Reaching out

By reaching out to unaffiliated Jews, Jewish agencies across the country seem to be taking these words of Torah to heart.

Two outreach programs are bearing fruit in Arizona, an older program in Tucson and a fledgling program in the Valley.

Lory Fischler, chairwoman of the Jewish Federation of Greater Phoenix's 15-member committee seeking newcomers, says her panel is targeting "those people who come into our community and are not participating."

"We're looking at what we can do to help encourage participation, what the synagogues can be doing, what agencies can be doing, what the community can be doing," said Fischler.

Fred Zeidman, federation assistant executive director, said, "We have expanded beyond focus groups and we're calling them 'community conversations.'"

The outreach program is under the auspices of the Jewish Community Development Initiative of the federation, established in 2004 to identify community priorities to assist in the future allocation of dollars, Zeidman said.

Zeidman said the initiative conducted a demographic study in 2001-02 that identified five key issues: outreach to newcomers; services for vulnerable populations (people with physical or developmental disabilities or families in crisis or affected by poverty); a senior-needs task force; Jewish youth and continuity; and Jewish participation (focusing on adult participation in the Jewish community).

The outreach effort was a two-pronged drive, Zeidman explained.

"We received lists of people who had contacted synagogues or temples and might have gone to a service or even joined. That put us in touch with the so-called affiliated newcomer," he said.

In order to reach the "totally unaffiliated newcomer," Zeidman explained, "we put a series of ads in the Jewish News and about half a dozen other community weeklies."

The ad campaign drew about 30 responses, which "we thought was very, very good."

"The people that we've reached with the ad we never would have reached (otherwise) - people who have been here for several years had made no contact with anyone in the (Jewish) community nor had anyone in the community contacted them.

"For whatever reason, they didn't get the Jewish News, they never looked on a Web site; they don't go into Jewish stores, yet when I meet with them they're very excited about the contact, some saying 'We really want to be connected with the Jewish community.'"

According to Zeidman, newcomers' needs vary by age group. "If they have young children, they're looking for Jewish life to connect their family to; older couples or singles are looking for a social network."

Zeidman said he likes what is happening in Tucson.

Following a 2003 demographic scan, the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona established an outreach department and an "outreach connections board" that meets regularly and includes representatives from every synagogue and Jewish organization.

The Jewish Outreach Institute (JOI) "showed us we had 500 new Jewish families moving in every year, but 80 percent of our population is unaffiliated," said the federation's outreach director, Rebecca Crowe, whose position was created as a result of the institute's work.

JOI is a New York-based nonprofit that advises and trains Jewish professionals and institutions how to better reach those on the community's periphery, including intermarried, multiracial and nontraditional families.

One of JOI's key recommendations is that to reach the unaffiliated, Jewish organizations will have to move their programs out of their institutions and into the streets.

"Most Jewish institutions focus their energy on programs that take place within the walls of their institutions," JOI's executive director, Rabbi Kerry Olitzky, told a group of 40 Jewish religious and communal leaders April 20 at the JCC of San Francisco. That's no way to reach people who aren't already members, he said.

Phoenix is attracting newcomers from all over the United States, said Zeidman. "Some come from California, and more arrive from the East and the Midwest."

Janet Phillips and her husband, Jeffrey Paige, both in their early 40s, and their 9-year-old daughter, Alanna, moved to Queen Creek in September from Worcester, Mass. They had been members of Temple Emanuel in Worcester, and have joined Temple Emanuel in Tempe.

The Tempe temple provided their names to the federation, and the steering committee contacted them.

Their reasons for joining the congregation were twofold: a religious education for Alanna and social opportunities for themselves.

Philip Baratz, 69, is an unaffiliated newcomer. He moved to Arizona in November after a lifetime in Manhattan. He told Jewish News he attended a focus group meeting with a fellow newcomer whom he had met at the Valley of the Sun Jewish Community Center in Scottsdale.

Baratz said he was not affiliated with the Jewish community in New York and is more interested in socializing than religion. He has family members in the Phoenix area, but remains undecided about remaining in Arizona.

Ed Bandyk and Lillian Vendig-Bandyk, also newcomers, are in their mid-50s. They purchased a home in Fountain Hills in 2003 and moved there from Pittsburgh in September

Their daughter, Beth, is a rabbinical student at Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem. In 2002 in Minneapolis, Beth had met Rabbi William Berk of Temple Chai in Phoenix. At their daughter's urging, the couple have joined the congregation. Bandyk said he and his wife, both of whom are social workers, now participate in Jewish life.

The future of the outreach program depends on the recommendations of the steering committee, Zeidman said. The committee's report on its initial work is anticipated later this month.

Sue Fishkoff of Jewish Telegraphic Agency contributed to this article.

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Reaching out

Federation courts newcomers, unaffiliated

HANK NEYER Contributing Editor

HANK NEYER
Contributing Editor