……. of debt.

When ipods first came out, I bought one for one of my sons.  About eight months later, I came home and my son was unwrapping a new iPod from its box.  He told me that his old iPod no longer worked and he ordered a new one.  So, I asked him for the old one so I could take it to the store and have it replaced and he said, “well, actually, I left it at school and someone stole it.”  So I was trying to think of a way to illustrate that he had lied to me, and after taking him to Guantanamo for water boarding sessions, which I explained to him were not technically torture, I think he got the point.

I have been wanting to try to move beyond the image that enters my mind when I think of the Pardes Board: that of a small child with his tongue stuck on a frozen pole in the dead of winter, but their plans to merge is the gift that just keeps giving, so I am having trouble getting my research done on the Federation.

Regrettably, my fear is so great that the current board leadership of the Jess Schwartz Abyss will somehow find a home at Pardes, that I can not let it go.  Now I have had two Board Members assure me that this is a complete takeover of JSA and that the only reason to even consider the name change is to help the JSA donors save face.  I have no reason to doubt these two Board Members, however, I do not understand why a change in tefillah, and why bringing in a Conservative Rabbi to lead this change, is needed if it is a wholesale takeover by Pardes.  So before I can look more at the Federation, I do want to address a very big lie told to our faces by those stalwarts of integrity, the JSA Board.

THE $1.3 MILLION

I don’t know how many of you attended the June 1 “Town Hall” meeting at Jess Schwartz, but I seem to recall Mitchell Ginsberg explaining to us that the Jess Schwartz Campus only has a $1.7 million dollar mortgage attached to it and that anyone who knows real estate (which would exclude me) would know that the campus is “worth many, many, multiples of $1.7 million dollars.”  This was part of the basis for the rationale of the merger (i.e. Pardes has a great operation and a bad mortgage, and JSA has a bad operation and a great building).  However, what the Mitchster neglected to tell us is that there is an unsecured note on the school for an additional $1.3 million dollars that is owed to the Levine Foundation.  This means that the debt owed by the school is $3,000,000, not $1,700,000.   For a copy of this unsecured note, which is an additional burden on a combined Pardes/JSA school, click here.  I think it is safe to assume that Mitch was a little light on the integrity here.  It is unfathomable to me that the Board of Pardes could have known that we would be told such a boldface lie by the Board of Jess Schwartz Academy, but they know this now.  I have no idea why Becky Lieberman is quoted in yesterday’s Jewish News that the merger with JSA is still moving forward.  I do not understand the basic need for Pardes to want to wallow in this type of filth.  It is not possible that the Mitchster did not know about the note, it is highlighted on the very tax returns for the school which bear his signature.  Beyond being stunned, we should be saddened and outraged.  Clearly now, this is just idiocy to want to merge as the additional debt makes a merger simply nonsense.  Maybe the Mitchster thinks it is not real debt because it is unsecured and he plans on rubbing the Levine Foundationn’s nose in it?

Every day that Pardes continues forward with the concept of this merger, they get a little filthier from associating with these people, and inch by inch, they destroy the credibility that they have painstakingly attempted to create with their school.  I just do not get it.

I have many other questions that really merit answers:

What happened to the money that was donated to the capital campaign to help JSA build a high school?Where did that money go?  What was it used for?  Was it returned to the donors?

This is a short post.  For once, I have nothing sarcastic to add to behavior I find incredibly repulsive, dishonest, and heartbreaking.