In many ways, Brian Shulman found it a "welcome relief" when he moved north from the University of South Alabama at Mobile to teach speech-language pathology at Seton Hall, the Catholic university in South Orange.

"I grew up as a traditional Conservative Jew in Rockland County," said Shulman, now associate dean of Seton Hall's School of Graduate Medical Education. And although he felt welcome and comfortable at a synagogue in a city with 400 Jewish families, "the people in Mobile were more interested in Southern traditions than Jewish traditions."

Since joining the Seton Hall faculty in 1998, he has found its academic community to have the admirable mission of "respect for the values of cross-cultural diversity — religiously, racially, and linguistically."

"I do not feel like an outsider," said Shulman. "I am part of the Seton Hall community. I have even attended Mass on the campus at Christmas, but I don't sing. I am a Jew working in a Catholic institution, and it's just like working in a nonsectarian institution."

The White House has triggered debate in and outside the Jewish community by supporting faith-based initiatives that would allow religious groups to consider faith in hiring staff and still receive federal money.

The Bush administration said such initiatives would only extend an exemption from civil rights laws that already allow religious charities to discriminate in hiring. Critics say the move would in effect permit workplace discrimination.

As legislators struggle with the issue and lawyers prepare for eventual court battles over religion-based hiring, a random look at sectarian institutions in the MetroWest area shows Jews fitting in comfortably at Christians institutions and Christians valuing their experience of working in Jewish community organizations and firms.

Presenting all sides

Ever since joining the Seton Hall faculty in 1978, Naomi Wish said, she has "yet to feel like an outsider — but there are some things I have to be aware of."

"The most critical one," said the director of the university's Center for Public Service, "is the issue of abortion rights and the special nature of the opposition on a Catholic campus. I'm not going to bring in a speaker from Planned Parenthood," she said, without arranging for someone who opposes abortion to present that view.

As a campus veteran, Wish said, she assumes "everyone knows I'm Jewish. I'm a Conservative Jew, and I make it plain."

On her office wall hangs a diploma engraved in Hebrew. It was awarded to her mother, Doris Bailin, who at the age of 70 received a degree in Hebrew literature from the Cleveland College of Jewish Studies.

Wish also said she makes her Jewishness known on many Friday afternoons. "I'm not shomer Shabbos, but if I'm invited somewhere I say, ‘No. I'm sorry. I'd like to go, but I have to go home and make Sabbath dinner.'"

Labor of love

Every Sunday morning, Dita Delman is greeted with the word "shalom" as she enters First Baptist Peddie Memorial Church and sits down at the organ.

It is the way the congregants of the church on Broad Street in downtown Newark give her a special welcome. Delman has been a musical mainstay at worship services and concerts there for the past 21 years, and she insisted the setting is not far removed from her childhood singing at Congregation B'nai Israel in Elizabeth.

During the week, at studios in Rumson and at her South Orange home, Delman teaches classical, operatic, and liturgical music to a variety of people, including cantorial students.

She is artistic director of the State Repertory Opera, which maintains its office in South Orange and performs at the Bergen Academies Theater in Hackensack.

But, she said, she has considered the Sunday job special since she first started singing in the choir.

Now she is the choir director and organist at Peddie Memorial, where, she said, "the music is gorgeous and the people in the congregation couldn't be nicer. They have never tried to convert me." When her son became a bar mitzva, members of the congregation sent presents.

"I treat my role as a professional position. This is my job. But it's a labor of love." In addition to the religious oratorios of Saint-Saens, Mendelssohn, and Handel, she has led the 18-member choir in African-American spirituals and what she calls "popular religious music."

Despite her Jewish upbringing, Delman said, she does not mind being surrounded in church by people with whom she does not share religious doctrine.

"There is a spiritual value in the experience. I feel the good parts."

Christians at the AJC

Two of the three women who form the backbone of the office staff at the American Jewish Committee's Millburn headquarters said they knew very little about Jews or Judaism until they were hired their two years ago.

Zayadah Wright, a secretary who commutes to work from Orange, said she found the post at first to be unusual. "I can't really say I knew a lot of Jewish people before, and in the beginning I felt a little out of it. But now I have a better understanding,"

Willingness on the part of the Jewish women on the AJC professional staff to share their religious and political knowledge helped Wright feel comfortable.

"If it's a holiday," she said, "someone can explain it to you. If different issues arise, the professional staff will come right here to the outer office and talk about them. So you have no choice but to know the issue and what's going on and what action is being taken to try to resolve it."

Wright said her experience working with Jews at the AJC has put her in closer touch with her background as a Christian. "It makes me want to be more involved with my religion after seeing how they are with theirs, how they are very much into their Judaism and they know everything that's going on. They can over-explain it to you. After a while, you want to take out a pad and a pen and start taking notes."

Office manager Kiyonna Thomas said she didn't know any Jews when she was growing up Christian in Irvington. "Maybe there were Jews there before me, but not while I was growing up."

Then, in January 2001, she was hired as a secretary at AJC.

"My first week here I felt, ‘Wow, this is totally different.' I knew nothing about Jewish people, and here they are, having conversations about Israel and all these issues while I'm sitting here. I felt left out. But there were a couple of questions asked, and I got a couple of answers back. It's like in school: If the teacher calls on you and you don't know the answer, you feel a little timid. That's how I felt the first week, but I let it go quickly because I realized that, if anything, it's not going to hurt me to learn something new."

But being around Jews at the AJC was nothing new for Deborah Dellatorre, a Florham Park resident and a Catholic who grew up on Long Island and went to Brandeis University.

"It's not a novel community for me to work in. I really admire the sincerity of the professional staff and how much they care about Jewish concerns," she said. "It is very inspiring. I feel my opinion matters quite a bit, and I really appreciate the level of respect the professional staff gives to the three secretaries.

"If we have something to add to the conversation, it's taken very much into account. It's not at all discounted, given either our level here or the fact that we're not Jewish.

At JCC MetroWest's Jewish Community Center of Metropolitan New Jersey in West Orange, "a substantial proportion of the staff is not Jewish," according to associate executive director Eric Robbins. That is not likely to change even if the legislation does. "We haven't done this because of any legislation; we've just hired the best people," he said.

Some positions require a Jewish knowledge base, he pointed out, but even that does not necessarily rule out non-Jewish applicants. The organization runs a series of Jewish education classes that all program staff are required to take, and others are "encouraged" to take, to ensure that they're familiar with the Jewish calendar and holidays, the different levels of observance, and so on.

Symbols and images

Having a mixed staff, Robbins said, reflects the JCC's membership and the wider reality. "We're a Jewish community center, but we're conscious of existing in a non-Jewish society. This keeps us more attuned to that," he said.

The notion that "you don't have to be Jewish" pervades the pages of NJ Jewish News, thanks in part to design director Lynn Pelkey, who is responsible for much of the way this newspaper looks.

She knew "very few Jews" during her years growing up in Madison, where father was a Presbyterian minister. But that would change radically nine years ago, after she graduated from William Paterson College with a degree in graphic arts.

A few months later she was hired as a junior graphic artist and began a learning process that has proved essential.

"I deal in symbols and images, and I have to know what many things mean. For instance, I had to learn the difference between a hanukkia and a menora" to depict the correct candelabrum at Hanukka.

Pelkey said she doesn't "feel different" from her Jewish coworkers and she especially appreciates one fringe benefit that began on her first day.

"Being here has really helped me learn a lot about current issues and what is going on in the world."

Robert Wiener can be reached at .