Faith, courage, hard work
As we slip into another long, hot summer, the ongoing, albeit temporary, recession appears to be jeopardizing not only our Jewish community’s monetary health but also our self-confidence.
Our young desert city and our institutions lack the long history, firm roots and financial reserves that may help more established places weather the ebb and flow of economic change. Our community is at risk.
The summer months offer an excellent time to set aside our differences of theology and turf, to come together over pitchers brimming with ice-cold lemonade, and to engage in a clear-eyed assessment of where we’ve come from, where we are now and where we want to go.
Our communal inheritance is the faith, courage and hard work of individuals and families who in the late 19th and early 20th centuries -- before air conditioning -- came to live in the desert and to build our community.
Our present reality is the rich network of Jewish religious, educational and cultural resources we have established and support throughout the Valley. That network is diminishing. In response to the recession, several national organizations have closed or reduced their local offices. Many local institutions have cut staff and services.
Before we allow others to follow, let’s summon up our inheritance: the example of our hardscrabble ancestors -- in the ancient desert of Sinai and in the Sonoran desert that is our home -- who came together, against all odds, to build and sustain Jewish life with nothing more than powerful faith, strong courage and ceaseless hard work.
Jewish News is eager to be a media partner to an inclusive leadership group that understands, as our ancestors did, the need to move forward in bad times as well as good, never caving in to adversity.
As Rabbi Tarphon taught in Sayings of the Fathers: “It is not for thee to finish the work, nor art thou free to desist (from doing it).”
30 May, 2009 > Comment - 0 -
Room enough to share
As Managing Editor Leisah Woldoff reports in her May 1 Jewish News story Synagogues deal with recession, http://tinyurl.com/cqsqlm, in this recessionary time, some local congregations are struggling to make institutional ends meet.
So what are they doing? At least two Phoenix-area congregations, while assuring that they’re maintaining “programming” (no details given) are not renewing the contracts of rabbis – the trained, experienced professionals who do the most important programming a synagogue provides: spiritual leadership, teaching and support to individuals and families.
Surely other congregational services are secondary to those that rabbis provide.
Meanwhile, synagogue facilities – except for offices and preschool classrooms -- sit virtually empty much of the time; and steep mortgages and maintenance costs erode the diminished financial resources needed to stay afloat until the economy improves and membership revives.
Are any congregations burdened with overhead inviting other synagogues (across the denominational stream), churches and schools that now lease quarters elsewhere, to rent space in their sanctuaries and classrooms?
For instance, Beth El Congregation rents space to the JFCS Center for Senior Enrichment, an Orthodox minyan, and a charter school.
Sharing facilities not only would consolidate scarce financial resources; it also would create connections between people and organizations too often isolated in their own worlds, building knowledge and understanding, and strengthening our community.
It’s worth trying.
15 May, 2009 > Comment - 0 -