WASHINGTON (
JTA)
— Michael Steinhardt has loomed large for a generation as one of the
most important givers to Jewish causes. A number of them bear his name.
And this week, The New York Times and ProPublica, the journalism nonprofit,
interviewed
seven women who said that “Steinhardt asked them to have sex with him,
or made sexual requests of them, while they were relying on or seeking
his support.”
No one on the two lists of 11
extant beneficiaries
on the website of The Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life had much to
tell the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, from projects as niche as the
Hebrew language instruction course at the famed Middlebury College in
Vermont (“I cannot speak to that, I’m sorry,” said the unidentified
woman who answered) to the far-reaching, like Birthright Israel, the
program that sends young Jewish adults on free educational tours of the
country.
Some replies trickled in late in the day. The Foundation for Jewish
Camp said it did not anticipate funding for this year. “As far as I can
see, FJC received funding of approximately $90k in 2018 from the Areivim
Philanthropic Group — a consortium of philanthropists which includes
the Steinhardt Foundation — for branding and marketing support of Kayitz
Kef, Hebrew immersion in day camps, completing their three-year funding
commitment for this program,” a spokeswoman, Aimee Lerner, said in an
email. “We do not have any funding committed for 2019 from the Areivim
Philanthropic Group nor The Steinhardt Foundation directly.”
The Steinhardt Social Research Institute at Brandeis University did
not say whether it would seek funds from Steinhardt, or whether it was
reconsidering its name. “The Institute was founded in 2005 with a set of
gifts that formed an endowment,” Leonard Saxe, its director, said in an
email. “The endowment provided by the Steinhardts and their foundation
has allowed us to conduct cutting-edge quantitative research on Jewish
life in America. No funding has been received in the last year from the
Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life.”
70 Faces Media, JTA’s parent organization, received a $5,000 gift from Steinhardt’s foundation last year.
“At this time our organizational focus is on covering this important
story and the issues that it raises, including claims of sexual
harassment and the treatment of professional staff at Jewish
organizations,” said Ami Eden, 70 Faces’ CEO and executive editor.
As for other groups, messages went unanswered; at least one person hung up abruptly upon hearing what the call was about.
The seven women interviewed by The Times shared allegations going
back to the 1990s in which they said Steinhardt propositioned them or
said sexually charged things while they engaged in their roles in Jewish
institutions or the arts.
In his response, Steinhardt acknowledged a pattern of comments made
in “jest” while denying the specific allegations made in the story. The
comments, he said, “were boorish, disrespectful, and just plain dumb.
They were part of my shtick since before I had a penny to my name.”
His family and foundations, too, spoke about his “well-known sense of
humor,” saying in a statement it “can be insensitive, and he has
apologized for the unintended bad feelings his remarks have caused.” The
statement also said The Times story left “the false impression that
Michael propositioned a handful of women.”
Lila Corwin Berman, a professor of history and director of the
Feinstein Center for American Jewish History at Temple University,
wrote
Friday in The Washington Post that the tolerance for a leader’s
“boorish, disrespectful” behavior may be the consequence of a trend that
gave megadonors like Steinhardt, who launched his foundations in the
1980s, inordinate power.
“A clear line connects Steinhardt’s philanthropic power and a
long-standing pattern of tolerance by the Jewish community of his
alleged conduct toward women and their bodies,” Berman wrote. “The power
he wields, and the belief among many Jewish organizations and their
leaders that he was too powerful to rebuke, is the result of a
historical shift that has seen many Jewish communal structures becoming
beholden to megadonors.”
The notion that Steinhardt’s behavior was forgiven in service of the
greater good was reinforced by some of the comments made by Jewish
leaders in The Times article. Abraham Foxman, the former national
director of the Anti-Defamation League, suggested that Steinhardt’s
sexually charged language was of a piece with his commitment to
programs, like Birthright Israel, that encouraged young Jews to marry
and have children.
“Michael is very passionate, and he is passionate in everything,”
Foxman is quoted as saying. “Call it a passion, call it an obsession,
call it a perversion. Some may. I don’t — I understand it. It’s just the
way it comes out, which may disturb people.”
A couple of beneficiaries have issued statements, although none of
the Jewish groups issued statements like the one by the NYU Steinhardt
School of Culture, Education, and Human Development,
saying it is going to review his interactions with students and staff.
Birthright Israel said, “To the best of our knowledge, we do not have
any record of a complaint made by the former employee noted against
Michael Steinhardt.” One of Steinhardt’s accusers is Deborah Mohile
Goldberg, for nine years Birthright’s director of communications.
“Birthright Israel’s policies, in compliance with law and industry
best practices, support a workplace free from harassment by any
individual who employees engage with, together with an established
protocol for reporting any such experiences and a mechanism for
investigating allegations. Any employee who ever experiences harassment
of any sort should report it immediately in accordance with our
policies,” the organization said.
Earlier this year, Hillel International issued the results of an
investigation into sexual harassment allegations made by staff. Without
naming Steinhardt, it found that the complaints about a donor’s behavior
“were justified,” and apologized to the complainants for not responding
in a timely manner. The Times reported that Hillel did not “pursue” a
$50,000 donation pledged by Steinhardt and removed his name from its
international board of governors.
There were expressions of Jewish outrage, of course, albeit from
groups that were not recipients of Steinhardt’s largess. They included
the
Wexner Foundation,
Lippman Kanfer Foundation for Living Torah, the
Union for Reform Judaism, the
Reform movement’s NFTY Jewish youth group,
American Jewish World Service and
Keshet, a Jewish LGBTQ group.
Jewish Women International said Steinhardt’s behavior was no joke.
“Those who brush off his words as jokes, or excuse his words as a
reflection of his zeal for Jewish continuity, is to demean the personal
and professional value of all women working in the Jewish community,”
Lori Weinstein, the group’s CEO, said in a statement. “To give excuse to
an older generation is to ignore that young men are watching and
learning.”
https://www.jta.org/2019/03/22/united-states/after-allegations-against-michael-steinhardt-beneficiaries-are-not-eager-to-talk?utm_source=JTA%20Maropost&utm_campaign=JTA&utm_medium=email&mpweb=1161-9752-21723
1. Listening to Silence, Hearing the Unspeakable
2. A Short History of Walking
3. The Difference between Loneliness and Solitude
4. The Courage to Be in Solitude
5. Solitary Encounters
Jennifer Stitt is a historian of modern American thought, culture, and politics. She earned a B.A. and M.A. in history from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and is a Ph.D. candidate in U.S. intellectual history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her work has appeared in Aeon, Big Think, The Garrison Institute, On Being, Quartz, Quiet Storm Literary Magazine, Public Seminar, and others. She lives and writes in Birmingham, Alabama.