Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Know Your Jewish Community

The "Organized Jewish Community," as Steven M. Cohen referred to it during a UJF* conference in New York, is made up of the institutions and organizations that were created (mostly around the turn of the 20th century) to facilitate Jewish life in America.

Broad description, right? Most people in our generation (and by "our" I mean 21-40) don't really know what the organizations are (they are often known by initials), who runs them, their history, and what they do. To help rectify that, I'm going to post a profile of an organization or individual every week. My goal is to eventually create a map that will explain how the organizations are connected and what they do. Also, because I love kitsch, I'm going to do them as if the organizations are being interviewed. If you have a particular question about a particular agency, I'll try to give a heads up a day or two in advance, and I'll "ask" it.

*UJF=United Jewish Federation

4 comments:

The Comic Torah said...

Good Idea. I look forward to the postings. BTW nice blog. I'll add it to my list.

aaron

Annie said...

Thanks on both counts!

Anonymous said...

A question for all the organizations: What percentage of your funds do you spend on programming/donate to other orgs and what percentage goes to paying overhead?

Annie said...

I'll definitely see what I can do, but if that information isn't in the public sphere I might have to go covert and seduce it out of them... um, I mean search the internet.