Editor's Note
February 15, 2008
New Visions
Neil Rubin
Editor
Exciting possibilities are flowering on Baltimore’s vibrant Jewish horizon. Let’s hope the momentum does not die in committee.
“Visioning,” the Associated’s blueprint to meet the needs of Jewish Baltimore’s emerging reality, already has brought a combination of most social service agencies here under one roof.
There’s another large step that should be explored: combining operations whose missions overlap — the Baltimore Hebrew University (BHU), the Center for Jewish Education (CJE) and the Darrell D. Friedman Institute for Professional Development at the Weinberg Center (DFI).
Ostensibly, all three want to create better educated Jewish professionals and lay leaders.
The “Visioning” process cannot get enough attention here. In it, local leaders are boldly bringing more than lip service to the reality that our community actually is changing in front of our eyes.
As current surveys reveal, without dynamic leadership now, within 20 years our extremes will be more pronounced, creating painful chasms. For starters, we will be: more Orthodox and more secular; weighted age-wise to both the young and old; and, most importantly, struggling to engage parents who are today’s under-affiliated generation of Jewish teens.
As the latter happens, mainly outside of Orthodoxy –– 80 percent of the local community and 90 percent nationally –– we must confront how the modus operandi of today’s younger Jews is the antithesis of our communal structure. That is, they are spontaneous, irreverent, fiercely independent, flow freely through porous identity boundaries, remain unimpressed with big donors and more.
To reach them, a new vision needs a new structure. Let us quickly review where BHU, CJE and DFI stand:
• In downsizing dollars to BHU, Associated leaders determined that other local needs will take precedence over support for degree-granting programs. (They continue to fund BHU adult-education efforts.) As a result, BHU has new leadership working with an energized board to seek a new venue and markets. I’ve seen BHU, an untapped treasure here, make positive leaps.
• DFI’s raison d’etre had been staffing the BHU/University of Maryland double masters program in Jewish studies and social work for future Jewish professionals. Today, DFI focuses on “professional development and career training opportunities to the full spectrum of Jewish communal professionals, both current and prospective.” Its leaders are correctly eying a national market for their services.
• Enter CJE. As early as next month its leaders could reveal their long-awaited strategic plan.
CJE deserves much credit for its self-exploration. Having an outsider conduct extensive interviews with 123 educators here was brave.
On the one hand, CJE staff is as extremely pleasant as it is highly dedicated. But there are administrative follow-through issues and a real lack of marketing skills.
Meanwhile, we must seriously ask:
• Do we need two community funded-libraries, one for academics and one for educators? Why aren’t both housed at one institution with a staff that can distinguish the true needs of patrons –– not to mention excite parents about both higher Jewish study and informal education at home and elsewhere?
• Do the staffs at these agencies have the right skills? They have made a professional commitment to our community so we must help them. If that doesn’t work, the appropriate conclusions need to be drawn.
• Why is there no joint marketing? After all, the constituents of both agencies often overlap.
• Why is there no overall blueprint being followed for what makes a good Jewish educator, professional and lay leader? This can be promoted through the combined resources of all three agencies.
Throughout American Jewry, this is a time for visionary leadership to keep pressing ahead. We need new structures as we strive to have Judaism not only survive, but thrive.
Finally, I’m pressing this because many in the educator’s community here –– some 2,000 strong –– are reluctant to go public. We need to give them a voice.