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Jewish communities across the country will soon unite in reaching out to intermarried and unaffiliated Jews.

"The time has come to start paying serious attention to this group which, despite growing numbers, is often ignored and in some communities even considered taboo," said Rabbi Rachel Cowan, director of Jewish programming for the New York-based Nathan Cummings Foundation.

Slated to begin later this year, a national outreach program called Missing Links is expected to strengthen connections to those groups and ultimately make Jewish life more attractive to them.

A Jew-by-choice, Cowan said the initiative, sponsored by the Council of Jewish Federations with planning and financial backing from the Cummings Foundation and other private foundations, sends a clear signal that "we care about this issue."

To show local enthusiasm for the four-year initiative, the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation's Endowment Fund has awarded Missing Links a $100,000 seed grant, making the JCF the country's first federation to join private foundations in supporting the effort.

Paving the way for other federations to follow suit, the grant will be used to help launch the project, which will study outreach programs across the country, promoting and replicating those that most successfully involve intermarried and unaffiliated Jews.

According to Carl Sheingold, CJF assistant executive vice president, few issues over the past decade have caused as much concern in the American Jewish community as rising rates of intermarriage and assimilation.

Yet despite the concern, he said there is often a negative connotation attached to programs that reach out to those groups, making program coordinators hesitant to publicize their efforts. The result is that little information is being circulated and professional Jewish communal workers fail to learn from each other's experiences.

With a population more geographically dispersed and a rate of assimilation higher than that of any other Jewish community in the country, the San Francisco Bay Area — which Cowan called a "real pioneering community" — has long been involved in outreach.

When Rosanne Levitt, director of the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco's Interfaith Connection, launched her program 11 years ago, it was one of the few in the country. Today the program, sparked by a JCEF seed grant, serves as a clearinghouse for interfaith resources and sponsors lectures, workshops and groups for interfaith couples.

"Even now, there aren't that many other professionals in the field," said Levitt, who also serves on the editorial board of Bridges, a JCF-produced newsletter addressing issues affecting interfaith couples.

The grant on behalf of the Missing Links initiative was one of 13 totaling $709,159 recently allocated by the JCEF to local, national and overseas Jewish organizations and projects. Other grants approved by the JCF's board of directors in the areas of education, culture and public affairs, family and health include:

*$150,000 to Camp Tawonga to upgrade and enhance its firefighting system.

*$10,000 in a one-time grant to the National Tay-Sachs & Allied Disease Association in support of its 19th annual conference to be held in San Francisco in May.

*$3,250 in second- and final-year seed funding to the JCF's South Peninsula region for its Young Leadership Chavurah, a study group comprising Jewish community leaders, both couples and singles, ages 30 to 45.

*$18,000 in second- and final-year seed funding to Berkeley Hillel for its Campus/Intergroup Relations Project, which addresses issues including affirmative action, church-state conflict and anti-Semitism that arise at U.C. Berkeley.

*Up to $37,500 (depending on other funding sources) to the Marin Jewish Community Center to ensure the continuation of the Marin Jewish Youth Connection (MAJYC), a program for teens conducted in collaboration with the Jewish Family and Children's Service, Brandeis Hillel Day School and Congregations Kol Shofar and Rodef Sholom.

*$100,000 in second-year seed funding to the Israel Center, which provides a central address for all Israel-related programming in the areas served by the JCF.

*$50,000 in seed funding to the Jewish Museum San Francisco to underwrite its exhibit featuring Russian Jewish photographer Yevgeny Khaldei.

*$45,000 in seed funding to Brandeis University, the National Foundation for Jewish Culture, the Jewish Museum San Francisco and the JCF to assist in the planning of the new Bay Area Jewish Museum and Cultural Center.

*$11,459 in supplemental funding to the Bancroft Library at U.C. Berkeley for the JCF's Leadership Oral History Project, which documents the histories of past JCF presidents and executives.

*$45,000 to the Judah L. Magnes Museum towards the implementation phase of its exhibit "Stalin's Forgotten Zion: Birobidzhan and the Making of a Soviet Jewish Homeland."

*$50,000 to support the JCF Quarter Century Circle program, which honor donors who have contributed to the JCF's annual campaign for 25 years or more.

*$78,950 to the JCF to hire a community organizer to conduct lay leadership training and community development in Sonoma County.

*$10,000 to the California Working Group in support of its national campaign "Not In Our Town," aimed at reducing hate violence and emphasizing collaboration among media, government and community agencies.