NEW YORK — Reform rabbis and activists are waging a last-ditch campaign to save the jobs of specialists who conduct outreach to interfaith families.
These rabbis and activists say they are raising money from rabbis, congregations and Jewish charitable foundations to ensure that the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, the congregational arm of the Reform movement, does not eliminate the outreach professionals.
“This is not a political statement, but an effort to see that these positions are not lost,” said Rabbi Howard Jaffe of Temple Isaiah in Lexington, Mass.
Dropping these professionals would damage outreach to the intermarried, which is one of the movement’s signature programs, activists in the campaign say.
However, it remains unclear how the UAHC would respond if the campaign finds the money to restore the positions of the outreach staffers, who counsel interfaith couples and create programs for temples.
“We won’t respond until they have a specific proposal and the cash in hand,” said UAHC spokeswoman Emily Grotta.
The grassroots fund-raising effort began after the movement’s congregational union announced in December that it was cutting 13 regional outreach coordinators to help close a $2 million shortfall in its $20.2 million fiscal 2003 budget.
By eliminating each regional director of outreach and synagogue community, the movement would save just over $300,000 annually, Grotta said.
The outreach cutbacks, expected to take effect March 31, sparked immediate protest.
Paul Cohen, past president of San Francisco’s Congregation Sha’ar Zahav, said he and other outreach activists decided at a UAHC regional biennial in Santa Clara two weeks ago to seek grants for outreach from as-yet specified local philanthropies.
Such a grant would hopefully fund more than a short-term, part-time staffer, he said, but would win “significantly more” money for a “larger, more distinctive program.”
The West Coast’s Pacific Association of Reform Rabbis voiced “deep concern” about the cutbacks.
Others questioned whether the movement was weakening its commitment to support interfaith couples and its attempts to encourage them to raise their children as Jews.
Several rabbis, synagogue members and activists then launched an effort on their own to find the money to keep the outreach professionals on board.
In the Northeast, for example, Jaffe said a dozen rabbis told him they would ask their synagogue boards to pledge money for the outreach work.
Others said they would dig into their discretionary funds, or get congregational members to make pledges, he said.
Jaffe aims to raise up to $90,000 to pay three years’ worth of salary for an outreach coordinator in his region. He said he has received half of that in pledges already.
“We want to demonstrate the value of outreach as perceived by congregations and the leaders of a large number of congregations,” he said.
Jaffe and others said the coordinators are doing work that is having a real impact.
Two weeks ago, he said, 200 people attended a role-playing seminar at his temple on interfaith dating that had been organized by a regional coordinator “with the insight” into such issues.
In Orange County, Rabbi Stephen Einstein of Congregation B’nai Tzedek in Fountain Valley, who is leading the effort to save the coordinators’ positions in the movement’s Pacific Southwest region, is also reporting fund-raising success.
Einstein, who co-chairs the movement’s National Committee on Outreach and Synagogue Community, is taking a slightly different tack, going directly to his pulpit colleagues for financial support.
He aims to raise $50,000 to pay two years’ worth of outreach, and has taken in pledges for half that so far, he said.