Israel File :: UJC Sees Fund For Israeli Arabs As Fresh Start

Photo: Katherine Kiviat
A Bedouin woman receives social services in a program sponsored by the Abraham Fund, a nonprofit organization that supports grassroots coexistence between Israeli Jews and Arabs.

By Jacob Berkman

NEW YORK (JTA) -- As part of a move to revamp its fund-raising strategy, the United Jewish Communities has started a joint venture fund to raise significant dollars to help Israeli Arabs.

The organization, which serves as the umbrella of the North American federation system, is raising $750,000 from 15 private donors, foundations, federations and service organizations to start the UJC Venture Fund for Jewish-Arab Equality and Coexistence.

The first of several similar venture funds the UJC plans to roll out in coming months, the project is part of a new fund-raising model designed to attract new donors and revenue streams.

The model, which the UJC is calling "Collaborative Financial Resource Development," is primarily focused on creating a new line of philanthropic enterprises and recruiting different funders to work on the projects.

Federations and the UJC would act as a convener and facilitator of those special projects, such as joint venture funds, that would not run through the federations' general campaigns. They would give decision- making responsibilities to the donors.

"The primary purpose is to bring together people with different perspectives, such as private philanthropists and foundations, around an issue that needs to be elevated and highlighted in the Jewish community," Carol Smokler, the chair of the venture fund, told JTA. "This is a new kind of venture. It is follow-your-dollar, hands-on involvement in an issue."

The model is a central component to a strategic operations plan launched last year by the UJC to help boost the system's financial intake.

The UJC wanted to re-examine the entire fund-raising system and "all of our resources," said Barry Swartz, the organization's senior vice president of continental community development and capacity building.

"We are beginning to tackle issues that not everybody might want to be involved with," Swartz said.

The Israeli Arab joint venture fund and the similar funds to be introduced are intended to engage large donors the UJC has not been able to tap.

Other future funds might tackle such topics as Jewish identity among Israelis, Darfur refugees and guest workers in Israel, women's issues, programs for gifted students and programming designed to integrate the disabled into Jewish life, a UJC source said.

For Swartz, the Israeli Arab venture fund is the ideal place to start.

Some 52 percent of the Israeli Arab community lives in poverty, according to the UJC, and observers see unrest in that community as one of Israel's greatest threats.

But the Israeli Arab issue is a hot-button topic within the Jewish philanthropic world, and while a number of major Jewish philanthropies have taken up the issue in recent years, many federations have shied away from it for fear of alienating donors to their annual campaigns who do not want to see their charitable dollars go to the non-Jewish community and specifically the Arab sector.

Some right-wing Jews vociferously objected after the UJC used some of the money it collected to help Israel rebuild after the Lebanon war in 2006 to help the Israeli Arab community.

For the new initiative, the UJC has garnered gifts of $50,000 each from 15 donors to start the fund. Some of the initial investors are fairly close with the system, including UJC Chairman Joseph Kanfer and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.

But it has also drawn new faces to UJC, which is one of its primary goals.

The Naomi and Nehemiah Cohen Foundation, the Rita and Harold Divine Foundation, the Alan B. Slifka Foundation and the Everett Foundation each have pledged $50,000 to the project, and none have been major collaborators with federations in the recent past, according to Swartz.

Edith Everett, the president of the Everett Foundation, says she has long been wary of investing her charitable dollars in the Jewish federation system.

She said the system is typically too slow and clunky to carry out her philanthropic wishes. Working with a federation meant watching projects "go from committee to committee to committee, and then never see the light of day," she said.

"It was way too complicated and costly to go through the federation" to carry out specific charitable goals, said Everett, who has opted for other avenues for her philanthropic dollars in Israel and elsewhere.

The details of the venture fund are still unclear as its board, comprised of donors to the fund, met for the first time last month. But it will most likely be run like a donor-advised fund in which donors make their contributions and decide later as a group how to use them.

It is unclear whether the board will give away all $750,000 it collects at one time or use the money to create an endowment fund that doles out a portion of its assets each year, Swartz said.

The decisions made by the board of donors will be executed by UJC staff.

That model, and the trust of some laypeople involved in the project, that convinced Everett to participate, she said.

"I think people who are unfamiliar with the system have been a little wary of getting involved. They are used to doing their own business," Smokler said. "But all of the partners have an equal vote, and that has been exciting to people."

The UJC also wants local federations to adopt the collaborative resource development model, Swartz said.

Its system has long been essentially a tale of fund-raising halves -- the small donors who give to the federations' annual campaigns, and large donors who donate to the campaigns and a handful of specialized projects.

The collaborative model is designed to offer a wider array of giving opportunities, including these venture funds, Swartz said. One of its primary goals is to make individual federations figure out how to work with local foundations on specific projects.

The program is now being piloted in 17 communities.

"It will be an interesting experience to see how a group like this comes together on a continental basis to make decisions," Swartz said. "We don't want to be seen as an obstacle but as honest brokers. I think it is an interesting new wrinkle."

Deep South File :: Bama hosts Jewish student recruitment

The University of Alabama Hillel Foundation, along with Zeta Beta Tau fraternity and Sigma Delta Tau sorority, will be hosting a recruitment weekend for 11th and 12th grade students interested in visiting the university. The event will be February 2 and 3.

Students will attend a campus tour and the Alabama-LSU basketball game. Game tickets will be provided.

The deadline for registration has been extended. For more information, visit www.freewebs.com/bamahillel.

Nation File :: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Launches Searches Of Archives

USHMM/Arnold Kramer
Steven Vitto, a researcher in the U.S. Holocaust Museum’s Benjamin and Vladka Meed Registry of Holocaust Survivors, with copies of documents from the Bad Arolsen archive.

By Ron Kampeas

WASHINGTON (JTA) -- Digital technology will allow Holocaust survivors, researchers and others access to one of the largest troves of Nazi-era documents -- but at a pen-and-paper pace.

The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum told survivors' groups last week that searches of the digital version of the Bad Arolsen archives it had obtained would take six to eight weeks to fulfill.

"People understood the challenges," said Jeanette Friedman, who represented the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants at a closed-door meeting Jan. 17 at the Holocaust museum here.

The inquiry process, launched that day, will integrate the 46 million documents the Holocaust museum already possesses with more than 18 million documents made available by the International Tracing Service, the agency based in Bad Arolsen, Germany.

The availability of the archives ends a decade-long political and legal battle to open the Bad Arolsen archives, which houses information on the fates of about 17.5 million Jews and non-Jews.

Most of the documents now available through the museum relate to incarceration, persecution and concentration camps.

Archivists ran a slide show showing how an index card in the files could help David Bayer, a survivor who volunteers at the museum, track his Auschwitz identification card and a census of the Jewish ghetto in his birthplace, Kozience, Poland. The census was the only extant record of his entire immediate family, some of whom perished.

