To apply for a grant, simply fill out our short two-page application which can be downloaded here. Submit your application at any time throughout the year. Notification is made within 45 days.

Anyone who applies by November 15 is eligible for an additional funding bonus. See a special mention of our funding bonus in eJewish Philanthropy.

Apply today for an NCEJ Grant—and tell your friends in the field, too.

Here’s what one of our grantees said about the NCEJ grant her organization received:

“It is clear that our sisterhood leaders accepted the (NCEJ) grants with a clear vision. These programs are able to be easily replicated and will serve as models for sisterhoods in the future as well. Your gift is truly one that keeps on giving.”

We welcome ideas for innovative programs, as well as proposals for events that can be replicated by others.

An NCEJ grant can help you attract more people to Judaism from all walks of life and backgrounds.

• Temple Beth Israel, Broward County, FL offers conversion classes for Spanish speakers. Two of the students who went through the conversion class are currently members of the synagogue board.
• West Suburban Temple Har Zion River Forest, IL just received a grant for an Introductory Judaism class for Spanish speakers.
• Women of Temple Sinai, Pittsburgh, PA hosted a “Pride Seder” program which reached women in the congregation who were studying for their conversion, as well as others, including many from outside the synagogue.
• Jewish Federation of Greater Orange County / New York – Interfaith Family Engagement Project. This initiative will offer monthly two-hour conversations for parents (with children welcome) focused on building a Jewish home.

Have an idea? Give us a call or send us an email, contact Ellen Gerecht, Executive Director or call 301-802-4254.

Here are a few of our recent grants:

• Welcome to Judaism Course (Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine/Portland): Working collaboratively with all clergy in the community, the JCA will offer five sessions over six weeks.
• Finding Your Place in B’nai Mitzvah: The Jewish Federation of Greater Indianapolis will hold a four-series seminar for Jewish/non-Jewish families in the bar/bat mitzvah stage to help them navigate some of the issues they may face.
• 2nd Nite Learners Seder for Conversion Students (Congregation Beth Tikvah, Toronto): This provided families an opportunity to celebrate Passover with others going through the same process.

Programs such as these can start participants on a Jewish journey. Here’s just one example:

“Our Taste of Judaism classes are a great way to introduce inactive and non-Jews to Judaism in a friendly, non-proselytizing atmosphere.”

Many students have continued on to other adult education classes. One Jewish retiree who had been unaffiliated took the Taste of Judaism® class a few years ago, got involved in the synagogue, and volunteered as an adult education chairman the past year. Additionally, a couple who attended the Taste of Judaism® class joined the weekly Torah study group.

In Other Grant News…

The NCEJ grant to the Union of Reform Judaism (URJ) was recently renewed. URJ will use the grant for marketing Introduction to Judaism and A Taste of Judaism® classes. The funds will be used to support classes held by individual synagogues and for social media and other advertising for URJ-sponsored classes.

The Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA) received an additional grant for 2018-19. This will enable more small- to medium-sized communities to receive sub grants for programming geared to interfaith families, including PJ library participants.

Want to Learn More?

To learn more about NCEJ’s activities and what we fund, click here to download our new flyer.

Have a program idea that needs funding?

Give us a call or send us an email, contact Ellen Gerecht, Executive Director or call 301-802-4254.

The post Start the New Year With New Programming—Apply for a Grant Today appeared first on National Center to Encourage Judaism.

Kudos to the leadership of the chapters who submitted winning applications and to the WRJ Outreach Committee for their work overseeing the process. As a result of their efforts, thousands of people were reached through WRJ’s weekly email newsletter, their social media sites, and at conferences. WRJ still has funds to allocate and will be accepting and reviewing outreach grant applications on a rolling basis until June 1st, 2018.

For more information on this program, contact WRJ Program & Communications Associate Micaela Sheinhait at msheinhait@wrj.org or 212-650-4060.

