Community Building
Featured: Reaching out to Unaffiliated and Intermarried Jews
This is a series of audio recordings and related documents explaining how one congregation did outreach to unaffiliated and intermarried Jews. It was part of the PEARL series for Kehillah builders and the calls were facilitated by Rabbi Nancy Epstein, RRC '06.
Featured: Kehillah Builders: Inreach, Outreach and Membership
This article connects effective inreach and outreach in the process of community growth. Thinking about how to grow can help a congregation figure out how to better serve its current members as well.
Featured: Making Our Synagogues Vessels of Tikkun Olam
Rabbi Mordechai Liebling is the former Torah of Money director at the Shefa Fund (now Bend the Arc). This article is adapted from a talk at the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation Tikkun Olam Kallah March, 2003.
Topics: Community Building, Congregational Development, Innovative Programming, Jewish Community, Synagogue Programs, Tikkun Olam Type: Article
Ways to Welcome New Members
A list of ways to warmly welcome new members into your community, from partnering new members with veteran members to running special programs for members' uninvolved partners and families.
Topics: Community Building, Congregational Development, Membership, Synagogue Administration Type: How to
Planning for Change: Dollars and Sense
A guide to thinking about and implementing long-term strategic planning in your congregation as a community building process.
Topics: Community Building, Congregational Development, Money and Values, Synagogue Administration, Transitions Type: How to
Values Inventory
An exercise examining your congregation's goals and values, evaluating successes and planning for the future.
Topics: Community Building, Congregational Development, Money and Values, Synagogue Administration Type: Evaluation Tool
Making Decisions on Controversial Issues
This article contains talking points on dissent and community, as well as a guide to a three step method for ethical decision making in your community.
Topics: Community Building, Congregational Development, Jewish Life, Synagogue Programs, Tikkun Olam Type: Article
The Power that Makes for Righteousness
This is a pamphlet put out by The Jewish Funds For Justice (now Bend the Arc) highlighting the work of Reconstructionist communities in congregation-based community organizing (CBCO).
Walking the Walk: The Sacred Art of Energy Conservation
Rabbi Brant Rosen makes a passionate plea, textually based, for building an environmentally sustainable synagogue. His own congregation, The Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation (JRC) of Evanston, IL is an example.
Topics: Capital Campaigns, Community Building, Congregational Development, Divrei Torah, Jewish Community, Jewish Life, Money and Values, Tikkun Olam, Yom Kippur Type: Dvar Torah
