[quote="
hasidicnews"]
DONORS
Footsteps has been very fortunate with generous contributions by people who care, both in the form of foundations and individuals.
The leading financial donor presently is Steve Eisman, a Wall street executive who broke ranks with his colleagues and dared care about the 99%. After his unwelcome doomsday prophecy regarding the future performance of the securatized subprime mortgage sector, he left a successful career in a wall street firm and “shorted” the market just in time before the 2007-8 financial meltdown.
Cashing in on his keen insight hand over fist, he has emerged as a leading supporter of Footsteps, perhaps seeing in it a parallel to his personal life. He likewise grew up Modern Orthodox and “studied the Talmud in order to prove its inconsistencies”. In his Wall Street rise to the top he was at once loved and hated by his colleagues. Hated by those whose companies he discounted in his ratings reports, he made a name for himself as an honest assessor of companies financial performance. He once crumpled up a deliberately opaque financial statement by a Japanese firm remarking that
“
this is toilet paper”
. He never sought to ingratiate himself with the powers that be and was ultimately rewarded handsomely for this. Does he see in Footsteps an organization whose members likewise peel back the deliberately misleading facade of fundamental Judaism to reveal a hypocritical and unsustainable system?
Another line of reasoning by a certain individual Jewish donor as couched by Ms. Santo is: My grandparents were also Hungarian and I could have landed in this community but I didn’t; and I had all these choices to build my life the way that I want to. And you know what, I’m not exactly like my parents either, but they love me anyway.
Other large foundational donors include the
UJA Federation of New York,
Natan, and
NYCON (New York Council of Nonprofits) Strengthening Community Fund, among others. For Footsteps members in their initial transition stages, it may come as a surprise that “Jewish” organizations would support them when all they want to do is run as far away as possible from their Jewishness. In the long run, however, most Footsteppers settle on a more moderate and balanced conception of their Jewish identity.[/quote]