Awarded Affiliate Program Highlights

WRJ Sisterhood: Temple Israel Sisterhood, Tulsa, OK
Program: “A Taste of Jewish Life”

Temple Israel has planned an outreach program for women in interfaith relationships and interested non-Jewish women that will combine sessions about Jewish living and culture with a lunch featuring a traditional Jewish meal. Sessions will include learning about Shabbat, making challah; learning about Passover and making charoset; and a tour of the Judaica shop featuring items used in celebrating Jewish life.

WRJ Sisterhood: Women of Temple Beth Torah, Fremont, CA
Program: “Daughters of Miriam Seder”

The Women of Temple Beth Torah is hosting a women’s Seder before Passover. This event will bring together members of 3 local congregations and unaffiliated members, including those in the deaf community. (The California School for the Deaf is located in Fremont.) The event will include “teachable moments” including traditional and non-traditional rituals by seder leaders and Jewish educators.

WRJ Sisterhood: Women of Temple Sinai, Pittsburgh, PA
Program: “Pride Seder”

Temple Sinai will host a Pride Seder in May 2018, a few weeks before LGBTQ Pride Month. They are reaching out to non-Jews and interfaith families within the LGBTQ community beyond their synagogue walls by partnering with a variety of organizations including the Gay and Lesbian Community Center of Pittsburgh, other nearby Reform Jewish congregations and the Hillel Jewish University Center of Pittsburgh.

WRJ Sisterhood: Women of Temple Bat Yahm, Newport Beach, CA
Program: “A Shared Seder”

The Temple Bat Yahm WRJ chapter will be holding a “Shared Seder” for interfaith member families, university students, and those exploring Judaism through Taste of Judaism and Introduction to Judaism classes to help them prepare for Passover and feel more comfortable attending the synagogue’s 2nd night Seder.

WRJ Sisterhood: Temple Emanu-El Sisterhood, Dallas, TX
Program: “Navigating the Religion Decision: A Workshop for Interfaith Couples”

This is a 6 session workshop for interfaith couples, led by a counselor. For those that decide to make Jewish choices the sisterhood will encourage them to enroll in the synagogue’s “Goin to the Chuppah” program which will help them understand how to create a Jewish home and also provide a connection with other newly engaged/married couples.

WRJ Sisterhood: Sisterhood of Temple Shalom, Newton, MA
Program: “Becoming Miriam: A series of programs around Miriam and Passover”

Becoming Miriam is a program series for interfaith families, young couples still forming personal traditions and new Jews by choice, using the traditions of Pesach and the Seder to create greater personal and community engagement with Jewish life. This program involves a series of education and engagement events designed to build relationships as well as increase knowledge about making the Seder a rich and enjoyable experience for all.

From the March 9th WRJ Weekly Digest:

“WRJ will provide Outreach Grant funds of up to $1,000 to WRJ sisterhoods and women’s groups to fund programs within their communities that reach out to interfaith families, unaffiliated Jews, and non-Jews who are seeking information about Jewish life. Made possible by the National Center to Encourage Judaism, the grant is designed to encourage and enhance learning about Judaism and to engage participants in Jewish life. An interfaith seder not only engages the community around the holiday of Passover, it brings a larger community together to discuss how we can be more welcoming to others.”

The post NCEJ Outreach Grants Awarded to Women of Reform Judaism (WRJ) Affiliates appeared first on National Center to Encourage Judaism.

ELKINS PARK, Pa. (JTA) — The Conservative movement’s leadership must drop its ban on Conservative rabbis officiating at interfaith weddings — before it’s too late.

The Rabbinical Assembly’s unequivocal rule is that a Conservative rabbi may not officiate at an intermarriage. But after 42 years as an active rabbi, during which I abided by that prohibition, I now believe it is no longer in the best interests of Conservative Judaism or the Jewish community.

