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December 15, 2008 | 7:42 am

The questionable legacy of Eli & Edythe Broad

Posted by Dean Rotbart

Philanthropist Eli Broad, a major patron of the arts

Date: December 15, 2008
To: Eli Broad, The Broad Foundations
From: Dean Rotbart, Jewish Journalist
Topic: Jewish Charities, Too, Need Your Support Now!

For those of you who didn’t get the memo, here it is…

Eli, you recently issued an open call for other civic and arts minded philanthropists to step to the plate to rescue the Museum of Contemporary Art from the financial abyss.

“This is not a one-philanthropist town,” you opined in the Los Angeles Times late last month, pledging to invest $30 million anew in MOCA, which you helped found in 1979, if others will open their wallets too.

A globally heralded supporter of the arts, public education, and medical research, you and your wife Edythe are also looking to build a Beverly Hills headquarters for the Broad Art Foundation. The new 25,000-square-foot facility would include a public museum and extra storage space for your totally awesome collection of contemporary art – one of the finest such private assemblages anywhere.

Given that my family and I delight in good art and can readily walk from our home to the corner of Santa Monica and Wilshire Boulevards – a likely location for the Broad Art Foundation – I personally couldn’t be more enthusiastic or grateful.

Far be it from me, a committed fiscal conservative, to try and tell you and Edythe where you should contribute, unless, of course, I care about what really matters in this life – and the next.

Perhaps, in our capitalistic system, we have no right to tell the über rich how they should allocate their estates. Perhaps. But I doubt that heaven shares our free-enterprise sensibilities.

As the force behind the Broad Foundations, with combined (pre-crash) assets of roughly $2.5 billion, the two of you have been grand patrons of the arts. Eli, you have received so many honors and titles, including being named Chevalier in the National Order of the Legion of Honor by the Republic of France in 1994, that one day someone will have to found a museum just to catalogue your collection of accolades.

But as much as I really would enjoy surveying the incomparable works by Warhol, Koons, Hirst, Rauschenberg, Lichtenstein and others resident in your massive private collection, I don’t know how I will ever be able to do so in good conscience.

Nor do I know how the two of you can contemplate building yet one more monument to your own generosity, or purchasing one more multi-million dollar work of oil on canvass, when the funds you spend could do so much good for your own people – the Jewish People.

It escapes me why so many Jewish billionaires delude themselves into believing that the money they earned by the grace of God, should not be bountifully reinvested back into his direct service?

Eli, we know your life story. You grew up in Detroit and began your professional life as a $75-a-week accountant. You are the son of Lithuanian Jewish immigrants. The fact that you made a fortune twice; first as a homebuilder (Kaufman & Broad) and then again in insurance/retirement planning (SunAmerica) is exceptional among American business luminaries.

Los Angeles is your adopted home, having moved here in 1963 after a brief sojourn in Phoenix. I know you adore our City of Angels, as you told Vanity Fair magazine two years ago, because Los Angeles is a great meritocracy.

“Where can someone with my background – don’t have the right family background, the right religion, the right provenance or whatever you want to call it – I come here and I’m accepted. The city’s been good to me. And I want to give back.”

Eli and Edythe, you are not alone. Across the United States and throughout the world there are hundreds of other examples of enormously rich Jews who believe they are not of the “right” religion and thus wary to be seen by other wealthy folk and the public at large as ‘too Jewish’. These insecure Warbucks prefer to use their monies to fund decidedly secular causes.

Ticking off just a few examples, as detailed in this year’s Lifestyles Magazine “Global Philanthropy Register”: Leonard A. Lauder, Chairman of the Board of Estée Lauder Companies, at least $331 million to the Whitney museum; Bernard Marcus, co-founder of Home Depot, $250 million to build an aquarium in Atlanta; David Rubenstein, co-founder of the Carlyle Group, $21.3 million to purchase a copy of the Magna Carta to be housed at the National Archives; and Leonore Annenberg, wife of the late publishing magnate Walter Annenberg, to build a $15 million theater bearing the couple’s names at the Newseum in Washington D.C.

Probably the single largest beneficiary of donations from Jewish millionaires and billionaires are America’s universities, which reap billions of dollars annually from Jewish alumni and other Jewish donors despite the fact that their campuses are breeding grounds of anti-Jewish, anti-Israel sentiments and teachings.

One glaring example is Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots, who last year publicly agreed to contribute $5 million to Columbia University’s “Campaign for Athletics” just days after Iranian dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke on campus to an auditorium of mostly cheering students and faculty. (I am not oblivious to the many Jewish causes that Kraft also supports.) Ahmadinejad spoke in September 2007 at Columbia’s Alfred J. Lerner Hall, named for its Jewish benefactor.

Meanwhile, most American Jewish day schools starve for a few financial crumbs from these so-called philanthropists.

To my mind, this Jewish guilt – or is it Jewish denial? – is repugnant.

Eli and Edythe, your lives are finite. No matter how many buildings and galleries you erect here to showcase your fine taste, none of it will go with you into the next life.