More documents relating to slave labor and to postwar witness testimony are slated to be delivered by 2010.

Those who want to make an inquiry can call (866) 912-4385 or go to www.ushmm.org/its.

The digital archives were released simultaneously last year to the 11 nations that control the tracing service. Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust memorial, was the first to establish a request-processing service last week, although it will not have an online capability until next month.

Much of the material delivered to the museums on hard drives packed into suitcases is not yet digitally searchable; images of the documents and 50 million index cards that arrived between August and November of last year are in jpeg form.

Converting those images to searchable files will take much time and millions of dollars, officials of the U.S. Holocaust museum said at a news conference before the meeting with survivor groups.

"To make it machine-readable would take millions and millions," said Sara Bloomfield, the museum's director. "We don't have the time."

Instead, said Michael Haley Goldman, the director of the museum registry, the priority would be to answer survivor questions with trained staffers searching through the material.

Top priority will be given to survivors with outstanding restitution claims on the assumption that some information obtained through the search could facilitate the claims.

Of about 800 inquiries received even before the launch of the service, most had to do with survivors seeking information on the fate of families, Goldman said.

Officials said that in some cases, the archive material would provide death and burial information, which would help in insurance restitution cases where survivors need specific documentation. But officials also warned that in the vast majority of cases, such information was not recorded or preserved at the time.

Another imperative of the archives, Bloomfield said, was to add evidence at a time of a resurgence in anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial.

"Keeping the International Tracing Service closed at a time when the president of a country says the Holocaust didn't happen is morally indefensible, " she said, referring to Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

About 30 representatives of survivor groups attended the closed briefing; Friedman said questions were mostly technical and calm. That made for a quiet denouement to a process that at times has been roiling.

Some survivors, particularly those still seeking restitution in various forms, had campaigned for instant, internet-searchable access, and they wondered at the snail's pace of the effort to open the archives.

"We need closure, we need to know what happened," said David Schaecter, president of the Florida-based Holocaust Survivors Foundation-USA, who was not at the meeting but has been one of the most outspoken critics of the process.

The nations controlling the International Tracing Service -- Belgium, Greece, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Israel, the Netherlands, Poland, Britain and the United States -- had signed an accord in 1955 after assuming control of the archives from the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Privacy concerns, particularly among the European nations and the Red Cross, kept it inaccessible, officials said. Pressure from survivor groups seeking evidence to bolster restitution claims led the tracing service to announce in 1998 that it would open the archives, but finding a formula acceptable to all was difficult.

Paul Shapiro, the director of the museum's Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, said some nations wanted to create a "worst common denominator" standard, applying each nation's most restrictive standards across the board.

Shapiro said the U.S. Holocaust museum successfully argued instead that each nation should apply its own standards upon receipt of the archives.

There were no restrictions on who could ask for information, museum officials said. So citizens of a nation that applies restrictive standards to sharing the information are free to submit inquiries to Yad Vashem or to the U.S. Holocaust museum, which do not.

Shapiro said that one restriction kept in place at the behest of some of the European nations -- he did not name them -- was that each nation maintain a single repository.

Museum officials suggested that the provision allowing each nation to distribute the materials according to its own laws and practices meant the museum was not bound by the restriction.

However, the museum will not share the materials with other U.S. Holocaust centers for now to avoid frustrating individuals searching for information, said spokesman Andy Hollinger.

Museum staffers are specially trained to search the Bad Arolsen documents and to integrate those searches with other archives in order to provide the most comprehensive possible responses, Hollinger said.

Another consideration, according to sources, is that commission members of the tracing service who still have privacy qualms would be angered if documents were freely available on the Internet. Disagreements now could hobble delivery of databases still held by the tracing service.

Ultimately, said Friedman of the Holocaust survivors and descendants group, the goal is to integrate existing archives in the United States, Israel and Europe into a single searchable database, but that could take a decade.

Deep South File :: Tuscaloosa inaugurates Jewish Cultural Festival

By Lee J. Green
Deep South Jewish Voice

What started as a Jewish Film Festival in Tuscaloosa has blossomed into a multi-focused, expanded Jewish Cultural Festival with a food festival, Klezmer entertainment, films and a several-month Jewish literary session series all rolled into one.

The Arts and Humanities Council of Tuscaloosa County and Tuscaloosa’s Temple Emanu-El will present the Jewish Cultural Festival Feb. 23 through May 15 at the University of Alabama and the Bama Theatre.

The festival consists of a Jewish Food Festival with a performance by the renowned Klezmer band The Vulgar Bulgars, who entertained at the Levite Jewish Community Center Food Festival in Birmingham three years ago; the 6th annual Jewish Film Festival, and “Let’s Talk About It: Jewish Literature” — a book discussion series at the University’s Gorgas Library.

Festival passes for the Food Festival and Film Festival are available for $30 through www.tuscarts.org, and tickets will be sold individually for the films. The book discussion series is free and one event will be hosted each month through May, starting Jan. 24 with “A Contract with God: And Other Tenement Stories” by Will Eisner.

“We are so pleased to be able to do something that is entertaining, informative and multi-faceted,” said Rebecca Rothman, an Arts Council board member who is also an involved member of the Tuscaloosa Jewish community.

“University of Alabama President Dr. Robert Witt has done so much to encourage the growth in Jewish student enrollment and to enhance participation as well as the culture at the University and in the area,” said Rothman. “The film festival has been successful and well-attended for five years. We feel that this expanded festival and the related events will be well supported.”

The festival opens with the Jewish Food Festival and music presented by the Vulgar Bulgars at 6 p.m. on Feb. 23. From bagels to hummus, the festival will provide a large selection of traditional fare along with some staples from the modern Jewish table.

Hailing from central Virginia, the Vulgar Bulgars are young musicians who play soulful Klezmer music. The group includes Ben Grondahl on clarinet; Kassia Arbabi on violin; Ezra Freeman playing bass guitar, and percussionist Madog Frick.

They perform a mostly instrumental combination of time-honored Klezmer classics mixed with special modern compositions. Klezmer music has been an important influence on the development of jazz as well as on classic composers such as Aaron Copland, George Gershwin and Leonard Bernstein.

The opening night film will be the drama “Black Book,” starting at 7:30 p.m. Film Festival screenings continue Feb. 24 at 2 p.m. with the 2006 documentary “The Rape of Europa,” which highlighted Jewish Cinema South in recent months.

Following the film, Daniel Belasco will lead an informative session. Belasco is the Henry J. Leir Assistant Curator of The Jewish Museum in New York. He manages the contemporary Judaica program at the museum and organizes contemporary art exhibitions.

Later that night, the short documentary “California Shmeer” will be screened at 7 p.m., followed by “The Bubble.”

The film festival wraps the night of Feb. 25 with the short comedy “Naturalized” followed by the feature-length romantic comedy “Arranged.”