Reality has overtaken us. Sixty percent of Jews who wed marry someone from another faith. The Conservative movement’s prohibition is ineffective as policy if our goal is to reduce intermarriage. It is counterproductive if we are trying to influence Jewish souls and bring them closer to the Jewish community. It needs to be modified if we are to serve our congregants faithfully.

We all want a strong future for our Jewish community. Intermarriage, the argument goes, weakens that future. But that’s not necessarily so.

In most cases of intermarriage, Jewish partners are not abandoning Judaism or rejecting their heritage, family, congregation or people. They just want to marry the people they love.

Often they want a “Jewish wedding,” which is why they want the officiant to be a rabbi, preferably one with whom they have a relationship. That is why they are so hurt when we refuse.

As they plan their interfaith ceremony, they learn more about the elements of a Jewish wedding. They typically choose to have a huppah, blessings over wine, seven marriage blessings, a ketubah and the breaking of the glass. They include these elements not to please their parents but for themselves. They often express surprise at how important these rituals turn out to be for them.

We do not know which interfaith couples will raise their children as Jews. We do not know which of their children — whether their parents raise them as Jews or not — will want to claim their own Jewish identity. The landmark 2013 Pew Research Center study of U.S. Jewry found that among millennials, 61 percent of those born to intermarried couples consider themselves Jewish.

We need to recognize that even when two Jews marry, there is no guarantee that their children will be dedicated Jews.

Some argue that if Conservative rabbis officiate at intermarriages, it will further lower Jewish standards and encourage intermarriage.

This is nonsense. It is delusional to think that a rabbi’s refusal to officiate will change any couple’s mind about whether to wed. Who would forgo a life with their beloved just because their beloved rabbi can’t be at their wedding ceremony?

The Conservative movement has approached intermarriage with ambivalence. Rabbis must refuse to be part of intermarriage ceremonies (we’re not even supposed to attend such ceremonies, though many of us do), but after the wedding we open our arms to the newly married couple and invite them to become part of our community.

But those we push away on Saturday night are not so ready to come back on Sunday morning. It is not easy to get over the initial sting of rejection and the stigma of the ambivalent way we view their marriage.

For a decade or so before my retirement from the pulpit in 2014, I increasingly felt uncomfortable sending young people for whom I had been their lifelong rabbi and our congregation their lifelong place of worship to a rabbi they did not know to perform the most sacred ceremony of their life just because their beloved was not Jewish. I felt I was abandoning them.

The issue became personal after I retired. My stepdaughter became engaged to someone who is not Jewish. Initially I thought I would approach one of my Reform colleagues to do the ceremony. But the couple wanted me to marry them, not a stranger. We talked about it. They wanted the ceremony to be as Jewish as possible. The religious symbolism would be exclusively Jewish, and I would be the only clergy officiating.

So I agreed. Looking back, I can’t believe I even gave it a second thought. Since then, I have agreed to do similar ceremonies for people dear to me, out of a sense of friendship, loyalty and love. In each case, I have been impressed by the sincerity of the couples and their desire to make their wedding both a personal and Jewish statement. I have been touched by their gratitude for my presence as a rabbi, blessing their most emotionally intimate moment in life and affirming the promise of their place in the Jewish community.

We can no longer stand on the sidelines, piously refusing to involve ourselves in intermarriage ceremonies. If we extend ourselves with acceptance, if we affirm the legitimacy of the loving choices people make by agreeing to be part of their ceremonies, more couples would be inclined to seek the spiritual fulfillment that comes from Jewish commitment.

At the very least, a superfluous impediment to couples’ involvement in our Conservative Jewish houses of worship would be removed.

(Rabbi Seymour Rosenbloom retired recently after 36 years as spiritual leader of Congregation Adath Jeshurun in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania. He is now the president of the Jewish Social Policy Action Network.)

The post Allow Conservative Rabbis to Officiate at Interfaith Weddings appeared first on National Center to Encourage Judaism.