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Friday August 13, 1999

Program recruits Jews to pass on 'surplus of literacy'

JULIA GOLDMAN
Jewish Telegraphic Agency

NEW YORK -- When Eileen Lieberman was asked to lead a team of literacy tutors at the Lucy Stone School in Boston's inner city, she was apprehensive.

Volunteers from the Women's Division of the Combined Jewish Philanthropies would be intimidated by the elementary school's surroundings, she thought.

"People will say, 'Where do I park my car? I don't want to go alone.'"

After only one visit to the school, however, she knew the program would work. "It was a very welcoming atmosphere," she said. She was confident that she could find others to participate.

The project, she said, "just blossomed," attracting far more volunteers than she anticipated, and is now beginning its third academic year.

Begun in Boston as a model project, the program of the National Jewish Coalition for Literacy has now gone nationwide, with projects in 26 cities, including San Francisco. The program is the brainchild of Leonard Fein, director of the Reform movement's Commission on Social Action.

By the year 2000, coalition administrators hope to engage every Jewish community nationwide.

Fein will be the featured speaker Tuesday, Oct. 5 at the kick-off event of the San Francisco chapter. Karen Tamis will coordinate the local Jewish Coalition for Literacy, launched in June as a joint project of the Jewish Community Relations Council and the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation.

"Our goal is to mobilize 200 volunteers from the Jewish community to tutor literacy skills in San Francisco public elementary schools, pediatric clinics at local hospitals and afterschool programs," Tamis said.

Locally, the project is funded by a grant from the Jewish Community Endowment Fund and the Maisin Foundation. It will operate in cooperation with other San Francisco public school volunteers and the Reach Out and Read program.

Plans are to expand the literacy program to other Bay Area communities, Tamis said.

Fein said that Jews "should be involved massively in tutoring. If we have a surplus of anything, we have a surplus of literacy."

The founder of Moment magazine and Mazon: A Jewish Response to Hunger, Fein was moved to action on his latest initiative when, in the fall of 1996, President Clinton announced a national campaign for childhood literacy.

In response to the president's call for 1 million volunteer tutors over the next five years for the "America Reads Challenge," Fein promised the Department of Education he would recruit 100,000 people from the Jewish community to serve as tutors, readers and book-drive operators.

Unique to the Jewish initiative, each local affiliate is also encouraged to promote Jewish literacy among its volunteers through study and discussion of Jewish texts. The Passover Haggadah, for example, with its four questions and four children, deals with the issue of literacy. As one volunteer noted, "the simple son has as much value as the smart one."

Coalition organizers from southern Florida to Seattle report a huge response from volunteers and funders, including an $85,000 donation of seed money to the coalition from the Righteous Persons Foundation, which is run by Steven Spielberg.

"You don't have to explain this to anybody," said Naomi Cohen of Hartford, where plans were under way to place 100 volunteers in schools. "We know that reading is key to so many things."

The national Jewish coalition aims to re-engage suburban Jews in the lives of people within the cities, where many of them grew up.

"Just because we chose to move to the suburbs doesn't mean we don't care about what goes on in our cities," said Nancy Kaufman, the executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston.

The challenge, she said, is to find a way to "be partners, not patrons."

"What we can do well in the Jewish community is organize people," said Rich Meyer, the literacy coordinator of the Boston Jewish Coalition for Literacy, which created a partnership with Read Boston and Boston Partners in Education to train and place over 250 volunteers in public schools.

Lieberman recounted her work on alphabet recognition with a 6-year-old girl.

After four months, the student could identify all of the letters. "She said, 'I'm really learning,'" Lieberman recalled with pride. "That's all you need to hear."

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