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Maccabee Clubs in works for public schools
Organizers say church-state separation laws will be followed
RANDI BAROCAS
Staff Writer
Some Valley teens soon will have the opportunity to join Jewish clubs on their public school campuses.
The "Maccabee Clubs," as they have been termed by creator Rabbi Barton Lee, executive director of Hillel at Arizona State University, are in response to the growing number of Christian-sponsored clubs that have long been meeting on public high school campuses.
The clubs, Lee said, will provide Jewish students with the opportunity to establish a connection to the Jewish community, learn about Jewish customs, traditions and ethics, and make Jewish friends.
While some Jewish groups have long been critical of the presence of Christian religious clubs on public school property, laws permit such gatherings provided they are held before or after school hours, or during the lunch period.
As he came to understand that Jewish organizations might take advantage of the same laws, Lee said he sought to implement Maccabee Clubs with the help of Aaron Scholar, executive director of the Valley's Bureau of Jewish Education.
Before the two agencies could launch the program, however, they had to come up with funding for administrative costs and to pay high school student liaisons, ASU students to serve as club advisers and a program coordinator, Lee said.
So Lee wrote a grant application for the Jewish Federation of Greater Phoenix's program allocations process. The proposal received the largest single program grant for fiscal year 1998-99, totaling $28,000. Although Lee had asked for $46,800 for the clubs, he said he is pleased that the project received the federation's nod of approval.
Because the funds allocated are just more than half of those requested, Maccabee Clubs will be implemented in about four area high schools instead of eight, Lee said, adding "We are going to try and stretch it as best we can."
The schools in which the clubs will be offered have yet to be determined, Lee said. That decision will be based in part on which schools have the largest Jewish student populations.
'An important program'
According to Fred Zeidman, the federation's director of planning and allocations, the Maccabee Clubs proposal first was submitted last year, then "tabled because the Commission (on Jewish Continuity and Community) wanted to make sure that they weren't going to be running counter to the rest of the organized Jewish community" by supporting religious clubs on public school grounds.
"Over the winter, the commission met with members of the Jewish Community Relations Council, American Jewish Committee, and Bureau of Jewish Education, and the feeling was that this program was an important program that we needed to institute, ... and that it didn't negate the Jewish community's concern about maintaining the separation of church and state," Zeidman said.
"What they want to do with this is that the same way our kids are being recruited by non-Jewish organizations on the high school campus, we felt it was time to take a stand and say that we have something positive for our kids and we will work with them (too)," Zeidman explained.
Lee also acknowledged that "Theoretically, it is true that some people prefer that there be no religious clubs on high school campuses. ... (But) the Christian groups are there and it seems to me that we would be damn fools to ignore the reality and not take advantage in an appropriate way of what the law permits us to do."
Tami Schultz, director of the Jewish Community Relations Council, agrees. She said her organization has implemented a checks-and-balances system known as the Joint Task Force on Religion in the Public Schools, in part to ensure that religious clubs operate within the set guidelines. She said the Maccabee Clubs will be "in total compliance" with all rules and regulations regarding religious clubs on public property.
"For all these years, these non-Jewish groups have existed at the high school level and have really made the Jewish students feel left out," Schultz said. "This is a way for the Jewish students to feel comfortable in an environment that is conducive to their needs."
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