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B'nai B'rith from attracting younger members.
The Schiner-Clearfield team has devised a complex plan
for changing B'nai B'rith from the bottom up — a scheme
that attempts to mix B'nai B'rith's fraternal past, which
still appeals to many older members, with the kind of loos-
er affiliation that has made groups like the Anti-Defama-
tion League — the B'nai B'rith group spawned to fight
anti-Semitism that today is largely independent of its par-
ent group — so successful.
If Mr. Schiner has his way, B'nai B'rith will offer three
different levels of affiliation.
"First, we will continue to have our lodges and units,
which have been the hallmark of our organization since the
beginning," he said.
"Another [level] will be affiliation by interest groups.
Someone who wants to be involved with our political action
network, for instance, and doesn't necessarily want to be
involved with a lodge or unit, will be able to join."
B'nai B'rith, he said, will also seek members at-large.
This third level of involvement would be for individuals who
simply want a minimal kind of affiliation with B'nai B'rith,
in much the same way that thousands of people join the
American Civil Liberties Union. These would be people who
want to donate to B'nai B'rith, but are not interested in
lodge meetings or a particular political issue.
B'nai B'rith, Mr. Schiner added, also needs to seek mem-
bers and money through direct mail solicitation, a hallmark
of successful groups like the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
But B'nai B'rith has tried to remold itself before. Past
drafts of proposals for a "new B'nai B'rith" list a depressing
number of studies and surveys going back two decades that
point to some of the same problems in the group's basic
structure that today threaten to push B'nai B'rith into ex-
tinction.
And despite Mr. Schiner's determination to reshape B'nai
B'rith, the group's aging leadership is reluctant to alter the
fraternal character of the organization. This, most out-
side observers and many insiders agree, dooms B'nai B'rith
to the status of also-ran in the race to attract a new gen-
eration of Jews.
hanges in B'nai B'rith organizational charts
will make little difference unless the group
can carve out a more finely honed sense of pur-
pose. Mr. Schiner seems to acknowledge this
when he talks about the programmatic focus he hopes
to bring to B'nai B'rith.
The group, he said, will continue its recent moves toward
a more active role in public affairs. But it will refine that
effort by focusing more on its strengths — including its grow-
ing overseas presence.
B'nai B'rith, he said, will also try to expand its activi-
ties on selected domestic issues that may give the group
C
Sidney Clearfield: "We were not living within our budgets."
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