The theme of the Jewish literature series discussions being led by Dr. Steven Jacobs will be “Modern Marvels: Jewish Adventures in the Graphic Novel.” All sessions will be held from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at the Gorgas Library on the University’s campus.

Jacobs is the Aaron Aronov Chair of Judaic Studies in the University of Alabama’s Department of Religious Studies, in addition to serving as rabbi for Temple Emanu-El.

On Feb. 21, “The Complete Maus: A Survivor’s Tale” by Art Spiegelman will be discussed. On March 27, it’s “Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer: Stories” by Ben Katchor.

Discussions on April 17 will center upon Harvey Pekar’s “The Quitter” and the final event in the literary series will be May 15 featuring “The Rabbi’s Cat” by Joann Sfar.

Tuscaloosa’s inaugural Jewish Film Festival took place in 2003. “We’re grateful that the community and the University have been very supportive of this and we’ve pulled from some great resources to offer a special experience,” said Rothman.

Deep South File :: JCRS to honor Phyllis Stern

On Feb. 23, the Jewish Children's Regional Service will recognize Honorary Officer Phyllis S. Stern at a gala event.

Stern will receive the Sara Stone Board Leadership Award, an award bestowed on a board member who has demonstrated leadership, loyalty, hard work and generosity towards the JCRS and the mission of the agency.

In addition to the JCRS presidency, which she held from 1985 to 1989, Stern has held numerous board positons at the JCRS since joining its board in 1975. She has also been a lifetime member of Temple Sinai and has served on the boards of its Sisterhood, Hillel, The Visiting Nurse Association and the board of the Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience, now the Goldring/Woldenberg Institutue for Southern Jewish Life.

The evening will feature clarinetist Michael White and his quartet. White will review the history of jazz in New Orleans with a musical medley and some narrative facts, all accompanied by projected historical images of both the city and Jewish institutions.

White is a professor of music at Xavier University and one a select few Fleur de Lis ambassadors for the City of New Orleans. In addition to his skills as a performer, he is widely recognized for his knowledge of jazz; from its sounds and beats, to the lives of those who have written and played it.

The 7 p.m. event will be at the J.W. Marriott, located between Canal and Common Streets. Tickets are $150 per person, and admission includes an elegant dinner. Tables will be set for 10 persons.

The JCRS is 152 years old, and is a regional agency, serving dependent and needy Jewish youth. It is headqurtered in Greater New Orleans. The Saturday evening gala kicks off a series of events that continues the next day.

More information: (504) 828-6334, visit the website at jcrsnola.org, or write P.O. Box 7368, Metairie LA 70010-7368.

Deep South File :: BJF launches ambitious annual campaign

The Birmingham Jewish Federation is kicking off its 2008 campaign with an ambitious goal of $2.4 million, and a start of over $2 million.

In recent years, the Federation has been one of the quickest in the nation in terms of finishing. As in past years, the campaign is expected to wrap up by the end of February, which this year will be extended by a Leap Day.

Last year the campaign, which provides funding for 29 beneficiaries, surpassed its goal of $2.255 million.

Leading this year’s campaign are volunteers Sheryl and Jon Kimerling, and they have seen the campaign to over $2 million before the public campaign launch.

Thanks to special funding the Federation has received from the Birmingham Jewish Foundation and a group of donors, the campaign will match pledge increases of 10 percent, and double-match increases of 20 percent or more.

“We are very excited about this year’s campaign,” said Richard Friedman, executive director of the Federation. “Sheryl and Jon have been working hard for months and doing a great job. We are off to a terrific start, though we still have a lot of hard work ahead of us.”

The Federation’s past four campaigns exceeded their goal and finished quickly, making Birmingham’s Federation campaign one of the fastest and most successful in the country.

One of the ways that the Federation has achieved that is by giving donors the option of calling in their pledges on a 24-hour BJF hotline. The number, for those wishing to pledge that way, is (205) 803-1522.

Two major events will highlight this year’s campaign.

The annual campaign gathering for Lion of Judah members and spouses will be on Jan. 27 at 5 p.m., at Pine Tree Country Club. Guest speaker will be George Mamo, vice president of special projects, for the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. This group raises money, mainly from Christians, to help Israel.

Mamo came to Birmingham in the summer of 2006 to keynote the Federation’s "Stand With Israel" rally during the war with Hezbollah.

Lion of Judah is for women giving at least $5,000 to the Annual Campaign. Personal invitations are being sent to women who qualify for Lion of Judah. Thanks to the efforts of the Kimerlings, the number of women involved in Lion of Judah has grown considerably over the past year.

On Feb. 10, the Federation and Foundation will hold the annual campaign event, including the presentation of annual awards.

The 7 p.m. event at Temple Emanu-El will feature “It Sounds Better in Amharic,” a one-man show depicting the saga of Ethiopian Jewry.

Randi Landy will receive the Joanie Plous Bayer Young Leadership Award. The award is given to an outstanding young volunteer, 40 or under, who has distinguished himself or herself through work on behalf of the Federation, involvement in the community and philanthropy. The winner is decided by the officers of the Birmingham Jewish Federation.

Landy, and her husband, Dave, continue to be generous supporters of the Federation Campaign. She has involved herself in a number of Federation areas, including playing a leadership role in the annual campaign and serving on the BJF board and nominating committee.

Melba Epsman is this year's recipient of the Susan J. Goldberg Distinguished Volunteer Award. The award, started last year in memory of the late Susan Goldberg, goes to volunteers who have distinguished themselves through their leadership roles, character, community activities and philanthropy. The winner is decided by the officers of the Federation after nominations have been reviewed and recommended by an advisory committee.

Epsman is a past president of the Levite Jewish Community Center and a past president and past campaign chair of the Birmingham Jewish Federation.

Gladys and Karl Friedman are this year's recipients of the N.E. Miles Lifetime Achievement Award. The award is given by the Birmingham Jewish Foundation to veteran community leaders who have demonstrated a lifetime of involvement and leadership and who have made provisions, through the Foundation, to endow their annual Federation campaign gift in perpetuity. The officers of the Foundation select the winner.

For decades, Karl Friedman, with support from Gladys, has been a major Jewish community leader, holding a wide array of important leadership positions and playing an influential role in guiding the community. He has been a mentor to leaders and staff of both the Federation and Foundation.

The Feb. 10th program is being underwritten by the Andrew David Abroms Fund of the Birmingham Jewish Foundation.

For more information about the 2008 BJF Campaign, contact Lauren Pyle Klinner at the BJF at (205) 803-1517 or laurenp@bjf.org.

January 17, 2008

(JTA) The North American Jewish federation system raised $2.4 billion last year.

Its umbrella organization, the United Jewish Communities, made the announcement Thursday for the system of 155 Jewish federations and 400 non-federated Jewish communities.

