A guide to exploring your community's relationship to money and creating a budget for your congregation based on your values and priorities.
Topics: Fundraising, Money and Values
Type: How to
Money and Values
Planning for Change: Dollars and Sense
A guide to thinking about and implementing long-term strategic planning in your congregation as a community building process.
Topics: Congregational Development, Money and Values, Synagogue Administration, Transitions, Community Building
Type: How to
Values Inventory
An exercise examining your congregation's goals and values, evaluating successes and planning for the future.
Type: Evaluation Tool
Tzedakah and the Jewish Holidays: Giving for Social Change
Ideas for giving opportunities throughout the Jewish year. Connects each Jewish holiday to the concept of tzedakah and recommends a relevant type of beneficiary to support.
Topics: Congregational Development, Jewish Life, Money and Values, Tikkun Olam, Holidays, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Simchat Torah, Shemini Atzeret, Sukkot, Hanukkah, Tu Bishvat, Purim, Pesach, Shavuot, Tisha B'av
Type: Program Description
The Halakhic Basis for Community Financing of Jewish Life
A perspective on taxes and community responsibility throughout Jewish history that sheds light on today's congregational practices of collecting dues.
Topics: Congregational Development, Jewish Life, Capital Campaigns, Fundraising, Money and Values, Jewish Thought, Jewish Community, Congregational and Organizational Life
Type: Essay
Walking the Walk: The Sacred Art of Energy Conservation
Rabbi Brant Rosen makes a passionate plea, textually based, for building an environmentally sustainable synagogue. His own congregation, The Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation (JRC) of Evanston, IL is an example.
Topics: Congregational Development, Jewish Life, Divrei Torah, Capital Campaigns, Money and Values, Tikkun Olam, Jewish Community, Community Building, Yom Kippur
Type: Dvar Torah
References for a Values-Based Decision Making Approach to Greening Synagogues
A collection of resources that help groups engaging in a values-based decision making approach to greening congregational spaces. The list is divided into print and online materials.
Topics: Congregational Development, Jewish Life, Money and Values, Jewish Practice, Jewish Thought, Tikkun Olam, Jewish Community, Tu Bishvat
Type: Bibliography
Dues and Financial Policy: Our Tax for Jewish Citizenship
This article brings a historical perspective on biblical taxation, suggesting that synagogue dues are a tax for Jewish citizenship. It also introduces the idea of "fair share" dues, where individual members' dues vary based on their income.
Topics: Congregational Development, Money and Values, Synagogue Administration, Membership, Community Building
Type: Article
A Jewish Approach to Obligatory Giving
This 2001 article explores our discomfort with money, offers some historical perspective and some contemporary solutions of how American congregations have set up their dues structure.
Topics: Congregational Development, Capital Campaigns, Fundraising, Money and Values, Synagogue Administration, Membership
Type: Article
A Group Discussion About Money (RT Winter 1999/2000)
This article from Reconstructionism Today contains a transcript of a conference call involving Rabbi Shawn Zevit, JRF board members and synagogue representatives from the West Coast Region about the Torah of Money workshops.
Topics: Congregational Development, Capital Campaigns, Fundraising, Money and Values, Synagogue Administration, Membership
Type: Article