to think about why are you benefiting? And if you go and you're lobbying Congress to have more earned income tax credits for day schools. What are you saying about public education and American democracy being tied to ideas of every child deserving an equal education, for example?" It doesn't mean you tear down the whole thing, but it certainly means that you allow yourself to ask some of those really hard questions and know that you're in the game. Bryan Schwartzman: Well, with your public writings, your op-eds, and now your book, you've clearly got a lot of people in the sector talking, thinking, you've started conversations. So I'm certainly curious to see where they go and equally curious and looking forward to what you do and what you tackle next. It's really a pleasure to have you on the show and I hope we have the chance to have you back. Thanks so much for a great conversation. I'm still adding up all the zeros in my head, but... Lila Corwin Berman: Well thanks so much. It was my pleasure. Bryan Schwartzman: Thanks so much for listening to the conversation with Lila Corwin Berman about her essay, Philanthropy in a Time of Crisis and Why History Matters". What did you think of today's episode? We want to hear from you. Evolve is about meaningful conversations and that includes you. Send us your questions, comments, feedback, whatever you've got. You can reach me at my real honest-to-goodness email address at bschwartzman@reconstructingjudaism.org. We will be back with an all new episode next month. Evolve, Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations is executive produced by Rabbi Jacob Staub and edited by Sam Wachs. Our theme song Ilu Finu, is by Rabbi Miriam Margles. This show is a production of Reconstructing Judaism. I'm your host, Bryan Schwartzman, and we will see you next time.