July 24, 2008
Morris County claims within its borders 19 synagogues, a Jewish day school, and the Alex Aidekman Family Jewish Community Campus in Whippany.
But if you’re looking for Jewish life in Morris County, you may be just as likely to find it in the aisles of a grocery store, at Barnes and Noble, or a local craft shop. It’s all part of an effort to reach the county’s unaffiliated, unengaged Jews.
The “public space” programs are among the initiatives that have grown out of outreach efforts by United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ and JCC MetroWest.
After two years assessing the needs of a community that planners consider Jewishly under-affiliated (especially in comparison with neighboring Essex County), partners in the Morris County Connection are beginning to roll out their plans.
They include parenting and grandparenting circles and workshops; Jewish story times at book stores in Morris Plains, Ledgewood, and Rockaway; and Passover programs at supermarkets and coffee shops.
Dana Lichtenberg, who was hired part-time as MCC coordinator last September, next year will bump her hours up to 40 per week, and she’ll be adding more programming for young families.
These include Morris County CareLink, a day of community service projects in November, and a parenting conference scheduled for next March with author Anita Diamant serving as keynote speaker. The conference will be a collaboration among a range of MetroWest institutions, including the JCC, Jewish Family Service, the Partnership for Jewish Learning and Life, the JCC early childhood centers in West Orange and Whippany, and the Bohrer-Kaufman Hebrew Academy of Morris County in Randolph.
“The idea is to create programming that attracts and serves to bring in unaffiliated people, make community, and foster relationships with those people and Jewish institutions in Morris Country, whether it’s the JCC, synagogues, federation, other Jewish organizations, or cultural activities,” said Arthur Sandman, associate executive vice president for program services at UJC MetroWest.
Lichtenberg’s job, he said, “is to help people find something relevant and meaningful, so they can become part of the Jewish community.”
Morris County has an estimated 37,900 Jews or individuals related to someone Jewish, according to the 1998 Jewish Population Study of MetroWest, the last such survey available. While most observers suggest the county’s Jewish population is growing, Lichtenberg pointed out that the community differs from Essex County, where the Jewish population has its roots in Newark and is centered around city suburbs like West Orange and Livingston.
Passover in the Aisles enabled Dana Lichtenberg, Morris County Connections coordinator, to go where the people are. Last spring, it meant going to the grocery store, meeting shoppers, taking down their contact information, and trying to help them find a meaningful Jewish experience.
Photos courtesy Dana Lichtenberg
“While there are Jews everywhere in Morris County, there is almost no center,” said Lichtenberg.
Two years ago, JCC MetroWest was invited to participate in a pilot project, the Community Transformation Initiative, of the Jewish Outreach Institute, an organization established in 1988 designed to foster community-sponsored events welcoming to intermarried and unaffiliated Jews. (Previous studies had established that many of the Jewish families in Morris County were unaffiliated.)
Through the JCC, JOI analyzed the programs of all of the Jewish organizations and agencies of Morris County that wanted to participate. The JCC, as well as 16 of Morris County’s 19 synagogues, participated in an intensive review during the fall of 2006.
In January 2007, the community received a 122-page review, complete with suggestions for improving outreach.
Many of the ideas revolve around creating public space programs.
“If people could more easily access programs, they could become entry points for unaffiliated people to come in and experience something Jewish,” said Sandman.
The report also encouraged the community to hire a coordinator of outreach efforts and led to the establishment of what became the Morris County Connection.
Jonathan Ramsfelder, cochair of the Morris County Advisory Council and a resident of Morristown, said he’s been “thrilled” with the results after just one year. “We’ve already had tremendous success, marshaling the resources of all the various organizations and establishing a kind of clearinghouse so the community can be more efficiently targeted.
“I live in Morris County,” he said. “It’s a sprawling place…. There are people and families who are disconnected from the community that is really their family. For me, this isn’t religious outreach but it’s about community. I meet people who consider themselves Jewish. They want to have enriched Jewish experiences — it’s part of what makes people happy.”
Lowering the barrier
The JOI initiative came just as the JCC, with facilities in Whippany and West Orange, was facing mounting challenges in Morris County.
