{"id":725,"date":"2023-11-14T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-11-14T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/scenechange\/?p=725"},"modified":"2023-11-14T15:17:55","modified_gmt":"2023-11-14T15:17:55","slug":"immediacy-not-one-of-the-great-attributes-of-the-nonprofit-arts-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/scenechange\/2023\/11\/14\/immediacy-not-one-of-the-great-attributes-of-the-nonprofit-arts-community\/","title":{"rendered":"Immediacy: Not One of The Great Attributes of the Nonprofit Arts Community"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What\u2019s more important: putting voice to the works directly affecting your community right now? Or doing that thing you promised you\u2019d do a year ago? Or do you care?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Be\u2019eri Kibbutz, Israel, October 8, 2023.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

If the photo used at the top of this article raises your blood pressure a little, makes you mad, makes you sad, or gives you a kick in the pants to do something, anything, right now\u2026 good. The intention of the photo is to spur you to some action, emotion, and empathy while keeping you informed about what happened in early October when Hamas brutally maimed, raped, and slaughtered 1400 Israelis, some of them as they slept.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When was the last time you saw something at your local nonprofit arts organization that made you feel that way?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Is “Fiddler on the Roof” your only connection to the Jewish people? (Image: Marc Chagall, “The Fiddler” 1912)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Working backward in time, Israel went to war against Hamas because Hamas killed Israelis, because Israel suppressed the rights of Palestinians, because Palestinians killed Israelis, because they fought back against the collective troops stationed by all the Arab countries at their borders, because Israelis were Jews and not Muslim and therefore \u201cblood suckers,\u201d \u201cbrothers of apes,\u201d \u201ckillers of the prophets,\u201d \u201chuman pigs,\u201d and \u201cbutchers,\u201d (according to some translations of the Quran) because Jews fought for and achieved the first country from which they would never be expelled (see above), because 6 million Jews were killed at the hands of Hitler and his axis partners, because the German far right (with no small help from American industrialists like Henry Ford) believed that Jews were keeping the White people down after World War 1, because poor Jews were being chased out of Eastern Europe and into Germany, France, and America by Bolsheviks and, before that, Czarists and Cossacks, because because because because because.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I was an actor in my 20s, I met with a potential manager who said to me, \u201cYou people are so funny.\u201d I responded drily, \u201cOh yeah, that Jonas Salk, he was a crackup. And Einstein used to put a lampshade on his head at parties.\u201d The manager laughingly replied, \u201cYes, and David Brenner.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still think Jews have no moral equivalency issue with other victims of hate crime in America?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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When Black Lives Matter protests occurred all over the country Jews organized at their places of worship to form groups to join the marches. They even got together to place this ad in all the major newspapers and news websites across the country:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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If you can\u2019t read the ad (and I know it\u2019s quite small), here are some key parts:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We are Jewish organizations and synagogues from across the racial and political spectrum; from different streams of Judaism; whose members trace their lineage from countries around the world. We speak with one voice when we say, unequivocally: Black Lives Matter. We support the Black-led movement in this country that is calling for accountability and transparency from the government and law enforcement. We know that freedom and safety for any of us depends on the freedom and safety of all of us.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

When Hamas slaughtered 1,400 civilian Jews in Israel on October 7, was there outrage from the Black Lives Matter movement?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBlack Lives Matter Grassroots stands in solidarity with our Palestinian family who are currently resisting 57 years of settler colonialism and apartheid.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, while I know it sounds trite, do Jewish lives matter? If they do, maybe mattering is not all that it\u2019s cracked up to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This month and next, will you see depictions of the stingy, nasty, selfish, miserly Ebenezer Scrooge at your local nonprofit theater where there’s clearly a makeup decision to make the nose larger? Maybe a bit of a dog whistle there?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Now I wonder why they decided to add a giant false nose to Scrooge, don’t you?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Weird, huh?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Make no mistake: Israel\u2019s hands are not clean. Although, they did warn: \u201cNever again.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have seen the mounds of corpses and visited the camps where they killed us. . . . By our sides were the ghosts of those who were no longer, whose blood was shed like water because Jewish blood is considered cheap. We saw their outstretched hands and looked into their burning and soul-searing eyes that peered into our very being and heard them say: Never again. Promise us. Never again.\u201d \u2013 Meir Kahane<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And, with Iranian funding<\/a> for Hamas\u2019 inclination to wipe Israel off the map and kill every last Jew on the planet, maybe Israel was just backing up those famous words with actions. Cruel, horrible, frightening actions, to be sure, but not unusual for a war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In all wars, civilians are killed and debased. Ask the folks in Hiroshima and Nagasaki about that. Or ask your Japanese-American friends whose families whose land was stolen from them as they were forced into camps in the 1940s. Or the families of the millions of Indigenous people who were gruesomely slaughtered in the name of something called \u201cManifest Destiny.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everyone in the US has dirty hands, including groups that had been cruelly subjugated. I just want peace. Palestinian peace. Israeli peace. No more killing, hostages released safely, and reasonable people sitting at tables trying to put an end to the hate. But maybe that\u2019s just me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How\u2019s your local nonprofit arts organization dealing with all this? Are they helping their community handle all this obliteration? Oh, and how did they handle Russia invading Ukraine and killing thousands? How are they handling a group of people in congress who want to end democracy as we currently know it to create a theocratic plutocracy, which is a combination of pseudo-Christian evangelists (like the Puritans, only dressed better) teaming up with the wealthiest 0.1% of the country to create the kind of tyrannical kingdom that the Founding Fathers feared?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I guess the South rose again, after all. Happy now?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Art is political. Art, in fact, is never not <\/em>political. The purpose of great art is to contextualize, galvanize, inform, and catalyze a response. Even the most banal examples of entertainment owns its controversies and mischief. After all, as my old friend and boss Eddie Gilbert once said, \u201cThe only businesses that utilize great quantities of heavy red velvet are theaters and brothels.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That subversive quality of art can help nonprofit arts organizations move past their desires to adhere to the ill-conceived and detrimental notion of \u201cart for art\u2019s sake,\u201d the idea that is killing arts organizations that have no desire to use their charitable status to be, as they ought to be in 2024, charitable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The biggest problem is that it takes so long to create a perfect depiction of the issue \u2014 a play, a ballet, an art exhibition, etc. \u2014 that by the time the work is finished (years later), the issue might no longer be urgent. The world might have moved on, making the art often become moot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But what if your nonprofit arts organization chose to benefit the community\u2019s issues before anything else? What if you saw that the conflict between your own neighborhood\u2019s<\/em> Jews and Muslims stemming from the Israel-Hamas War had become dangerously hostile? What would you do \u2014 right now \u2014 if you could stop the hate from killing people?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can. And you don\u2019t have to wait years. Just do something now \u2014 right now. LIKE THE ARTICLE YOU\u2019RE READING RIGHT NOW, it might not artistically perfect, or even great. But if it lowered the emotional temperature or brought clarity, wouldn\u2019t that be worth it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And wouldn\u2019t that be a charitable cause that would service your community? After all, it fits the requirements of Section 501(C)(3), \u201clessening neighborhood tensions; eliminating prejudice and discrimination; defending human and civil rights secured by law; and combating community deterioration and juvenile delinquency,\u201d doesn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You have <\/em>read Section 501(C)(3) of the IRS code<\/a> by now, haven\u2019t you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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