Cover Story: Convening In Atlanta
well as fortune; of the luxury of being
generation removed from combat in
capitalism's trenches.
"Charles has tremendous reflexes,"
says Rabbi Irwin Kula, president of the
National Jewish Center for Learning
and Leadership [CLAL]. "In a sense,
he's naive in that he doesn't like politi-
cal infighting. But his take on people,
on ethical questions, on policy issues, i
intuitive and usually right."
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Sam Bronfman built a liquor
empire. His son wants to
build an empire of spirit
VINCENT COPPOLA
Special to the Jewish News
Ill
or much of his life,
Charles Bronfman has
been a prisoner of his
name and the fabled
Seagram liquor fortune, a prisoner
of other people's expectations — or
lack of them.
His father, Sam Bronfman, built
the empire. His older brother Edgar,
an outsized personality like Sam,
ran the business side. Charles, who
remembers himself as "a very small
and overprotected Jewish boy," was
Sam's second son — by birth and
implication. He was the one select-
ed "to build the family name. )3
Both sons have followed that
command, creating one of the
most powerful philanthropic
engines in history, dedicating hun-
dreds of millions of dollars to the
arts, education, health care and
social services in the United States,
Canada, Europe and Israel.
Their contribution goes far
beyond the checkbook-Judaism practiced by some of
the other so-called "mega-donors" in the Jewish
world. Their leadership, along with their dollars, is
helping to drive the communal Jewish agenda.
But the brothers' styles could not be more dis-
parate: "My brother and I are very different charac-
ters," says Charles. "Edgar will go about things very
differently than I do, but our goal is still the same:
to make a difference."
Edgar, the president of the World Jewish
When Charles became a bar mitzvah
his father wrote to him, "... Having so
many comforts, your lot entails respon
sibilities to the less fortunate ..." Over
the next 50 years that wisdom became
a commandment.
He is a slight, balding, nondescript
man bent over a laptop computer in a
Park Avenue office decorated with
blown glass objects and fanciful,
though not extravagant, art. He smiles
often, puts a visitor at ease, speaks
about his personal life and family deal-
ings with the startling honesty and
openness typical of many Canadians.
When it comes to the Jewish people
Jewish life, Jewish vision, Charles' goal
is grand. It is nothing less than the cre-
ation of a corps — the best, the
brightest, the richest, the most spiritu-
al, enlightened, dedicated — that he
hopes will drive 3,000 years of Jewish
promise, history, belief, culture, spiritu-
ality, tradition, desire and aspiration,
forward.
"Making money is not bad," he
says. "It's terrific, if you tithe to those
who don't have any. I'm following a
tradition that was laid down 3,500
years ago.
Bronfman will help refine and re-
energize that tradition as the lay
leader of the new UJC (a merger of
the Council of Jewish Federations,
the United Jewish Appeal and the
United Israel Appeal), the philan-
thropic engine of Jewish communal
life both here and abroad.
The merger is, in part, an answer to
critics who have charged in recent years
that this North American centralized
fund-raising machinery is bloated and
inefficient, not accountable enough to
donors and sometimes misdirected. The
fight over how much money should go overseas and
how much should remain at home for local needs
has been particularly fierce.
The system raised an enormous $841 million in
its 1998 annual campaign in the United States and
Canada, plus at least as much in endowment and
other funds. Nonetheless, it has had to fight to hold
its own in the philanthropic market. Younger donors
are less interested than their parents in giving to an
entity where priorities are decided by consensus and
As Arn erica's Jewish communal
leader s meet, Charles Bronfman talks
about his passions and priorities.
Congress and international chairman of Hillel: The
Foundation for Jewish Campus Life, is outspoken
and aggressive. He led the successful World Jewish
Restitution Organization's campaign to wrest
Holocaust reparations from Switzerland and
Germany.
Charles is softer, more whimsical, but no less dri-
ven. He is chairman of the newly configured United
Jewish Communities. His activism, say those who
know him, is a result of inheriting responsibility as
11/12
1999
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