“One of the impetuses for getting involved with JOI was the perception that the JCC could never adequately meet the needs of the Jews of Morris County out of the Whippany location. This was a way to extend itself further into Morris County,” said Sandman.
Budget shortfalls and a rising deficit at the JCC’s Whippany location came separately and later, and JCC MetroWest would eventually announce that it would no longer run fitness operations there (Gold’s Gym, a private operator, will take over in September).
JCC MetroWest emphasizes that it still runs programs for seniors and an early childhood center at the Aidekman campus. The JCC maintains satellite offices at the Hebrew Academy of Morris County, where it also holds vacation and after-school enrichment programs.
Through public space programs — like this Hanukka story time at a local Barnes and Noble — Morris County Connections brings Jewish experiences to unaffiliated and intermarried Jews in Morris County.
“The JCC is proud of its leadership role in initiating the current Morris County outreach effort,” said JCC MetroWest executive director Michael Hopkins. “From the very beginning our lay and professional leadership have not been satisfied with how we are fulfilling our mission of serving the Jewish community of Morris County. The outreach effort is at its core about energizing the organized Jewish community to become more relevant to more Jews in Morris County. We look forward to working with all of our partners in this important and critical work.”
The switch of JCC fitness facilities to private ownership heightened tensions between MetroWest institutions and many Morris County Jews, some who remembered when the Morris-Sussex Jewish Federation merged with what became UJC MetroWest NJ in 1983. At the time, some Morris Jewish leaders felt their county would be overshadowed, or overlooked, by its larger partner to the east and the agencies, like the JCC, included under its umbrella.
“There is a great concern in the community that when the JCC indicated to UJC that it no longer wished to operate the facility in Whippany, that Morris County and our territory to the west were being abandoned. That’s not the case,” said UJC MetroWest president Gary Aidekman. “Morris County outreach has taken the JCC programs and programs that already existed at synagogues and provided a way to promote cooperation among them and get the word out about services and programs available in Morris County. It really has leveraged some existing programs in way that reaches significantly more folks.”
Lichtenberg said destination programs in public spaces have been drawing anywhere from 20 to 100 people. She is also liaison for all the agencies in the community and the go-to person for anyone with questions about how to “do Jewish” in Morris County.
After one of three parenting sessions offered last year by Jewish Family Service of MetroWest, Lichtenberg took down contact information and participants’ interests and invited them to come to the JCC’s NJ Jewish Film Festival in the spring. Although they had not previously been familiar with the festival, five of the women not only went to a film at a Morris County venue, she said, they attended a second film in West Orange.
In her first year, during which she worked 20 hours a week, Lichtenberg created a variety of public space programs, particularly around the holidays. For example, Hanukka brought story time to Barnes and Noble or Borders book stores in Morris Plains, Ledgewood, and Rockaway. She coordinated a Hanukka card-making workshop at A.C. Moore in Rockaway. Passover brought Lichtenberg to the aisles of local grocery stores and to a Smart World Coffee shop in Denville for a holiday program coordinated by Go Organics. A Purim puppet show at HAMC was the surprise hit of the year, attracting over 100 people, most of whom had never walked into the building before.
Other programs included parenting workshops, a camp fair (in conjunction with Congregation Adath Shalom in Morris Plains) and two interfaith programs designed to reach non-Jewish mothers and Jewish grandparents with intermarried children.
Every participant at every program receives a goody bag containing contact information — enabling Lichtenberg to track attendance at the programs and to contact every person and invite them to another activity.
She measures success person by person, family by family. “I follow up individually with every family. It might be a letter or a phone call; they are always invited to the next activity.”
Lichtenberg’s ongoing training takes place through the JOI, which is based in New York and developed many of the programs she is implementing.
Asked how she envisions Morris County five years down the road, she said, “I see a more active, engaged Jewish community.”
Her interim goals include “making sure we are putting out quality programs that people can relate to and find meaning in that are low barrier.”
Significantly, Lichtenberg rarely uses an office, although she’s technically headquarted at HAMC. She sees her job as one requiring her to be out and about.
“Really, it’s about being where the people are,” she said. “I don’t want anyone to have to come to me.”
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