The local fund-raising branches raised $900 million through their annual campaigns and $1.3 billion in new contributions to endowment funds and planned giving programs. In 2006, UJC brought in $898.1 million from the branches and $2.3 billion in endowment funds and planned giving programs.

The system now has more than $13 billion in endowment funds, which yield approximately $1 billion per year.

The UJC also collected $90 million in 2007 through the Israel Emergency Campaign, which it started in 2006 after Israel’s war with Hezbollah in Lebanon. The campaign has collected more than $360 million.

The UJC raised another $52 million through supplemental giving campaigns.

"When the day is done, we all care about the bottom line," the UJC’s president and chief executive officer, Howard Rieger, said in a news release. "Well, the bottom line for UJC and the Jewish Federations of North America during 2007 is $2.4 billion. And in many respects, that is just the beginning of what we do."

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(JTA) The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum launched a search service to access the world's largest closed Holocaust archive.

Survivors and others as of Thursday may request information from the massive digital archive, which was transferred to the Washington museum in November. The archives came from the International Tracing Service, based in Bad Arolsen, Germany.

Trained staff will search the archive, and will cross-reference with the museum's own archives and material that the tracing service has yet to share with the museum. The archives relate to wartime incarceration and concentration camps; still to come is material related to forced labor and postwar documentation. All the material should be in hand by 2010, museum officials said.

The material became available after a decade-long negotiations among the 11 countries responsible for the archives. All 11 nations now have copies of the archive.

Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust memorial, launched its own search service on Wednesday.

About 800 requests have been received so far by the U.S. Holocaust museuum, mostly family inquiries.

Applicants may make requests for information on the Web at www.ushmm.org/its or by calling (866) 912-4385. The museum is planning outreach programs to communities throughout the United States. More than half of the documents relate to non-Jewish persecutions.

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(JTA) Israel tested a classified new missile system.

Israel's Defense Ministry announced Thursday that a missile had been fired from the Palmachim Air Base in the Negev Desert as part of a propulsion-system test.

There was no more information forthcoming, prompting the Israeli media to speculate that the missile was an advanced version of the Jericho-2, which is believed to be capable of carrying non-conventional warheads to distances of up to 1,000 miles.

Israel has stepped up its development of strategic defense systems amid concerns that Iran could acquire nuclear weapons within a few years.

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(JTA) Tourism to Israel is at its highest since the outbreak of Palestinian violence in 2000.

Approximately 2.3 million people visited Israel in 2007, a 25 percent increase over the previous year and the highest figure since 2000, the government's Central Bureau of Statistics announced Wednesday.

Almost a quarter of last year's tourists were from the United States. The next-biggest contingent came from France. The number of tourists from Egypt and Jordan also showed a modest rise.

Prior to the outbreak of Palestinian violence in September 2000, the millennium was the peak year for tourism to Israel, with more than 2.5 million visitors.

Israeli officials said they hope to match that figure this year, when the Jewish state marks its 60th Independence Day.

Deep South File :: Hadassah Region Plans Israel Trip

The Southern Region of Hadassah is planning a celebratory trip to Israel for May.

The mission, which is planned for May 25 to June 3, is part of the celebration of Israel's 60th birthday. In addition, the region will celebrate the Memphis chapter's 90th anniversary, and the 70th birthday of regional president Edria Ragosin.

This will be an adult trip, for those age 18 and older. Adult children and grandchildren of members are welcome even if they do not live in the region.

The mission will be based at the Dan Panorama in Jerusalem and include meetings with prominent Israelis, visits to the Knesset in Jerusalem and Independence Hall in Tel Aviv, and a trip to Masada and the Dead Sea.

There will also be visits to Hadassah College, a Young Judaea youth hostel, Hadassah Hospital and Meir Shfeya Youth Aliyah Village.

Cost is $1893 per person based on double occupancy for the land portion. Air is roughly $1100 roundtrip from Memphis.

More information: Eileen Posner, 901/683.7841, or eposnerhadassah AT aol DOT com

New Orleans File :: National Jewish Service Group Opens Local Branch

By Julie Schwartz
New Orleans Jewish News Online

"AVODAH: The Jewish Service Corps" will bring idealistic and passionate young people to strengthen the rebuilding efforts in New Orleans beginning in the fall of 2008.

AVODAH is enabling and energizing the next generation of Jews who want to change the world and themselves through direct work on poverty issues. The organization has recruited recent college grads from across the United States and Canada, and across the religious spectrum, to work full0time on urban poverty issues.

The local program is due in part to the efforts of New Orleans Program Director Joshua Lichtman, and long-time New Orleans friend Barbara Gervis Lubran.

"AVODAH," Hebrew for "work, service, and prayer," was founded 11 years ago by David Rosenn, a rabbi living in New York City, who sought a Jewish context for his commitment to social justice and poverty issues. He set about creating an organization where this could take place, finding a model in the Lutheran Volunteer Corps, where he interned. Rosenn opened the first AVODAH office in New York City, followed by similar programs in Chicago and Washington.

AVODAH's New Orleans efforts will complement the rebuilding work done by the local Jewish community, temporary volunteer groups, and United Jewish Communities.

Until now, there has been no Jewish vehicle for bringing long-term volunteers to New Olrenas. The AVODAH program will fill that void by recruiting approximately 10 recent college graduates, ages 21 to 26, ready to dedicate a full year to working in New Orleans.

This AVODAH Corps will serve on the staffs of front-line anti-poverty organizations, working on issues such as housing, education, and domestic violence. AVODAH Corps members live together for a one-year program, forming a community committed to making a connection between social change and Jewish life. Since AVODAH corps members live on a basic stipend during their year of service, partner organizations save money on staffing costs, and often gain permanent employees.

Lichtman came to New Orleans last winter to volunteer, and noticed that there was no long-term volunteer program. When he mentioned this fact to Lubran, she became enthusiastic about bringing the AVODAH program to New Orleans, and raised the issue with Rosenn.

AVODAH had recently decided not to expand to new cities in the next several years. But after it became clear that there was a uniquely strong match between the need in New Orleans for long-term volunteers and the programs' year-long service model and an opportunity for AVODAH to help strengthen the city's Jewish community, the Board approved a New Orleans site.

Lichtman's background is in law, but his passion is clearly in community development and social action. His previous employment experience includes a year-long fellowship with Hillel in a Jewish Campus Service Corps, a Jewish farming program with "Adamah: The Jewish Environmental Fellowship," and a stint at the Isabella Friedman Jewish Retreat Center in Connecticut. Lichtman is a new hire for AVODAH, recruited to run the New Orleans program.

He will also be a newcomer to the city, even though he has extensive New Orleans ties. He returned to New Orleans for four months starting in January, when he engaged in various volunteer projects including gardening with kids, Parkway Partners, and building houses in St. Bernard Parish. Lichtman's mother, Catherine Stern, was born in New Orleans , to S. Water Stren, Jr. and Simonne Stern.

