Like all charities, many Jewish groups have been hard hit by the recession. Some have been forced to lay off employees in recent months.
Stephen G. Donshik, a lecturer at Hebrew University’s International Leadership and Philanthropy Program, wonders on the Jewish Philanthropy blog about the ethics of trimming a charity’s staff.
Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, the philosopher-scholar better known as Maimonides, suggested that the most important way to assist someone is to enable him or her to find a job so that person no longer has to rely on charity, according to Mr. Donshik.
“This being the case,” he writes, “then the imperative would be to find a way to keep our communal professionals employed.”
He continues: “It is also far better to keep someone employed than add them to the already exploding rolls of the unemployed.”
While Mr. Donshik says he recognizes that charity leaders have a responsibility to manage their organizations’ finances effectively, he says that people who lead Jewish charities should consider other measures such as asking staff to take a voluntary pay cut and adopting a four-day workweek before they conduct layoffs.
He challenges United Jewish Communities to consider coming up with a recommended approach for cutting costs, based on Jewish values, that could be used by all federations.