For the more than $8 million you spent last month alone at a Sotheby’s auction to lard your collection of contemporary art, you could help fund a dozen yeshivas for a year. These are boys and girls who won’t grow up believing they are of the wrong religion and heritage.

For what you will likely pay to purchase the land and construct the new Beverly Hills Broad museum, (like Southern California is starved for one more sibling to join LACMA, MOCA, the Getty, the Hammer and others) you could construct and house a full-born Jewish day school, such as Milken Community High School here and the Dell Jewish Community Campus in Austin, Texas. Heck, you likely would have enough spare change to provide 100s of full-tuition scholarships.

Then there is Israel.

What might your wealth do to fortify her with better education, health care, technology and even defensive military equipment?

It is your money. I will defend your legal right to make your choices. But never your values.

I ask you to reconsider your legacy. There are plenty of others to support the arts, and your contributions in that arena are vested. It is not even a year since the $56 million Broad Contemporary Art Museum opened at LACMA.

What the Jewish people need are role models who will prioritize Jewish causes to receive the preponderance of their charitable giving. That philanthropic space is severely underserved.

My instincts tell me that when the two of you do meet your maker, may you both live to be 120, He will greet you warmly for your generosity, especially on behalf of education and health charities. But if He does ask, “Why didn’t you do more specifically to help the Jewish people and repay My many blessings”, what will you respond?

p.s. Now you’ve got The Memo!

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As my Parents who are no longer with us would have said “Gut Gasagt” Having lived here in Los Angeles since 1962 I have met many Jews (too many) who are successful yet self hating Jews who continue to look at the Gentile for their approval.  Are we ever going to sever the Shetle Jew and be Proud of our heritage and Israel and stop the Jewish Guilt?

Comment by Sol Schneider on 12/15/08 at 5:58 pm

Dear Dean,

I apologize for Mr & Mrs Broad for not donating to your favorite charity.

Gilbert H. Skopp

Comment by Gilbert H. Skopp on 12/15/08 at 6:53 pm

Apology accepted.  If you really want to make amends, write a check, even for $18.00, and mail it to one of Los Angeles’ fine Jewish Day Schools.  Send me a copy of the check and I’ll post it on The Memo to show you are after all a truly good guy.  Come on, it’s only 18 bucks and it will put you in good with the man upstairs.  Deal?

Comment by Dean Rotbart on 12/15/08 at 9:53 pm

Pay money for God’s approval? Surely this is satire!

Comment by J on 12/16/08 at 12:02 am

J.  No jest here.  God and the IRS operate from two different playbooks.  The IRS may consider it charity to buy a painting for $11.6 million and then show it in public.  The Torah teaches us that God does not share that public-spirited view.  Rather, He judges charity based on its direct benefits to people.  If you haven’t read the book, I highly recommend ‘Rambam’s Ladder:  A Meditation on Generosity and Why It Is Necessary to Give’ by Julie Salamon.  Only an atheist will remain convinced of Eli Broad’s generosity after reading it.

Dean Rotbart
The Memo

Comment by Dean Rotbart on 12/16/08 at 5:20 am

I politely disagree. I average about ten percent of my yearly income of charity giving and I’m an Atheist.

Comment by Sol Schneider on 12/16/08 at 9:02 am

Sol, I appreciate your comment.  Do you donate to ‘good’ causes or to tax-deductible causes?  Not that they have to be mutually exclusive.  My intent was not to say that Atheists can’t be or aren’t charitable.  Of course they are.  My point was that only someone who doesn’t believe a God dictates an order of charity would be able to equate showing a painting to feeding the hungry (for example) on the charitable scale.

Dean Rotbart
The Memo

Comment by Dean Rotbart on 12/16/08 at 9:08 am

Dear Dean,
I think that I’m a charitable man, more generous than some, not as generous perhaps as others. Your suggestion to post my check on your blog would lessen the level of my gift.  You cited the Rambam in your response to J.  Did the Rambam not say that the second highest level of Tzedakah is to give anonymously? The recipient of the donation should not know from where it came and the charity should remain unknown. However, rest assured there is a Jewish Day School that is receiving some support from me.
Gilbert

Comment by Gilbert H. Skopp on 12/17/08 at 9:08 pm

Dear Dean.
I knew Maimonides described 8 levels for giving charity, but I wasn’t aware God made a charitable scale. You might argue, “well, it’s common sense, bread before Art”, but that’s your common sense, not necessarily God’s. Mr Schneider might even say it’s only your common sense because there is no God.
Gilbert

Comment by Gilbert H. Skopp on 12/17/08 at 9:23 pm

Dear Gilbert,

I believe you really do support an area Jewish Day School and I publicly thank you for it!  You are a good man after all .

I believe there are some concepts in the world that are absolute and charity is one of them.  There is a huge, huge difference between what is legal, what is constitutional and what is right.

Eli and Edythe Broad have not yet met a building they don’t want to see their names on.  Do they have the right?  Of course.  Is it right?  Obviously, I think not.

