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Gary Wexler

Basic Info

Member since:
12/31/2006
Last Logged In:
07/30/2009

Posted in: Jewish Agency/MASA change course on ad

The link to this story is certainly making the rounds. I have now received it from about ten different people. The problem here is not the TV spot or its concept. The actual spot and its concept is pretty interesting. The problem is the strategy. If MASA believes that Israelis are one of the strategies to recruit Diaspora Jews to commit to an Israel program, then the TV spot is a total waste of money and time. Does anyone really think that by seeing this TV spot, Israelis are going to run to their computers, bring up the MASA website and start sending out links to their relatives???This type of strategy, in order to have a prayer of success, requires among Israelis a deep and strategic community organizing effort, hands on education, identifying Israeli influencers who can tap into their Israeli networks and a host of other labor intensive initiatives. It is naive and wasteful of hard raised dollars to use them in such an non-strategic manner.

Posted in: Haredi protests in Jerusalem highlight difference with Diaspora

The bigger issue is that a mother in their community was abusing and starving her child. Rather than deal with this reality and the steps that any responsible society's lawmakers must take to protect its children, this community refused to accept what one of its mothers is doing because it shakes their foundations as to who they want to believe they are. So they are willing to sacrifice the well being of this defenseless child for the sake of their inability to accept that abuse happens in their community. The Haredim are human like everyone else and everything human happens. Instead of taking the appropriate action, I witnessed them taking to the streets to throwing their garbage, burning and having their youth run around on a Motzei Shabbat with the excitement of being at the circus. They need to stop wearing blinders and then blaming the consequences on Israeli justifiable protectors of the country's laws.

Posted in: Gary Tobin, Jewish researcher, dies at 59

Gary's death is a great loss to intellectual, contemporary Jewish thought. I often depended upon his research for my own professional actions. He brought a fresh and unexpected perspective to analyzing the Jewish community, forcing us to think in ways that were not always comfortable, but consistently critical to our communal objectives. Gary Wexler

Posted in: Blair wins Dan David Prize

1. Tel Aviv University, a wonderful institution is experiencing severe financial problems. 2. Israelis are experiencing extreme financial problems. 3. Students badly need scholarships. 4. Departments are severely underfunded and closing. 5. There is a brain drain because professors don't have jobs. 6. The American economy is spiraling out of control. 7. Madoff 8. Funders don't have the money they used to. 9. And Tel Aviv University is awarding a $1million prize to Tony Blair 10. Someone should have spoken with the Dan David committee and asked if maybe this year they could either give their prize money to scholarship or hold it back. 11. This is a public relations disaster in the making for the University

Posted in: Pressure mounts for Jewish organizations to merge

The Jewish community should have been strategically planning for years how to merge its organizations, making us a smarter, leaner and a more targeted enterprise. The amount of duplicated efforts that exist in our community, with a tweek here, a slight difference there, a big board ego here, a glorious history there, have made us at times seem foolish and look like we are hiding our heads in the sand. But only when there is a money crisis, do organizations take steps that they should have taken before. The questions is what do we as a community learn from this? What lessons are emerging that are universal, that apply even when times are good? There is a big discussion for our community that sits inside this topic. Gary Wexler

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Updated 11/20/09 @ 11:30AM EDT

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