1/5/06
After more than a year of task forces, consultants’ reports, and two interim directors, United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ has hired West Orange resident Robert Lichtman to reshape the Jewish Education Association of MetroWest as a new entity that will be part of UJC MetroWest.
Lichtman began work Dec. 26 as executive director of Jewish education and identity initiatives at UJC MetroWest.
Along with his lengthy title comes a new set of responsibilities for a veteran professional of Jewish communal work, whose breadth of experience ranges from advocacy for Israel and Soviet Jews to running a federation women’s department.
The transition of the JEA is expected to be completed at the end of the current fiscal year on June 30, 2006. The change, according to Lichtman, is being made to reflect community leaders’ consensus that “Jewish education doesn’t exist solely within the purview of the JEA or a subsequent agency. It is a fundamental touchstone of Jewish life as it is played out through all the agencies of MetroWest,” he said.
The move was motivated by recommendations made by TBF Consultants of Potomac, Md., and refined by UJC MetroWest. As Lichtman sees it, the educational process is an expansive one that will encompass a diverse a set of agencies, including the Legow Family Israel Program Center, the Jewish Family Service of MetroWest, and JCC MetroWest.
“We are looking to create collaborations through the federation network, the synagogues, and other organizations that are Jewishly aligned in MetroWest,” said Lichtman, whose previous job was vice president for professional development and advancement at the New York-based Jewish Education Service of North America.
“It is also to shake things up a little, in my opinion. If we do things under the JEA, people will say, ‘Oh, this is what the JEA is doing now.’ We are sending a dramatic signal to the community. We are bringing this enterprise within the walls of the federation; this to me is a very powerful statement.”
JEA had been led by acting directors since January 2004, as its board and UJC MetroWest studied its future.
“JEA found itself without executive leadership,” said Arthur Sandman, associate executive vice president for program services at UJC MetroWest. “There were serious questions as to the direction the agency was taking and its ability to continue to provide services. There were problems ranging from programmatic capacity to budget issues. And there was generally a sense in the community that Jewish education needed to be looked at from a fresh perspective and a higher degree of focus than in recent years,” Sandman said.
Operating out of JEA’s first-floor suite of offices on the Alex Aidekman Family Jewish Community Campus in Whippany, Lichtman said his first mission is to implement task force recommendations to focus on two key priorities — early childhood education and programs for teenagers.
“But I want to emphasize that once we are successful at that, we will be growing again to encompass a whole range of Jewish lifelong learning,” he said.
His blueprint for revitalizing Jewish education is wide-ranging and will reach beyond classrooms for learning opportunities. “One thing that really excites me is creating more opportunities for teens to be involved in areas of social justice,” said Lichtman. “I want them to understand that doing good is not only an American civic virtue. It is the mandate of our Jewish tikun olam.”
To Lichtman, such programs would have high school students volunteering at homeless shelters and soup kitchens to reflect “our obligation to the Jewish community and to the community at large, and all of that is informed by our Jewish learning.”
In addition, Lichtman said, he believes in emphasizing the educational components of programs ranging from athletics to the arts. He called the Central Hebrew High School, an after-school program for area teens, “a living laboratory for trying new approaches with Jewish teenagers.”
He is proposing scholars-in-residence — in the arts, journalism, and political activism — “so people can see real-live role models of what can be engaged Jewishly.”
Retaining educators
Lichtman’s portfolio will also include directing the Israel Program Center, which will retain its status as a UJC-supervised entity. “Israel is a very powerful component of Jewish identity, and it must be integrated into what we’re doing,” he said.
Merle Kalishman of Livingston, a past JEA president, agrees. “I am very enthusiastic about Bob supervising the Israel education program,” she told NJ Jewish News. “You can’t have Jewish education without Israel education. The bottom line is the Jewish education needs of MetroWest are going to be met, and the way things are going, they are going to be better.”
At JESNA, Lichtman oversaw a program aimed at attracting and retaining Jewish educators through a pilot program in southern Florida — one that he said can be applied in MetroWest.
“We want to be able to help their professional development and help them understand that the two- or three- or four-year-old child walking through the door every day represents a whole family. We have to engage the whole family Jewishly — not only the child. And at the same time, we want to improve the working conditions of Jewish educators, many of whom are very poorly paid, and they have zero, if any, benefits. Being paid a demeaning salary does not dissuade them from coming to work every day and being near the children they love.”
As he assumes charge in the waning days of the JEA’s functioning as an independent agency, Lichtman inherits a JEA staff that has been shrinking for the past three years. Lichtman said he is scheduling meetings with department directors and did not rule out additional personnel changes. “I want to hear from the staff about the programs they run and what they think their roles can be. We anticipate that some staff will have very important roles, and there very likely will be some changes.”
Aware that an uncertain future “has created a great deal of anxiety for the current staff of the JEA,” some of whom have served the agency for more than 20 years, Sandman said that some employees “may move over to the new entity and it may be that others do not. That will become clear over time.”
But he noted that UJC MetroWest’s “highest responsibility is to our community and to doing the best we can in the area of Jewish education and identity development for the community.”
Saul Andron, whose term as the JEA’s acting director ended three days before Lichtman’s began, told NJJN he wished his successor “the best of luck. There is a lot of work to be done in putting meat on the bones of the recommendations.”
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