Project Reconnect Brings Alumni and Unaffiliated to Seders Across Country

NEW YORK, MARCH 2007 - In accordance with the Passover seder decree “kol dichfin yaitai v’yechol” (“all who are hungry, let them come and eat”), Project Reconnect and the North American Association of Synagogue Executives (NAASE), working in coordination with Conservative congregations across North America and Israel, will help college students and unaffiliated young adults find places for themselves at both community and family seders during the first and second nights of Passover, April 1 and 2. Project Reconnect is the official alumni association of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism.

A list of synagogues participating in Project Reconnect’s Kol Dichfin seders, which by late March 2007 included 180 congregations in the United States and Canada, 5 in Israel, and one each in England, Spain, and Germany, can be found on our website. This list is updated daily.

“The instructive ‘Kol dichfin’ speaks not only to physical hunger, but also to spiritual hunger,” says Project Reconnect chair Jackie Saltz. “There are too many things that get in the way of us coming together as a community on a regular basis, particularly for young adults — relocations far from home, the prohibitive costs of synagogue dues for those on a limited income, the demands of new careers — the holidays give us an opportunity to gather together, to open doors in such a way that we hope will nourish our communities throughout the year.”

According to the National Jewish Population Survey of 2000-2001, conducted every decade by the United Jewish Communities, Jews between 18 and 29 years old have a considerably weaker sense of belonging to the Jewish people than do older respondents, although members of the two groups say being Jewish is very important to them in nearly equal measure.

“The Conservative movement has a tremendously vigorous youth wing in USY,” United Synagogue Youth, says Saltzman, “Our challenge is to make sure there is a next step when these young adults graduate from university, to meaningfully engage them all along the way so that they know they are not just the future of Judaism, but its present as well.”

The first Kol Dichfin seders, in 2006 followed on the heels of another successful campaign in the fall. Through “Come Home for the Holidays,” also coordinated by Project Reconnect and NAASE, 71 congregations in North American and Israel, welcomed hundreds of unaffiliated Conservative Jews into their synagogues and homes during the High Holy Days. Kol Dichfin's first year, 2006, was successful too.

“When I moved in the summer of 2005 it would have been really difficult to immediately find a place to go for the High Holidays that was not only welcoming, but also comfortable for me, had it not been for Project Reconnect,” says Gabe Taraday, who attended services at Congregation Adas Israel in Washington, DC. “I was welcomed at Adas as though I had grown up there, like I was at home,” adds Taraday. Last winter, he helped organize a young adult minyan at the synagogue that hosted him, and he sits on Project Reconnect’s central steering committee.