BJ’s Community Building Initiative involves an internal assessment of community at BJ, as well as an external assessment of how other congregations around the country are succeeding in building community.
Guy Austrian and our team of NYU Wagner School students will come up with an outline of findings and recommendations in March. Choices will be made by a leadership team including lay leaders, board members, staff, and the rabbis. A fuller narrative report, including more background and research, will be published in April. Both reports will be available to the community.
Guy Izhak Austrian is BJ’s Senior Consultant for Community and Social Justice. He previously served BJ as Director of Social Action/Social Justice from 2005-2008, and is now enrolled in the Rabbinical School at the Jewish Theological Seminary, where he is proud to have finished one semester so far! Guy lives on the (Upper) Upper West Side with his life partner, Rabbi Jill Jacobs.
(He is a different person from Guy Felixbrodt, BJ’s current full-time Community Initiatives Coordinator, who is responsible for programming things like kiddushim, onegs, havurot, Bekef, and more, and can be reached at gfelixbrodt@bj.org or 212-787-7600 x255)
If you have comments or questions on these posts, or on the initiative as a whole, please feel free to let Guy Austrian know. You can e-mail him at gaustrian@bj.org
