c. 2004 Religion News Service

BEDFORD, N.Y. _ The books on the coffee table of Michael Steinhardt reveal why the former hedge fund manager is devoting more of his time to Jewish philanthropy.

“American Judaism,” a history, sits next to “Who Hops?” and “Who Hoots?” _ children’s books for three grandkids who share the property of his 51-acre country estate.

The titles reflect Steinhardt’s twin passions: his family and the Jewish community. His entrepreneurial approach to giving, bypassing traditional charities, illustrates a trend in Jewish philanthropy.

Despite being a staunch atheist, Steinhardt says his beloved Jewish community is in what he considers a spiritual crisis of values. Ironically, he wants the Jewish community to believe more in the God he himself can’t believe in _ so it can be more authentically Jewish.

“I believe in the values of the Jewish people, evolved over four to five thousand years, being superior to any other values that I know,” said Steinhardt. “These values have created, over a period of time, a people whose achievements relative to their numbers are far superior to that of any other people that I know.”

Steinhardt, who grew up in working-class Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, in the 1940s and ’50s, said the Hebrew school education he received from an Orthodox synagogue did not instill in him a sustainable religious commitment to Judaism. As a result of that unsatisfying experience, Steinhardt grew alienated from the Jewish community, he said.

He said like-minded Jews of his generation consequently de-emphasized the Jewish educational experience of their children, “and in general that has not led to a highly educated, Jewishly at least, non-Orthodox constituency,” said Steinhardt.

“Only now are we beginning to understand the implications of that, one of which is of course a greatly assimilating and integrating population,” he added.

After decades spent in the risky but financially rewarding business of managing hedge funds, Steinhardt decided in 1995 that he would devote himself full time to starting and funding programs that would try to address Jewish problems ranging from apathy to intermarriage.

Scholars observe Steinhardt as an example of an overall shift in Jewish philanthropy from a straightforward model of donations, usually to a community federation, to a more actively involved model of shaping the programs large gifts are funding. This trend appears even as the country has seen an overall decline in American Jews giving to Jewish causes.

“Jewish fund-raising has emerged as a more entrepreneurial kind of activity in the recent past, rather than the more traditional obligation,” said Arnold Dashefsky, a sociology professor at the University of Connecticut who is working on a book on Jewish charitable giving.

Philanthropists want to “more directly control” the use of their money, “rather than leaving it to a larger set of communal priorities,” he said.

The result has been new Jewish institutions. Entrepreneurial philanthropists, including Steinhardt, have been behind some of the most successful Jewish endeavors of the past decade, said Dashefsky.

“They’ve used their entrepreneurial spirit and their business know-how to create new institutions, to challenge the established Jewish community to re-look at how they do things,” said Lisa Eisen, program director of the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, which often works closely with Steinhardt.

Calling Steinhardt a “blunt” person who would prefer to offer an alternative vision rather than accept the status quo, Eisen says that he has “created a culture” around his programs, particularly Birthright Israel, which sends 18-to-26-year-old American Jews on free 10-day trips to Israel.

Also notable in Steinhardt’s arsenal of efforts to engage young people in Jewish life is the Jewish Service Campus Corps, which sends single people right out of college to campuses to create Jewish clubs and activities; the Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education, which aims to strengthen enrollment in Jewish day schools; and Synagogues: Transformation and Renewal, which hopes to strengthen synagogue life in an age of declining affiliation. Steinhardt is also a board member of Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life.

Steinhardt can be critical of both the Jewish denominations and the federation system that has governed Jewish giving for decades but now struggles financially. However, he often partners with these groups in order to achieve his goals, announcing a major new matching fund initiative at the General Assembly of the United Jewish Communities last year, for example.

Steinhardt believes that challenging institutions is the best way to foster growth.

“I try to stay out of the mainstream,” he said. “I try to think about those areas that need changing and do them,” whether from within or without.

Steinhardt, “Hoo-Ha” to his grandchildren, lives in Manhattan and summers at the country estate, where a kitchen staff prepares lunch while gardeners are busy tending the lush flower beds outside.

Also sharing the estate with Steinhardt, wife Judy and their daughter’s family is an impressive array of exotic animals, including zebras, ostriches, llamas and several families of lemurs from Madagascar.

His collections _ of animals, antiques and Japanese maple trees _ fold into his lifelong struggle with atheism. He wrote of his maples in his 2001 autobiography “No Bull: My Life in and out of Markets”:

“The colors seem to radiate above the trees, almost as if generated by the God I do not believe in.”

Steinhardt’s approach to his belief system is not casual. “I have always tried to challenge my atheism,” he said, though every effort to do so, through extensive reading and research, as well as conversations with respected rabbis, “has failed.”

This failure is for one basic reason _ an existential struggle with the evil of the Holocaust and other events of the 20th century.

“When I focus on the experiences of the 20th century, particularly the experiences of the Jewish people, I conclude that the attributes given to God in the Bible do not remotely apply,” he said.

But the values of Judaism are still badly needed, he said. The three he said he most identifies with are education, “tzedakah” (which can be translated as responsibility) and social meritocracy.

MO/PH END RNS