But some longtime Jewish advocates and historians say the campaign is as much about a new generation of activists trying to gain influence and inject their style of social justice work as it is about anything else. The new crop of groups is trying to spread influence through cultural efforts, such as JDub Records and the Jewschool blog, as well as through such traditional grass-roots groups as Jews United for Justice, which focuses on issues such as housing and labor in the D.C. area.

“It's true that established groups haven't spoken with one voice on domestic issues, but they have advocated for those things," said Pamela S. Nadell, professor of history and director of Jewish studies at American University. "What's happening is these new groups — which are very exciting — are trying to band together to exercise larger political clout."

I join Professor Nadell in her excitement over the possibilities revealed by this collaboration. There are dozens of independent organizations and blogs that share an upstart mentality, if not necessarily the same specific policy agendas. As I mention at the bottom, this campaign is part of our effort at jspot.org to develop a Jewish netroots.

WaPo also notes that

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Earlier this week, I sat down for lunch with several co-workers to talk about our personal philanthropy. How did we make decisions about our tzedekah? What motivated us? Where did our money go?

Let me back up for a second and provide some context. This is a topic of no small interest in my job, because we are a public foundation. That means we give away money, but unlike most foundations you’ve heard of, we aren’t funded through an endowment. We raise our own budget each year.

In the Jewish world, we are unique – a Jewish foundation whose grantmaking is focused on supporting community organizing in low-income communities, mostly immigrants and people of color.

So, back to lunch. We all went around and spoke about our personal tzedakah. For many of us, myself included, we were not terribly strategic about our giving. Although there is consensus among us that poverty issues are a priority, we often gave significant amounts of money to support causes that had nothing to do with poverty. The reason for giving? Usually because we were asked to give by a close friend or relative. We were giving mostly for them, not for the cause.

As the conversation progressed, one of us raised the question of anonymous vs non-anonymous giving. The example cited with greatest disapproval was the practice by one Jewish Federation to publish and distribute a list the exact dollar amount of all of its contributors. This was an egregious enough sin to convince one of our lot to forgo future contributions.

Stop. Fast forward a few days. I’m reading Jewcy and enjoying the mutual admiration society forming between Joey Kurtzman and Peter Singer over whether or not the former should be pleasuring himself in front of the world for his $1000 contribution to fight global poverty.

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