One Success Story

The Jewish Fund for Justice is a model for social action
between blacks and Jews.

ROBERT NEUWIRTH SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS

obile, Ala. An af-
l f uent Jewish congregation joins a con-
frontational black community
• organization to fight for affordable hous-
ing.
New Haven, Conn. Suburban Jews
stand side-by-side with inner-city home-
less people to fight for more permanent
housing and better conditions in the
city's shelters.
Tulsa, Okla. A synagogue links with
a black Baptist Church to "adopt" a trou-
bled city housing project.
/— Washington, D.C. Members of the
city's Jewish community form YACHAD
(in unity), a non-profit group dedicat-
ed to mobilizing resources to finance and
build low-income housing.
While newspapers blare that blacks
• and Jews are at each other's throats,
while the mere presence of Jesse Jack-
son on the political scene still irks many
American Jews, while leaders from the
Jewish community and other minority
groups seem increasingly far apart,
_ there's a new message emerging from
the grass roots. It's a Jewish version of
"Do the Right Thing."
In Mobile, New Haven, Tulsa, Wash-
ington, and dozens of other cities and
towns around the country, temples and
synagogues are forming alliances out-
side of the Jewish community to fight
for social justice. The weapons they are
using in the battle are traditional Jew-
ish values — tzedakah (the command-
ment to spread righteous-
ness) and tikkun olam (the mandate to
repair the world).

"There have been lots of opportuni-
ties for presidents of Jewish federations
to sit down with their counterparts at
the NAACP or the Urban League," says
Meir Lakein, an organizer with the
Homeless Persons Organizing Project
in New Haven. 'There have been almost
no opportunities for the average Jewish
person to speak with the average per-
son who lives below the poverty level."
In their first action, the homeless peo-
ple in New Haven decided to use Sukkot,
the Jewish harvest holiday, to illumi-
nate their struggle. Together with sev-
eral Jewish congregations, they built a
sukkah on the green, at the center of the
city.
Mr. Lakein argues that this kind of
joint action is key to re-establishing trust
between relatively well-off Jews and
poor people. "These personal ties are the
only way to break the barriers down,"
he says.
Breaking down the barriers is what
the Jewish Fund for Justice (JFJ) is all
about. Formed in 1984 by Si Kahn, a
community organizer and director of the
Grassroots Leadership Project in Char-
lotte, N.C., JFJ, now headquartered in
New York City, has been at the fore-
front of efforts to build a Jewish con-
stituency for social justice causes.
With 7,000 donors, it's hardly a threat
to the United Jewish Appeal, but last
year JFJ passed an important milestone:
in its short history it has now given out
more than $1.4 million in grants.
In 1992 alone, the Fund handed out
more than $400,000 to non-profit groups.
All told, it has helped 207 organizations
in 42 states and the District of Columbia
to combat poverty and inequality.
JFJ backs a wide spectrum of groups:
interfaith coalitions working on social
issues; agencies providing training and
support for immigrants; rural organiz-
ing projects; toxic cleanup campaigns.
JFJ funds groups whose work might not

be well received by other, more cautious
foundations.
For instance, this year JFJ gave a
grant to Inner City Press/Community
on the Move, a controversial Bronx com-
munity group that has angered New
York City officials because it organizes
people to take over vacant buildings in
an effort to force the government to build
housing for the poor. And a JFJ-sup-
ported group in Mobile will soon target
its city's negligent landlords, many of
whom are Jewish.
Though it does not require the groups
it funds to have a Jewish component,
JFJ sees itself as a catalyst, a clearing-
house of information for Jewish groups
that want to get involved in the kind of
work it supports.

The Fund
sees itself
as a catalyst,
a clearing
house of
information
for Jewish
groups that
want to get
involved.

-

"I don't know if all of this is going to
add up to a major refocusing of the Jew-
ish community's efforts," says Marlene
Provizer, the Fund's executive direc-
tor, "but it is encouraging to see that
some of the seeds that are being dropped
out there are getting noticed."
The JFJ has grown dramatically in
its eight-year life, in part because of a
perception that the mainstream Jewish
organizations around the country, while
supportive of dialogue groups, are not
prepared to invest energy and dollars
on social action. Jews are moving in-
ward, notes Sherry Frank, who leads
a black-Jewish dialogue group in At-
lanta.
The Fund believes joint advocacy is
the logical next step after dialogue. It
has come up with a plan to encourage
Jewish groups to bond with low-income
communities: it offers what it calls syn-
agogue challenge grants — money for
community empowerment efforts that
involve active participation by mem-
bers of a Jewish congregation.
The idea is not just for the congrega-
tion to give money, but for its members
to get personally involved.
"Our alliance was historically based
on shared concerns and then imple-
mentation," says Steven Dow, head of
the social outreach committee of Con-
gregation Bnai Emunah in Tulsa, and
a spearhead of the synagogue's joint ef-
fort with the Antioch Baptist Church to
help the residents of the Comanche Park
housing project. 'We were marching to-
gether during the civil rights movement.
We weren't sitting around having dia-
logue groups about what the problem
was." ❑

This article was made possible by a
grant from The Fund for Journalism on
Jewish Life, a project of the CRB Foun-
dation of Montreal and the Jewish Tele-
graphic Agency. Any views expressed are
solely those of the author.

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