Lichtman will spend the next nine months setting up an office and a home for his 10 AVODAH Corps members. He will also be working on recruiting applicants for AVODAH's service positions in New Orleans, and establishing connections with local agencies which will employ Corps members.

The program begins with a week-long training, ending in a Shabbaton retreat. After that week, Corps members begin working directly with local agencies, and receive on the job training. AVODAH continues to provide training in the form of twice-weekly programs on issues such as race relations, poverty, and homelessness. The project will follow the national curriculum, with local and national retreats. Every Corps member will get to know all 10 partnership agencies, since members visit each others' workplace to learn how issues and approaches are interconnected.

Jewish values and Jewish learning are the source for the spirit of the program, and members are encouraged to plan and celebrate Shabbat in the home once a month, leaving participation in synagogue and communal life up to each individual. Lichtman hopes to hold workshops with rabbis and teachers in the New Orleans area, to help connect Corps members to the local community.

Experience has shown that AVODAH Corps members are changed by their year in the program. A recent survey found 92 percent of alumni pursuing a career in social justice of Jewish communal work, and 95 percent of current participants saying the program has strengthened their Jewish identity.

AVODAH follows up the service year with an alumni initiative aimed at developing leaders who will commit themselves to working as advocates and organizers within and beyond the Jewish community.

After one year, the New Orleans AVODAH program will recruit a new Corps. The organization is currently raising funds for the local program to continue for at least three years, and longer if funds are available.

Both national and local funders are providing support for AVODAH, with the majority of the funds for the initial years coming from outside New Orleans.

Those interested in assisting AVODAH, such as helping it to build local connections or find housing options for its New Orleans program, should contact Lichtman at 646/234.0455 or jlichtman AT avodah DOT net. For more information, visit www.avodah.net.

January 14, 2008

(JTA) Israel and the Palestinian Authority began negotiating over "core" peace obstacles.

Negotiators for both sides met Monday for the first round of talks tackling so-called "core issues" such as Jerusalem, borders and refugees that have stymied past peace efforts.

The new diplomatic drive was launched last week ahead of President Bush's visit to the region, during which he outlined his hope of clinching an Israeli-Palestinian accord within a year.

According to media reports, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and P.A. President Mahmoud Abbas already are close to an informal agreement, but both leaders face serious domestic challenges.

Olmert's coalition government includes right-wing parties that have threatened to block any attempt to cede areas of Jerusalem to a future Palestine. One party, Yisrael Beiteinu, said Sunday it would bolt the coalition should there be progress in the discussions of the "core issues."

Abbas, whose authority has been reduced to the West Bank since Hamas took over the Gaza Strip in June, would have a hard time winning popular support for an accord that requires Palestinian refugees be resettled in the future Palestine rather than return to land in Israel.

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(JTA) A Chabad rabbi's threat against Ehud Olmert is deepening the rift between messianist and non-messianst Lubavitchers.

According to the Forward, Chabad's Israeli leadership appears ready to publicly distance itself from a messianic element within the movement, an about-face from the many years of efforts to downplay divisions in the fervently Orthodox movement, as required by a Brooklyn-based rabbinical court.

Rabbi Dov Wolpe, a popular leader of the messianic wing of Chabad, which believes that the late Lubavitcher rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson is the messiah, said Jan. 2 that if Israel were properly run, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert would be “hanged from the gallows” along with Israeli Vice Premier Haim Ramon, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Defense Minister Ehud Barak. His remarks were broadcast on Israeli television news.

"This is not Lubavitch," Moni Ender, a Chabad spokesman in Israel, told the Forward. "Rabbi Wolpe is talking by himself. We have nothing to do with him. He makes dirt for Chabad.”

Some U.S. Chabad leaders also had strong words for Wolpe. His statements did not appear in mainstream Chabad communications.

Incitement to violence by rabbis has become the ultimate taboo in Israel, since such rabbinical injunctions were blamed for Yitzhak Rabin’s 1995 assassination.

Chabad is the only major Chasidic group whose members serve in the Israeli army; its rabbis are also regarded as informal chaplains. It is the threat to this activity that could force Chabad to declare the messianists separate from the movement, Ender told the Forward.

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(JTA) The use of a yellow Star of David to protest Germany's new smoking ban has the country's Jewish leaders upset.

A company based in northwest Germany sold T-shirts featuring the word "smoker" in a yellow star.

Using the symbol is "brainless, brazen and tasteless," Dieter Graumann, vice president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, told the DPA press agency.

The Web site selling the shirt was promptly shut down. The seller, Dennis Kramer, said the announcement on his site that 1,000 shirts had been sold already was "just an advertising ploy" and that no shirts had actually been sold.

Kramer told the DPA that he "wanted to show that smokers are being discriminated against in bars." He said he never thought it would arouse the ire of the Central Council of Jews.

Nazis forced Jews in Germany and occupied countries to wear a yellow star in public as part of a systematic policy of humilation and extermination.

The smoking ban went into effect on Jan. 1 in restaurants and bars in most German states.

The local state prosecutor's office reportedly is looking into whether there is cause for charges to be filed against Kramer.

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(JTA) A Berlin day school is planning a major expansion.

Rabbi Yehudah Teichtal, who directs the city's Chabad, told JTA Thursday that the Talmud Torah Or Avner will add on an elementary school building and a sports facility.

Its kindergarten opened with eight students in 2004. Now 100 students from kindergarten to fifth grade attend the school, which is housed in a former Gestapo building.

"Our goal is not to have them full right away, but to reach every single Jew," he said, adding that buidings are the "hardware," and "we will fill them with the software -- we will fill them with life."

Berlin officials have approved the architectural design, but because the city owns the property, a lifetime lease must be signed before construction begins, Teichtal said. No construction date has been set.

Funding will come from private donations, Teichtal said, like Chabad's Szloma Albam House-Rohr Centre, a synagogue and educational complex that was dedicated several months ago.

An estimated 120,000 Jews -- about 12,000 in Berlin -- are registered members of the German-Jewish community. More than two-thirds of German Jews came to the country in the last 18 years from the former Soviet Union. Jewish leaders suggest that another 100,000 Russian-speaking Jews remain unaffiliated.

Deep South File :: Florida Gator walk-on looks to contribute

By Lee J. Green
Deep South Jewish Voice

With his father being a jewelry sales executive in New York City and a former college basketball player, Florida Gators’ junior forward and Jewish athlete Michael Weisenberg knows a gem of an opportunity when he seizes it.

The humble and determined Weisenberg never played basketball in high school but gained the notice of current players on the reigning two-time national champion Gators during a pick-up game this past summer.

Forward/center Marreese Speights and forward Chandler Parsons encouraged him to try out for the team. There were some roster spots open since all five starters, as well as their sixth man, were drafted and/or signed by the National Basketball Association this off-season.

