Jewish Community Center members from Morris County expressed anger and frustration at two forums convened by JCC MetroWest to discuss its financial crisis and options that include vacating the athletic facility in Whippany as a JCC operation and allowing it to be run by an outside fitness provider.

JCC MetroWest said they had done all they could to carry on operations at the Whippany site and pledged to continue to work with Morris County Jews in providing services.

	Mel Zirkes of Livingston, Cy Halpern of Morristown, and Louis Abramson of Roseland took part in a heated public forum, held July 19, to discuss the fate of the Whippany facility of JCC MetroWest. Photos by Johanna Ginsberg

The two public meetings were held in the afternoon and evening of July 19 at the Alex Aidekman Family Jewish Community Campus, the Whippany home of what is known as the Lautenberg Family JCC. Panelists included JCC officials and officials of United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ, of which it is a beneficiary agency.

Members were invited to the meetings in response to an announcement in May that JCC MetroWest could no longer cover long-standing deficits at the Whippany facility. JCC MetroWest maintains a second facility in West Orange.

"Our first priority to JCC members is to continue to offer services to the Morris County Jewish community," said Dolly Luwisch, JCC MetroWest board of trustees chair.

She told the audience at the two-hour afternoon meeting that adult programming, such as Men and Women at Leisure and Jewish Enrichment Time for Seniors, would continue at the Whippany campus, along with special programming including Winterfest, Kids Extravaganza, and College Fest.

Luwisch said that early childhood programming will continue in the building for one more year. In the meantime, she said, the JCC is talking with the Nathan Bohrer-Abraham Kaufman Hebrew Academy of Morris County in Randolph and several Morris County synagogues about collaborating with them for early childhood programs beginning in the fall of 2008.

She apologized for "any tumult it has caused in your individual lives."

UJC MetroWest president Kenneth Heyman said that the Aidekman campus building in Whippany would continue to house institutions of the Jewish community, including UJC itself, New Jersey Jewish News, The Partnership for Jewish Learning and Life, the Jewish Historical Society of MetroWest, Lester Senior Housing, and the Waldor Library.

Among the possibilities for the JCC facility, which include a gym and a swimming pool, is that it could be run by an outside fitness provider, he said.

"UJC has been in discussion with several alternative service providers in an effort to keep all fitness, gym, and aquatics programs in the Lautenberg building," Heyman said. There have been "strong expressions of interest from several retail and nonprofit fitness providers, and we are hopeful we can achieve a seamless continuation of the health and fitness services," he said.

Heyman added that any new provider would come with a track record of success in the fitness field.

"Their different business model, name recognition, customer base, and more visible marketing efforts to the broader Morris County audience will hopefully result in a revenue stream that would sustain the Whippany facility," he said.

Morris County residents in the audience vented anger at not having been informed about the growing financial crisis until a decision had already been reached by the leadership. Some audience members said they had been treated as a "stepchild" by the JCC and UJC, both of which have roots and their largest funding base in Essex County (see sidebar).

"I have no confidence in your management of our facility or your ability to govern," said Rebecca Levine of White Meadow Lake. She identified herself as a founding member who invested in the JCC from the beginning "because I believed in it."

The deficit, she said, "didn't happen yesterday. What were your efforts in outreach to the Jewish community? Why didn't we have a town meeting three years ago?" she asked, to applause from the audience of about 100 people.

Luwisch defended the JCC's actions, saying it had not set up community forums earlier because "we were doing our due diligence, trying to find any manner possible to be able to continue to give the level of service here at the Whippany location for as long as we could."

	Sheila Gudis of Randolph called the departure of the JCC athletic facilities "a tragedy" for the community.

In the past year the JCC renovated the weight and exercise rooms at the Whippany campus, developed a dedicated space for personal training sessions, and outsourced its health and fitness center management and membership functions to the Manhattan-based fitness management company Plus One.

"We took major dollars and invested in advertising; we reached out to the Morris County corridor," said Luwisch. "It didn't work. I wish that it had. We did do some improvement, hoping that it might make a bit of a difference. It did, a little bit, but not to the level that we could continue to sustain some of the things that we do and stay true to the mission."

Mel Zirkes of Livingston, who said he comes to the Whippany JCC because he prefers the smaller facility to the West Orange facility, expressed frustration that while the Whippany facility was facing a financial shortfall, the JCC launched a renovation and expansion of the West Orange JCC that eventually cost $23 million. JCC MetroWest executive director Michael Hopkins estimates that the long-term debt is $8 million. Zirkes called the renovation, originally budgeted at $14 million, the "$8 million gorilla."

In the May letter to members, JCC officials said the costs of the expansion in West Orange contributed to JCC MetroWest's inability to cover the deficits in Whippany.

At last week's afternoon forum, officials denied that the West Orange expansion played a decisive role in the financial difficulties surrounding Whippany, which called "systemic."

Although Hopkins acknowledged that West Orange has been operating at a loss, he called it "transitional" and added, "Right now, West Orange membership is the highest it's ever been. There's a wait list for preschool, and within probably the next year, West Orange will be a profitable location."

David Reingold, president of the Morristown Jewish Center-Beit Yisrael, charged that little effort was made to rally the Morris County community through the area synagogues.

"We have about 900 and change adults who are members," he said. "I never got a phone call saying we have this problem, maybe we can sit down and see what we can do."

In one of the most heated moments of the meeting, Reingold elicited applause when he asked audience members if they were going to reduce their contributions to UJC, which supports local Jewish agencies and schools as well as the United Jewish Appeal campaign for Israel and other overseas needs.

"This is what's going on because you're not associating the psychological impact of coming to us with a done decision," Reingold said.

Heyman implored audience members not to discontinue their support for UJC MetroWest's area-wide campaign.

"I would suggest very strongly that is 200 percent the wrong approach," he said. "We can spend the next four hours talking about what the UJA campaign does for the Jewish people both here on the North American continent, or certainly in Israel, and in dozens of countries around the world."

Heyman said the victims of a diminished campaign would not be UJC but the people it helps. "You're going to be making a statement to the wrong people. The people who are going to suffer the most are people who are hungry or in need of something the Jewish community offers them."

UJC MetroWest executive vice president Max Kleinman countered Reingold by invoking the Jewish sage Hillel.

"There is no address that accomplishes more in the Jewish world," he said of the federation. "I understand your pain. I understand your anger. But as Hillel teaches us in Pirkei Avot, the Ethics of our Fathers, "Al tifrosh min hatzibur." Despite differences, despite arguments, despite ways in which we can all do better — and we certainly acknowledge that we could have done better — "Al tifrosh min hatzibur." "Never separate yourself from the community," he said.

After the meeting, Abe and Sima Feder of Parsippany echoed the remarks of many participants by saying the meeting was too little, too late.

"This forum was important. There are a lot of issues, but it's a big question mark. They should have considered sharing all of this with the Jewish community before. I'm very sad nothing was done and there was no public effort. This was too late, but Jews always live in hope," said Abe Feder.