Summary
and Implications
1996-1997 Survey of Jewish Communal Professionals
The results of the 1997 Jewish Outreach Institute's survey
of Jewish communal professionals provide additional support
for JOI's commitment to the continued expansion of outreach
programs for the intermarried and their children. The
proto-typical Jewish communal professional indicated that
outreach programs were very important, that their local
community was moderately/very receptive to outreach, that
outreach programs were not very controversial in their
community, and that strong resistance to outreach programs
was not pervasive among the Jewish sub-communities in
their local area. Given the arguments by some vocal professionals
that outreach to the intermarried is highly controversial
within the Jewish community, the almost matter-of-face
acceptance of intermarriage outreach programs by survey
respondents is a critical reminder that outreach programs,
in fact, have achieved a high level of acceptance. However,
the respondents also noted that very little of their job
responsiblities and very little of their agency budget
were dedicated to outreach. As such, they strongly favored
increasing local and national funding to outreach programs
for the intermarried.
Over half of the survey respondents had participated
in a Continuing Professional Education [CPE] program
within the past three years, and had found their experiences
valuable. But, the vast majority of Jewish communal
professionals, particularly those sampled from the national
organization list, had not received extensive training
in outreach to the intermarried, particularly in terms
of marketing outreach programs and evaluating their
effectiveness. Generally receptive to several planned
JOI initiatives in outreach training, survey respondents
were particularly interested in a training curriculum
for new outreach professionals, a training videotape
for professionals, a model advertising campaign for
marketing outreach programs to the intermarried, and
a standardized evaluation tool for assessing the effectiveness
of outreach.
The results of this survey of Jewish communal professionals
reaffirm the importance of the mission of the Jewish
Outreach Institute at the end of its first ten years
as a central address for the cause of outreach to the
Jewish intermarried. But, the results also show that
much more needs to be done. While almost half of the
respondents from the national Jewish communal professional
list had not heard of JOI before the survey, over 40%
had not only heard of JOI, but somewhat/clearly understood
that JOI focused on outreach to the intermarried. Focusing
only on those who had heard of JOI before the survey,
JOI was rated by the survey respondents as having been
somewhat successful in its goal of advancing the cause
of Jewish outreach to the intermarried; over 70% of
JOI list respondents and over 60% of national list respondents
said that JOI had "partly accomplished its goal" or
had been "fairly successful." Similarlly, the data on
Internet access and familiarity with the JOI homepage/web
site indicated both a vast potential and a moderate
level of success--accomplished within a finite time
framework.
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