“At first I thought they were joking, but they told me they thought I had some talent and could compete for a spot. They said the team was looking for players with good attitudes and who were hustlers,” especially since that is how Head Coach Billy Donovan was when he was a player, said the 6-foot-7, 190-pound Weisenberg. “I always believe that you follow your heart with all that you’ve got. I am now living a life I never even really dreamed of a few months ago.”

He grew up in Long Island in a successful athletic, business and political family. Weisenberg’s grandfather was a star athlete and is an Assemblyman in Long Island. His father played basketball at the University of Denver. His brother is on his college golf team.

“Growing up, golf was really my game,” he said. “After the 9th grade my parents began sending me to a golf academy in Sarasota, Fla.,” where they now have a second home, which is just a couple hours from Gainesville and the University of Florida.

Weisenberg said in the 10th grade he started growing and began realizing some of his physical gifts for basketball. But he only played in middle school and pick-up.

“In New York City, most of the courts are outdoor asphalt so I was so excited about being able to play some pick-up ball in such a nice facility here on campus,” he said. “I have always had a love and appreciation of the game. But I am so privileged to be able to really learn the game from such great coaches and more experienced players.

“I think Coach Donovan is already one of the greatest coaches ever,” added Weisenberg.

Donovan also has some good praise for one of his two walk-on, non-scholarship players on this year’s roster.

“Weisenberg is a tough kid… he works his tail off in the post. He tries to rebound every time and he gives you everything he has,” said the coach. “I think from the walk-on perspective, that’s been pretty good.”

Weisenberg said he was raised Jewish — his father is Jewish, while his mother is Catholic. “We’ve always been observant of the cultures, traditions and holidays,” he said. “I take great pride in it and take (his Judaism) with me wherever I go.”

He is a member of the Theta Epsilon Pie (TEP) Jewish fraternity at Florida and spends holidays whenever possible with family either in Sarasota or Long Island.

“It has been a little bit difficult since we have practices and games through the holidays. All of my (TEP) housemates are out for break but we have a strong fraternity and family with our close-knit team,” said Weisenberg.

Despite winning the national championship this past April to cap last season’s back-to-back run, very few magazines predicted the Gators to even finish in the top 25 or challenge for the Southeastern Conference title, due to the team losing so many stars.

They are a young team, but several of those departing stars led the Gators to the first national championship when they were sophomores.

“It is such an honor and a great experience to wear the Florida Gators logo across my chest. I take great pride in being on the basketball team at the University of Florida which won two national championships in a row,” he said. “But most of us on the team this year weren’t on either championship team so we know we have every reason to be humble… and to learn as well as grow at every opportunity we can.”

Weisenberg has only logged a few minutes of playing time here and there, but you will never see him complaining. “The only thing better than wearing the jersey is contributing more during the games and earning more playing time. I am just so grateful, though, to have the opportunity to be on a team with a lot of players who have played basketball for much of their lives,” he said.

The Finance major hopes to go into business after he graduates. His father has already helped him to work several internships. “If I can say that I earned a degree and played basketball at the University of Florida, then certainly I will have achieved two things that to me are very important in my life,” said Weisenberg.

January 9, 2008

'The Jewish Americans,' a three-part documentary of 350 years of Jewish American history begins tonight on PBS. Local broadcast times here.

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Gil Tamary of Israel's Channel 10 interviews Condoleeza Rice; she discusses growing up in Alabama:

SECRETARY RICE: Well, I think any American Secretary of State going all the way back has had a strong interest in trying to see if we couldn't help use American influence to bring an end to the conflict. But yes, I think that sometimes one has to be careful about analogies. But I feel that I understand a little bit that when an Israeli mother puts a child to bed in Sderot or in a place that is under Haifa that they are -- you put your child to bed just a little bit afraid that maybe a bomb will go off.

And you know, since I lost a childhood friend in that bombing of the church in Birmingham, a little girl -- who with whom I'd gone to kindergarten, I know my mother must have had that fear. And I know, too, that a Palestinian mother who has to tell her child, well, we're not going to go on that road. Because you're Palestinian, must feel a little bit of a humiliation, even the anger that my parents felt when they had to say to their six or seven year old daughter, well, you can't go in there because you're black.

And that's the reason that this conflict needs to end. You know, we talk about the two-state solution. It's a kind of antiseptic concept, the two-state solution. But what we're really talking about is a state that the Palestinians can have that is a homeland for the Palestinian people and next to Israel as a homeland for the Jewish people -- defensible homeland for the Jewish people. And that, it says to me, means so much more than the phrase the "two-state solution" because it means that when that is achieved, Israeli and Palestinian parents and their children will grow up each in their own state with their own futures in their hands.

Israel File :: President Bush Arrives in Jerusalem

Chris Greenberg/ White House
President Bush, flanked by Israeli President Shimon Peres, left, and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, arrives in Tel Aviv on Jan. 9, 2008 at the start of his Middle East tour.

By Ron Kampeas

JERUSALEM (JTA) -- Turning out the lights before you leave Jerusalem may be an odd way to say you care, but it's what President Bush wants.

Jerusalem's municipality is shutting down the Old City's familiar strobes on Thursday at dawn to give the president an unfettered look at the sun rising over its walls, spires and cupolas. The request came from the White House, Jerusalem officials said.

Bush landed at Ben Gurion Airport outside Tel Aviv shortly before noon Wednesday, kicking off his first visit as president to Israel and the Palestinian Authority. The visit is the first leg of an eight-day tour to the Middle East that includes stops in the Persian Gulf states, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

"The United States and Israel are strong allies," Bush said after a red carpet reception at the airport by Israeli political and religious leaders, and by an honor guard.

"The source of that strength is a shared belief in the power of human freedom. Our people built two great democracies under difficult circumstances."

"The alliance between our two nations helps guarantee Israel's security as a Jewish state," he added.

Bush is meeting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert at the King David Hotel on Wednesday night, and again after he visits Ramallah to meet with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Bush's first stop was the residence of Israeli President Shimon Peres, where he was serenaded by a group of Jerusalem schoolchildren singing a medley of Israeli songs and "Over the Rainbow" in English, Hebrew and Arabic.

The U.S. leader initially tried to contain his laughter before giving up and embracing the children afterward. The children were chosen from a pool of English speakers so Bush could converse with them.

In short remarks delivered while seated alongside Peres, Bush emphasized the overall tenor of the visit, confronting those who would obstruct peace.

"It's vital for the world to fight terrorists," he said. "I come as an optimistic person and a realistic person -- realistic in my understanding that it's vital for the world to fight terrorists to confront those who would murder the innocent to achieve political objectives."

On Tuesday, a day before Bush's arrival in Israel, Jerusalem officials outlined a huge military-style operation dubbed "Clear Sky."

