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Who's Who in Outreach : Rabbi Margie Sloan
I direct the Brooklyn Jewish Coalition, a sector of Brownstone
Brooklyn, where seven Reform, Conservative and independent
synagogues and The Jewish Board of Family and Childrenšs
Services have joined forces to reach out to unaffiliated
Jews. Brooklyn Brownstone, whose neighborhoods include
Brooklyn Heights, Park Slope, Windsor Terrace, Cobble
Hill and Carroll Gardens are home to approximately 40,000
Jews, including professionals, artists, writers and musicians,
singles, families with children, many of whom are intermarried
and gay and lesbian Jews. Because as few as 20 percent
of Jews who live in Brownstone Brooklyn are members of
a synagogues, the UJA/Federation of New York awarded a
substantial Jewish Continuity grant to help create Jewish
connections between the area synagogues and those who
are unaffiliated.
Our mandate is to coordinate joint programming, create
educational opportunities for rabbis and lay leadership,
and to reach out to unaffiliated Jews. In this, our first
year of operation, we held the first community wide Hanukkah
program with 600 participants. We doubled our enrollment
in our Introduction to Judaism classes, celebrated the
first Passover seder for Jewish singles, began work on
providing services to children with special needs, and
developed a community Adult Jewish Learning brochure listing
all Jewish educational opportunities in our seven synagogues.
As a result of our outreach efforts we have created a
safe haven in the community for unaffiliated Jews to turn
to.
Even at this early stage of our existence, we have seen
what happens when synagogues move from a model of competition
to cooperation. We have seen how working together has
enabled us to do things we couldnšt do alone.
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