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Getting The Word Out: Jewish outreach workers recommit themselves to strengthening religious observance.
Jewish outreach is no longer a mom-and-pop operation. In barely 30 years, it has grown into a $100 million multi-national industry complete with slick marketing techniques, training programs, and a corps of professional practitioners whose goal is to help ever-larger numbers of Jews reconnect with their heritage.
But it still measures success one soul at a time.
"If anybody considers their Jewish identity more valuable after a program, that's a success," said Rabbi Shlomo Porter, director of the Etz Chaim Centers for Jewish Studies in Park Heights and Owings Mills. "If anyone doesn't intermarry, that's a great success. If anyone does one mitzvah [commandment], that's a success."
Rabbi Porter recently was elected president of the Association for Jewish Outreach Professionals (AJOP). He was one of about 100 Orthodox outreach workers who gathered May 11-13 at the Homowack Hotel in the Catskills for the ninth annual AJOP Professional Convention.
The participants, who came from as far away as Australia, represent dozens of Orthodox organizations, ranging from Chabad Lubavitch, the world's largest outreach group, to individual rabbis and lay leaders.
They heard presentations on a variety of topics, but each one had essentially the same focus: In an effort to combat assimilation, how best can Orthodox Jews reach non-Orthodox Jews? The issue is complicated by deteriorating relations between the various denominations. While the Orthodox outreach community has been hesitant to legitimize non-Orthodox movements and their leaders, it has expressed its eagerness to embrace all Jewish individuals regardless of their denomination.
"Orthodox outreach workers should feel that every Jew is a part of the Jewish people, no matter what their belief system is, Reform, Conservative or secular," said Rabbi Porter. "They should befriend them and love them and care for them."
Toward that end, the New York-based...