For years Bush has described the transformative experience of seeing the sun rise over the Old City during his first visit in 1998, when he was Texas governor.

"You know, my first trip to Israel, and only trip to Israel, was in 1998," Bush told Israel's Channel 2 TV before leaving for Israel. "And I remember being in a hotel room and opened the curtain over the Old City, and the sun was just coming up, and it just glowed. It was golden. And I told Laura, 'I can't believe what I'm looking at.' And after she got her contacts on, she came and looked."

That would have been the view east from the King David Hotel, where Bush stayed then and where he is staying this trip.

The sunrise view will come just before Bush sets out to Ramallah, where he will spend the day meeting with Abbas.

Bush is scheduled to leave Jerusalem Friday morning after visiting the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial. He is scheduled to tour Christian sites in the Galilee before continuing to Kuwait.

His planned sunrise vantage was one of many revealed by Israeli officials. A comprehensive PowerPoint presentation mapped every detail of his convoy's travel routes. The curious can track the president in real time on the Jerusalem municipality Web site, www.jerusalem.muni.il.

Such details stunned White House officials, who are used to keeping the president's movements under wraps. Israeli officials said that because the visit is shutting down Jerusalem for three days, Jerusalemites deserve to know where and when they can travel.

Many of the city's residents had fled by Tuesday morning, preferring to leave the city to the Bush onslaught. On Tuesday, rain lashed Jerusalem's emptying streets, but by Wednesday morning the sun was out.

Some of the details of "Clear Sky," outlined by spokesman Gil Sheffer, unwittingly underscored the difficulties of the city Bush is visiting.

Jerusalem's fervently Orthodox and Arab populations comprise the bulk of its population but do not provide much of a tax base. For years the government has been the major employer here; much of the infrastructure has been deteriorating.

Sanitation workers are working overtime to "scrub corners clean," Sheffer said, and electrical workers were making last-minute repairs to the city's lighting system. Road repairs were carried out along the presidential route, where 1,500 Israeli and American flags are flying. Parking downtown is banned.

Schoolchildren are getting half days for the duration of the presidential visit to the area.

The Jerusalem municipality is touting the visit with a graphic depicting Bush and two helicopters -- one nosing downward.

Authorities have dedicated a police presence of more than 10,000 to secure the city for three days. That doesn't count the security detail the president brought with him, particularly after al-Qaida figures called on local Palestinians to kill him.

Israel will hand over security to the Palestinian Authority for Bush's visit to Ramallah in the West Bank on Thursday, an American-urged nod to Palestinian sovereignty. Nonetheless, Israel shut down the West Bank as of Tuesday midnight, a closure that applies to internal movement as well as to entering Jerusalem and Israeli areas.

Palestinians are eager to prove the viability of their own security forces after the humiliation troops loyal to Abbas suffered this summer when the Hamas terrorist group ousted them from the Gaza Strip.

One sign of the P.A.'s caution: It has asked journalists to show up at 4 a.m. to cover the 10 a.m. meeting at the P.A. headuarters.

Nation File :: Candidates, Surrogates Appear at New Hampshire Shul's '08 Forum

Ben Harris
New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson speaks at a synagogue in Manchester, N.H., on Jan. 6, 2008, two days before the state's primaries.

By Ben Harris

MANCHESTER, N.H. (JTA) -- Four years ago, Temple Adath Yeshurun in Manchester canceled its traditional election-year candidates’ breakfast after only one presidential hopeful agreed to participate.

This year, in a sign of how intensely the campaign is being fought here, three candidates and surrogates for three more appeared on Sunday morning before a packed room at the Reform synagogue.

As attendees munched on bagels and rugelach, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, fellow Democrat Mike Gravel and Republican Duncan Hunter -- all three trailing in the polls and desperate for a strong showing in New Hampshire to keep their presidential hopes alive -- appealed for votes from an audience that has been swamped by political messaging in the run-up to Tuesday’s primary.

The Democratic front-runners in New Hampshire -- U.S. Sens. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.) -- each sent high-profile surrogates who served in the Clinton administration.

Only one big-name Republican -- former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani – was represented at the event. The three leading Republican contenders in New Hampshire -- John McCain, Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee -- all skipped the forum and did not send surrogates, perhaps reasoning there were few votes to be gained from a liberal, Democrat-leaning Jewish crowd.

Boasting an estimated population of just 14,000, New Hampshire’s Jewish community has not been seen as a critical constituency in statewide races. With the 2008 race as tight as it is, however, the Granite State’s Jews could be more crucial than ever.

While speakers emphasized their support for the security of Israel, the audience was clearly more interested in talking about domestic issues.

After Giuliani's representative spent 15 minutes recounting the ex-mayor’s pro-Israel bona fides, a questioner asked what Giuliani planned to do about the country’s domestic problems.

“It seems the Rudy Giuliani campaign doesn’t understand what the Jews of New Hampshire care about,” one attendee whispered.

Only Richardson, who trails Clinton, Obama and John Edwards in the polls, relegated Israel to a passing reference. He was rewarded with repeated applause as he promised to withdraw American troops from Iraq, fund stem cell research, restore habeas corpus and abide by the Constitution.

Obama, whose victory in the Iowa caucuses helped him draw even with Clinton in New Hampshire, according to recent polls, was represented by Anthony Lake, President Bill Clinton’s former national security adviser.

Lake, a recent convert to Judaism, cited Obama’s personal qualities -- his authenticity and his ability to inspire and unite -- as reasons the freshman senator merits the Democratic nomination.

Clinton’s surrogate was Ann Lewis, who served as White House communications director in the Clinton administration and is the sister of U.S. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.). Lewis assured the audience that Clinton would demonstrate a serious commitment to social justice.

"Or as they say in Arkansas, tikkun olam," she said.

Lewis also talked about what she described as Clinton's commitment to confronting Iran and ensuring Israel's security.

While leaning heavily Democratic, the crowd was sharply divided.

Judith Jolton, a member of Adath Yeshurun, said she was behind Edwards, who was not represented at the event.

“I think he means what he says,” Jolton told JTA. “He definitely is for education, for Social Security, for the welfare of every human being with health care and to stop the war in Iraq.”

Barry Scotch, a Bedford resident and a former Adath Yeshurun president, identified himself as one of the few Republicans in the room.

“At the end of the day,” Scotch said, “I think John McCain is in a league by himself in terms of his experience, his practical ideas and his straight talk.”

Jennifer Moisi said that while she found Obama inspiring, she was supporting Clinton because she is the best candidate to effect change.

“I think she’ll be more effective because she’s shown the ability to work with people from both sides for decades,” Moisi said.

Moisi’s husband, Sam Lampert, said he was supporting the longshot candidacy of Gravel, a former U.S. senator from Alaska.

In his presentation, Gravel called President Bush a “horrible, war-mongering leader,” said Iran was not a threat to Israel and promised to bring peace to the Middle East in his first year in office.

