Shefa Fund Opens Its Doors, Goes To Work on Main Street

Rita Lowenthal
Special to the Mirror

   Another quality occupant has moved in to the Edgemar Farms Complex on Main Street in Santa Monica. Next door to Rockenwagner restaurant and behind Peet’s Coffee Shop, with a door opened to the ocean breeze, sits Celia Bernstein, the happily ensconced new West Coast Director of The Shefa (Hebrew for abundance) Fund.
   Bernstein is uniquely suited to her new position. She has a background in business and social work as well as an in—depth understanding of Jewish communities. Formerly the associate director of development of another Santa Monica institution, the Liberty Hill Foundation, she speaks enthusiastically about her new position and the Fund, which recently opened its West Coast office in Los Angeles – which has the second largest Jewish population of any city in America.
   Established in 1988, the Shefa Fund is a progressive Jewish foundation, based in Philadelphia. Its programs include donor-advised services, funder education programs and its innovative Tzedek “Justice” Economic Development Campaign (Tzedec).
   Tzedec seeks to improve the lives of people living in poverty by encouraging American Jewish institutions such as federations, synagogues, family foundations and individual funders to invest in community development financial institutions (CDFIs).
   Nationally, the lack of access to credit and financing makes it almost impossible for low-income people living in poverty to buy homes, create jobs or revitalize their communities. Shefa organizes Jewish investors to commit a small fraction of their assets for an investment in Tzedec for three, five or seven year terms. Tzedec funds are then placed in CDFIs that, in turn, make low-interest loans to low-income individuals and community based organizations for housing, business development, worker training, childcare and other social services.
   Tzedec helps Jews fulfill Judaism’s highest level of tzedakah (working for justice) by increasing the economic strength of low-income communities. So far, the program has catalyzed over $11 million in investments from the American Jewish community.
   Two of the CDFIs working with Shefa are the Communidades Credit Union in the Pico/Union neighborhood and L.A. Neighborhood Housing Services. The Pico/Union Credit Union was established three years ago. It provides savings and checking accounts to an area that is underserved by banks. Its goal is to return earnings to its 800 members in the local community. Members can receive personal loans up to $5000 at 12 percent interest or car loans at 8.5 percent interest.
   L.A. Neighborhood Housing Services offers assistance and education as well as home loans to clients. It has loaned more than $25.5 million in the past fiscal year to residents of L.A. County who don’t qualify under conventional terms. The CDFI’s foreclosure rate in its seventeen years of existence is zero percent and the delinquency rate is 2 percent or less.
   Says Bernstein, “My first goal in Los Angeles is to bring The Shefa Fund’s Tzedec program to the attention of the local Jewish community and over the next several years, to invest $5.4 million from our community into our local community-based banks, credit unions, and loan funds that serve and benefit our low-income neighbors. We are currently in the process of setting up a local advisory board. We are beginning with a Rabbinical Council that to date includes westside Rabbis Neil Commess-Daniels, Allen Freehling, Steven Carr Rueben, Leonard Beerman, Jerry Goldstein and Alan Henkin.”
   In Los Angeles the membership of Progressive Jewish Organizations has welcomed Bernstein to their monthly meetings. The organizations are: Americans for Peace Now, Association of Reform Zionists in America, Coalition for Justice in Hawaiian Gardens and Jerusalem, New Israel Fund, Progressive Jewish Alliance, Shalom Community and Workmen’s Circle.
   Shefa is the third progressive Jewish organization to be launched in Los Angeles in the past three years. The Progressive Jewish Alliance and The Coalition for Justice in Hawaiian Gardens and Jerusalem are the others.