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December 24, 1999/15 Tevet 5760, Vol. 52, No.17
JCC breaks from JASS
2 new singles' groups launched in Phoenix area
CHRIS GARIFO
Staff Writer
The Valley's organized Jewish singles community is going through a major - and rancorous - transformation.The leadership of the Jewish Association of Singles Services (JASS), which has served Jewish singles for nearly 12 years, is changing, with resignations of its president and executive vice president, and the end of its nearly two-year association with the Valley of the Sun Jewish Community Center.
The JCC, meanwhile, is launching its own singles organization, Valley Jewish Singles (VJS), which will provide many of the same services as JASS has been providing.
A third singles group, JewishSinglesAZ.com, has been started by Mickey Latz, a former JASS president who resigned his position with JASS earlier this year. Latz said his group will "cater to big groups and ... give to the community an opportunity to have a place where Jewish singles of all ages can come together in a fun setting." Latz will use a Web site (JewishSinglesAZ.com) and e-mail to keep singles informed of scheduled activities.
The split between JASS and the JCC has not been amicable.
"(The JCC) disconnected the JASS phone line and put in their own line without any notice to anyone," alleged Barbara Allyn, JASS executive vice president of membership. "They promised funding to JASS, which they withdrew immediately to start their own singles group. ... What has happened is they have taken information from JASS under the auspices of working with us, and they are using it for their own benefit and gain."
Joan Kalmenson, director of Valley Jewish Youth, and who will now be VJS director, said her singles' organization will be free of the sort of internal politics that she says led to the leadership changes at JASS.
"The politics did them in," Kalmenson said of JASS.
Steve Millstein, who resigned as JASS' executive vice president on Dec. 8, said the group is on "hiatus," but Allyn insisted JASS "is alive and well."
"Steve Millstein resigned from the board," Allyn said. "Steve Millstein no longer has anything to do with JASS. JASS is alive and functioning and will continue to function."
Throughout the year, JASS has been plagued by upheaval within its executive board. In addition to Millstein's resignation, the board since March has seen two presidents quit - Latz and Marc Peagler.
Millstein says he quit as executive vice president because he simply had too much to do, with a full-time job as a senior financial analyst for Motorola and going to school full-time to get an MBA from Arizona State University. However, he agrees with Kalmenson that politics and personality clashes brought about other resignations.
"It came down to certain people trying to run everything, do it only their own way, not giving in to anything else, not working together really as a team, things of that nature," Millstein said, declining to identify those people.
Latz, who resigned as president in May, just a couple months after being elected, said he quit because he could no longer work with Allyn, whom he described as "an extremely difficult person to get along with."
"I had no longer an interest in working with her in an executive capacity and I asked for her resignation," Latz said. "She refused to give me the resignation." Allyn declined to comment on Latz's statement.
Allyn, who has been with JASS since its earliest days, said the relationship with the JCC was supposed "to help strengthen JASS, not to destroy it and start their own singles group."
She claimed that JCC officials are using the JASS membership list in violation of an agreement made when the relationship was formed and that JCC officials won't provide her with an accounting of JASS funds. JCC officials deny those allegations.
Mark Shore, JCC executive director, said JASS is a department of the JCC. As a result, he said, JASS has no proprietary rights to the membership list. He also denied that Allyn had asked for an accounting of JASS funds and said that all of the JASS money has been accounted for.
"JASS is not a separate corporation," Shore said.
Millstein said many of JASS' problems were due to the group's lack of a paid staff position. Finances also were a source of trouble, Millstein said. The cost of printing the newsletter was about $1,000 each month. The Dana Cheryl Beitscher Charitable Foundation helped defray some of the expense by paying for the printing every other month, Millstein said.
"The only way JASS was surviving was because they were getting (the Beitscher money) to help underwrite the newsletter," Millstein said.
Major JASS events, such as the annual Winter's Eve bash, Millstein said, evolved into fund-raisers to help meet the organization's costs.
Millstein said JASS also suffered from having too few volunteers doing too much work.
"My job at the beginning was executive vice president," Millstein said, as an example. "We couldn't find anyone to do the newsletter, so I did that. We didn't have a treasurer, so I did that. And when our president stepped down, I took over the presidency, too."
Allyn denied that politics was as much of a problem as Millstein and Kalmenson suggested.
"It's real difficult to have in-fighting when one person is holding four positions," she said, referring to the various jobs Millstein held at one time.
Allyn said the board is still functioning and that she is working on "keeping this group going."
"The founders of JASS are absolutely furious with what is going on," she said. "We have a very solid core of founding members."
Dr. Rick Shaikewitz, a Chandler chiropractor who serves as JASS historian, agreed that there was in-fighting, but said that is something that should be expected with any group of people.
"You get more than two people together, that's going to happen," Shaikewitz said. "It's been going on for years."
JASS currently has a membership of about 300 people who pay $30 a year to join, Shaikewitz says.
Allyn said that anyone interested in learning more about JASS and its future can call her at 480-515-1935.
Millstein, however, said he believes JASS has become unnecessary.
"I personally don't think (JASS) needs to exist anymore," he said. "If JCC has a paid professional person ... and is willing to back (VJS), the end result is that the singles community out there is going to be better for it."
Millstein, after resigning from the executive board, and Kalmenson apparently called other JASS board members and told them the board was being dissolved. Allyn said she has since called her fellow board members advocating that the board continue, and most members are interested in keeping JASS alive.
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