“I think he’s absolutely right,” Lampert said. “I want a guy who’s going to tell the truth.”

Nation File :: Union for Reform Convention Explores Mega-Church Ideas for Services

Courtesy of the Union for Reform Judaism
Musician Doug Cotler leads participants in the Union for Reform Judaism's biennial convention in a Friday night song session, Dec. 12, 2007.

By Ben Harris

SAN DIEGO (JTA) -- In a darkened room at the San Diego Convention Center, nearly 1,000 people clapped, sang and danced to evening prayers, with the words projected on two large screens against a bucolic backdrop of mountain vistas and rolling streams.

Featuring a five-piece band, a small vocal ensemble and a charismatic, storytelling leader, the weekday evening service could have been held at any of the growing number of mega-churches in America.

But the service was in Hebrew, the prayers were lifted from the new Mishkan T'filah siddur and the participants were delegates to the Union for Reform Judaism's biennial convention Dec. 12-16.

Ideas borrowed from evangelical mega-churches were in abundance at the five-day biennial, a trend championed by Ron Wolfson, co-founder of Synagogue 3000, a Los Angeles-based organization dedicated to synagogue revitalization.

For more than a decade Wolfson has been studying the success of Saddleback Church in Orange County, Calif., and has developed a close bond with its pastor, Rick Warren.

"Where do you think we got the idea?" Wolfson said of the service.

In the 19th century, the architects of Reform Judaism, seeking a more enlightened, rational and modern style of worship, borrowed heavily from their Protestant neighbors. They held weekly services on Sunday, cloaked rabbis in long black robes and worshiped in a high-cathedral style.

While the movement today is increasingly embracing Jewish traditions it once shunned, Reform leaders insist they must remain open to innovation. And again they are finding inspiration in Christian churches, the most successful of which hold boisterous music-driven services, expertly utilize new technologies and offer a warm and welcoming atmosphere.

"If the mega-churches can do it, maybe it'll work for us," said one member of Temple Holy Blossom, a large Reform congregation in Toronto. "I'm open to anything. As long as Jews are praying, I'm happy."

With an estimated 1.5 million members spread over nearly 900 congregations, several of which boast membership rolls running into the thousands, Reform Judaism doesn’t quite reach Saddleback proportions, but it doesn't lack for adherents either.

Less trumpeted, however, is the movement’s struggle to retain its members. Congregations frequently report a precipitous decline in membership after a child’s bar mitzvah, when both the child and the family often drop out of synagogue life.

"The most pressing challenge for congregations is attracting and retaining members," Peter Weidhorn, the incoming chairman of the URJ's board of trustees, told the biennial Sunday.

Weidhorn cited a recent study showing that the movement's congregations are not as welcoming as many Reform Jews believe them to be.

Participants throughout the biennial were encouraged repeatedly to be more welcoming of newcomers to their communities in a manner that has become a hallmark of the mega-church phenomenon.

At Saddleback, first-timers are directed to park their cars in a designated area, where they are greeted by ushers and escorted to their seats. Several Reform congregational leaders told JTA they have already replaced synagogue ushers with "greeters" who perform a similar function.

"They understand how to welcome people, engage people, induct people into the life of the community," Wolfson said of the mega-churches. "Our people don't have a sense of mission."

Another idea Wolfson poached from mega-churches is the idea that "congregations of relationships" must replace service-oriented synagogues in which dues entitle members to bar mitzvah their children and consult occasionally with a rabbi.

The mega-church influence was felt as well during Friday night prayers, where 6,000 worshipers gathered in a cavernous room on the convention center's ground floor for a choreographed production of sight and sound.

Multiple cameras projected the service on several enormous screens suspended over the hall. A live band buoyed a service that was conducted almost entirely in song.

And then there's the music, which found its way not only into the services, but into nearly every aspect of the biennial. A stage outside the main auditorium played host to a steady stream of performers. The Shabbat evening sing-along, a biennial highlight, had thousands singing and dancing in the aisles. On Saturday night, the URJ honored Debbie Friedman, the movement's leading composer.

"It's all about the music," Wolfson said. "I've said to cantors, the cantors are absolutely critical in this revolution."

At an evening plenary session on Dec. 13, Warren, the best-selling author of "The Purpose Driven Life" and perhaps the best-known mega-church pastor in the country, discussed how he grew Saddleback so large that he expects 42,000 worshipers to attend his 14 Christmas services next week.

Two years ago, for the church's 25th anniversary, Warren wanted to address his entire flock together -- so he rented out Anaheim Stadium.

"One of the keys to building your congregations is just to be nice to people," Warren told the mesmerized audience. "Smile. People have a longing for belonging."

Wolfson, a professor of education at the American Jewish University, formerly the University of Judaism in Los Angeles, and the author of "The Spirituality of Welcoming," first attended services at Saddleback 12 years ago with his wife. He has returned many times, bringing along Reform movement leaders and rabbinical students to learn what makes the church so successful.

"Our theology is totally different," Wolfson said. "But there's so much we can learn about building sacred community, a deeper relationship with people."

Lessons drawn from the experience of mega-churches extend beyond the need to be welcoming.

Reform leaders are increasingly stressing the need to provide individuals a personal sense of divine mission and have recognized the need to forge smaller sub-communities within synagogues that have grown too large to foster a sense of intimacy and belonging.

They are also looking to new technologies, such as the video screens, to enhance the prayer experience in their synagogues.

Rabbi Billy Dreskin, a congregational rabbi in White Plains, N.Y., and the leader of the biennial's first mega-church style service, is considered a movement pioneer in this area. His workshop on the use of technology in worship drew 200 participants.

"It's about to take off," Dreskin said of the new worship style. "People want vibrancy in their worship, and the vibrancy can come aurally and the vibrancy can come visually."

Not everyone enjoyed the mega-church trend. One URJ staffer told JTA she was put off by musical styles that she felt were more suited to a nightclub.

"I half expected the rabbi to say, 'I'm Judy Shanks and I'll be here all week,' '" she said, referring to the rabbi who led Shabbat morning services.

But the overwhelming sentiment at the biennial was that the services were powerful and inspiring. Dreskin said he was surprised at how little resistance he found to mega-church techniques.

"I haven't heard anyone here question it except me," Dreskin said, "and I'm it's biggest proponent."

(JTA correspondent Sue Fishkoff contributed to this report.)

Deep South File :: Temple Beth-El, Birmingham, Rings In New Year With Centennial Gala

Birmingham's Temple Beth-El finished a year of centennial programming with a New Year's Eve gala held in the congregation's Cultural Center. The evening featured dancing, a silent and live auction, and the screening of a DVD from oral history interviews taken over the past year.

Checking out the silent auction:

Laurie and Rabbi Brian Glusman take part in the festivities

The event lasted until midnight