By Joel Magalnick, Editor, JTNews
The Jewish Community Center, says Judy Neuman, CEO of the Seattle area’s Stroum JCC, is “in the outreach business.” What that means, she told a crowd of approximately 400 that filled the gym at its Mercer Island facility, is that where for the past 60 years the Stroum JCC has been in one or two places — Mercer Island and Seattle’s Northend — that model doesn’t necessarily work anymore.
“As compared with just 50 years ago, today’s Jews have far fewer Jewish spouses, friends, neighbors and coworkers,” she told the crowd on April 29 at the JCC’s Circle of Friends brunch. “Yet it is clear, from a recent [Jewish Community Center Association] national benchmark study that Jewish continuity is directly linked to making Jewish friends and nourishing those connections.”
In her first year, Neuman said she has committed to partnering with other local agencies for programming both on-site and elsewhere in the community using what she called their “new mobile JCC strategy.”
Neuman pointed to a Purim party in which the JCC partnered with the Kavana Cooperative, the Jewish Federation’s PJ Library program and Herzl-Ner Tamid Conservative Congregation, and a partnership with Washington State Holocaust Education Resource Center for their Yom HaShoah program last month as examples of how the agency is “committed to filling gaps, not duplicating efforts,” she said.
Neuman, who took over as CEO in September 2009, is putting into play a plan set forth by the JCC’s board that includes expanding its community reach and overhauling its facilities. JCC board president Lindsey Schwartz told the crowd that the board had committed to a three-year strategic vision, of which he’s already begun to see results.
“All of this points to a new direction for the JCC and informs and supports our brilliant future,” Schwartz said.
A video created by local company Sadis Filmworks, and posted on the SJCC’s Web site, showed how Neuman and the JCC staff are working to put that vision into practice.
Neuman also made note of the changing landscape when it comes to how JCCs around the country have traditionally operated.
“In pushing ourselves, we have acknowledged the JCC’s traditional business model could put us at risk long term,” she said. “For those of you who have come to the ‘J’ over the past many months, I believe you are experiencing real change right now. We are addressing tough issues, making enhancements to our programs and services, collaborating more then ever, and bringing Jewish life back to every day at the ‘J.’”
While the meal was a fundraising event, it wasn’t intended to bolster the general operating budget — all of the money raised will be used for scholarships for its summer camps.
Local developer Martin Selig, who was given the Sam and Althea Stroum Spirit of Inspiration Award, related two stories about why he has been involved in Jewish causes, and the feeling he got from those experiences. One was of how he had a Torah written in honor of his mother in Israel, and how he personally, carefully carried it back to the U.S.
“It was a wonderful, wonderful feeling,” he said.
During another visit to Israel, Selig went early one morning to the Western Wall in Jerusalem.
“If you’re really lucky you’ll be the only one there,” he said. “You get a feeling there, it’s the same as carrying that Torah.”
So when he supports local Jewish causes, it is because of the feeling it creates that reminds him of those two points in his life.
“I do it for no other reason, and that I’m lucky enough to be able to do it,” he said.