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Conceived in 1995, Making Connections provides more than 1800 families with user-friendly home-based education (Home Study Kits) together with community outreach activities held in non-traditional settings.

At this juncture, Making Connections is creating an innovative paradigm for outreach and affiliation that will lead the unaffiliated and uninvolved into the Jewish community and enable synagogues and other community institutions to develop the necessary approaches to embrace them.

Making Connections intends to accomplish this objective over a two-year period by

• enhancing its current program with three new Home Study Kits and three community events
• introducing Our Jewish Home, a St. Louis based in-home family education program, to the Philadelphia region
• developing a training Handbook for use by synagogues with the Home Study Kits and the Synagogue Mentorship Program
• implementing the pilot Synagogue Mentorship Program in four area synagogues
• disseminating the new program model in two pilot communities throughout the United States

The Making Connections Mentorship Program empowers synagogues to explore, develop and implement institutional changes in their approach to outreach and affiliation.

Over an eighteen month period, Making Connections Mentors who are specifically chosen for each participating synagogue guide a team of lay and staff professionals through a process of systemic change designed to enhance outreach, affiliation and member retention practices. Program structure which consists of an introductory meeting attended by all participating synagogues, three individual team meetings and interim consultations with the program Mentor allow each synagogue the opportunity to benefit from the collective experience of the group and to individualize program content to meet the needs of the congregation.

The Mentorship Program is currently being offered in its pilot form to four synagogues in the Philadelphia region: Germantown Jewish Centre, Old York Road Temple-Beth Am, Or Hadash, A Reconstructionist Congregation and Kesher Israel Congregation in West Chester. The Mentorship Program will be offered again in the fall 2000.

E-mail us at erivel@jopp.org to recieve more information about the Synagogue Mentorship Program or about Making Connections.

   

Our Jewish Home, an in-home family education program, was made available through Making Connections for the first time in March 2000.

Families with a least one child between the ages of 3 and 6 are eligible to participate in the program which consists of four one-hour interactive and informational home visits by a trained Jewish educator on the subjects of Pesah (spring), Shabbat (summer), Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Sukkot (fall) and Jewish Values (winter). Some of the activities used by our family educators to engage participating families include: candle lighting and other religious rituals, challah braiding, storytelling, music and craft. Families from all Jewish backgrounds and levels of observance are welcome and encouraged to participate.

For more information, visit the Our Jewish Home web page.  

 

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