Save the Striar

Being the wanna-be townie that I am, I've been keeping tabs on the Stoughton Jewish Community Center as it transitions itself into a YMCA this March. A new group dedicated to saving the Striar JCC was created after they encountered resistance from the Boston Combined Jewish Philanthropies (CJP). It appears that CJP is pulling out of their originial agreement to provide Jewish programming for senior on the South Shore and is shifting the burden to local synagogues.

I've always had a love/hate relationship with the Boston CJP. While they do provide much-needed social programming for the greater-Boston Jewish community, the vast majority of those programs do not take place south of Boston. Despite the fact that tens of thousands of Jews live south of town (and donate to CJP), we are routintely ignored by the CJP who favor the wealthier metro west suburbs.

The Stoughton JCC was built with donations gathered by Boston's South Shore Jewish community. As if it weren't bad enough that we're losing our local J, the CJP is taking the proceeds from a building that we paid for and not putting it back into our community. Apparently acting like a bunch of gonifs isn't where the CJP's shadiness ends. According the Stoughton Journal the CJP has gone so far as to stonewall efforts by local community organizers to poll current JCC members on programs that they would like to see continued.

Jews south of Boston continue to give generously to the CJP though for the life of me I can't figure out why. South Shore Jews are constantly treated like second class citizens by the very organizations that were designed to help us. The fact that we elect to live away from the shtetls of Newton or Brookline does not make us any less deserving of the programs that we so continue to so generously support. I will rally behind any effort to rebuild a South Shore Jewish Community Center so long as the CJP is not directly involved.