By DAVID IZRAELEVITZ
Los Alamos
My earliest memory of a “non-profit” organization reaching out while growing up was during the fall of 1971, some months after our family had finally immigrated to the U.S. and living in Bridgeton, a small town in southern New Jersey. My father had started a job at a knitting factory, and the five of us lived in a one-bedroom apartment.
One of the managers at the factory had noticed the Izraelevitz last name, and correctly surmising a new Jewish family, introduced my parents to the local synagogue. Attending services soon followed, and with the translation assistance of a Jewish Cuban emigre, my brother and I started attending Sunday school, supplementing our immersion into the English language through regular school.
The local jewelry store owner, a certain Mr. Cohen, took a special liking to our family, and would visit us on occasion, and check in on us. On one of his visits, he brought with him a message from the congregation. My sister slept with my parents, while my brother and I shared a pull-out couch in the living room, and Mr. Cohen had noticed our cramped living arrangements. The community was interested in financially helping us to purchase a house nearby. I still remember a family meeting, all of us spread out on our parents’ bed, my father excitedly explaining the offer and that we would visit the house soon.
I remember driving by the house, it was red and white, yet I don’t remember entering it, as my father soon decided, after the combination of the nasty firing of a co-worker and the compounding effect of a single factory in town, that we should move where his employment opportunities were less fragile, and we resettled in New York City.
Nevertheless, that offer from Mr. Cohen and his synagogue, the family meeting surrounded by blankets and pillows, that red and white house, Sunday school, even those interminable religious services, have remained deep in my heart. It was a magnanimous, welcoming gesture from a community eager to accept these strangers newly in their midst, and I will never forget it. My parents returned to Bridgeton to visit Mr. Cohen many times until he passed away.
The term “non-profit organization” is one I deeply dislike. It defines an organization and the people behind it by what they are not, rather than by what they are. It is not that a food pantry, a historical society, a youth support group, etc. dislike being in the black at the end of their fiscal year. It is just that the people behind this organization are driven by a different bottom line than a monetary one. They could likely make a higher salary working elsewhere, could work less time and less intensely, and and so many of them work for no salary at all.
U.S. Code Title 26, Subtitle A, Chapter 1, Subchapter F, Part 1, Section 501c3 has a full paragraph with 133 words to define these “non-profit” organizations, but surely we can find a shorter description. If not driven by profit, what are these organizations driven by? Maybe the adjective charitable comes to mind, but that is also incomplete. Organizations that strive to elevate our society through art and music, that want to better educate our children or promote their wellness through sports, or myriad other noble goals are not “assistance to those in need.” It is a higher and broader mission than that.
The Hebrew Scriptures do not speak of charity, because there is no such word in the Hebrew language. The closest approximation might be the word for righteousness, Tzedakah, or the word for love, Ahavah. A righteous or loving organization is a better descriptor than a 501c3 nonprofit. I vote for loving organization.
It was love that we experienced in that little town in southern New Jersey, it is love that I witness when I see volunteers or underpaid and overworked staff all around me follow their passion and their hearts. I’d be very happy if the IRS is willing to reduce 133 words to two or three, but I suspect the word love is nowhere part of the Internal Revenue Code.
August 17 is U.S. National Nonprofit Day.