I believe great art museums enrich us all, Jew, non-Jew, atheist, communist, you name it.  I am a member of LACMA and my family and I regularly visit area art museums. 

But if my enjoyment of art is at the expense of securing the long-term viability of the Jewish people, then I can live without it.  I simply can’t equate the two as being morally equivalent.

The Broads have done plenty for the art world.  Enough!  Time for them to step up and bolster the many worthy Jewish causes.

Some may question whether or not God notes the difference in charitable giving.  All I can say is that the God described in the Torah most certainly does—if that matters to the Broads or any other ‘genetic’ Jews.

What, you may ask is a ‘genetic’ Jew?  A human whose DNA says s/he is Jewish, but whose behaviors would argue otherwise.

Comment by Dean Rotbart on 12/17/08 at 9:52 pm

Gilbert Skopp wrote:
Dear Dean,

I am familiar with the concept of genetic Jews. Did you know that scientists can trace 78% of Ashkanazi male’s ancestory back to the Middle East, based on a regular rate of mutation of their “x” gene. Only 50% of Ashkanazi women however can trace their ancestory back to the Middle East based on a similar process with their Mitichondria? Explanation: some of the men were fooling around after they left the Middle East. Some may say that was questionable Jewish behavior! Actually questionable Jewish behavior is more often in the eyes of the beholder.

I wrote to you about the irony of the Memo’s position with respect to Eli Broad and Bernie Madoff. You asked me a question as to whether I believed that you or I can tell Eli Broad how he should be charitable. I concluded that since it’s his money; he earned it, he didn’t steal it, he has the right to spend it or give it away as he sees fit. Furthermore, I suggested that you might speak nicely to him and explain the need of your personal charity and why it would be a mitzvah for him to donate.

We also acknowledged Maimonides’ 8 levels of providing charity, but I must confess I’m not aware of God’s charitable scale. His values and our values may be different.

Gilbert
Reply to this
12/28/2008 6:20 PM Gilbert Skopp wrote:

In my recent reply to you, Dean, I erred in writing “X” Gene. I should have written, “X” Chromosome.

The point I labored to make to your rhetorical question and answer…” What, you may ask is a ‘genetic’ Jew? A human whose DNA says s/he is Jewish, but whose behaviors would argue otherwise”, is that I agree that there are markers in our DNA that tend to associate present Jews with a population in the Middle East during a certain period in the past that proclaimed themselves to be Jewish.

However, “behaviors” is a relative term (perhaps there is a “Behavior Scale” that you endorse). There is no gene (or Chromosome) that is associated with Jewish behavior. Therefore, Genetic Jew is really a derogatory term with no scientific basis.

I can not see Eli Broad, with his many philanthropies being labeled as a “genetic Jew” because he does not donate to your favorite charities. You do him a disservice.

Gilbert
Reply to this

Comment by Gilbert H. Skopp on 12/28/08 at 6:30 pm

Let me recommend to all interested in our shared genetic history—which brings us Ashkenazi I.Q. and Ashkenazi breast cancer if not Jewish ‘behaviors’— the newly-released Abraham’s Children.

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Pay money for God’s approval? How could they say that?

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Comment by Создание сайтов в Киеве on 8/10/09 at 6:00 am

We need to congratulate Eli Broad for his generosity, even though it is for the arts. I know a lot of people will like him to provide more direct support for Jewish causes, but his philanthropic efforts should be denigrated.
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Comment by bedava lig tv izle on 8/21/09 at 10:31 am

I’m a charitable man and generous than some, not as generous perhaps as you think. Your suggestion to post my check on your blog would lessen the level of my gift. The recipient of the donation should not know from where it came and the charity should remain unknown. However, rest assured there is a Jewish Day School that is receiving some support from me.
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Comment by Term papers service on 10/12/09 at 6:13 am

Eli Broad has been incredibly generous time and time again and I think that this is something that everyone should be thankful for regardless of anything else.
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Comment by Voff on 10/12/09 at 12:56 pm

Eli Broad has been incredibly generous time and time again and I think that this is something that everyone should be thankful for regardless of anything else.
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This indeed was to illustrate the feelings of love and art within the contemporary society. And other this type of steps should be encouraged to settle up the normal society and culture.

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Foundations like the Broads’ can definitely support culture, which in turn breeds a stronger national identity. Good job!

Comment by wrist weights on 2/01/10 at 7:58 pm

I think the approach of demanding money from a philanthropist cannot be successful, even if one understands why it would be just (and in his own best interest) for him to contribute thus.  However, I will bet that if someone knowledgable and willing would appeal to Mr. Broad and help him to understand the worth of say, yeshiva day schools, which perpetuate our long history, there may very well be a softer response.

Comment by Anon on 2/08/10 at 7:49 pm

Also, if we are appealing to a Jewish philanthropist about one particular Jewish school in one locale it could be perceived as “my favorite charity”.  The larger picture is that there are Jewish schools in every major city across the nation, and many in smaller cities as well, most of which are needy for financial resources.

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