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Friday April 4, 1997

JCRC director brings world-affairs skills to East Bay

LESLEY PEARL
Bulletin Staff

Nonetheless, they worked together to make certain both the speech and the vigil remained calm and respectful.

"We kept close cooperation throughout," recalls Kahn. "What could have been a tense relationship at that time was instead maintained on a friendly professional level.

"I was impressed by her intelligence, her people skills, her cooperative spirit and her interest in many of the kinds of issues we address at the JCRC".

Now the two are working on the same team.

Rubinson, 28, was recently hired as director of the S.F.-based JCRC's office in the East Bay.

She is the first staffer hired since the JCRC of the Greater East Bay became part of the S.F.-based regional JCRC operation, which also serves the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma counties.

Nine months ago, in an effort to trim the budget of the Jewish Federation of the Greater East Bay, the East Bay JCRC was dismantled and 25 percent of the federation staff was laid off.

With reduced allocations to the JCRC, the East Bay federation linked its JCRC efforts to the regional office and reduced the hours of director to halftime.

Because of the restructuring, Rubinson is building from the ground up.

"Right now I'm just working on building infrastructure," she said. "I'm establishing a new board of directors. I'm meeting Jewish community leaders and rabbis and helping them understand the absorption process."

Among her more long-term goals are building coalitions with different ethnic populations and being a voice in politics, ranging from school boards to legislative process.

But for now, Rubinson is focusing much of her attentions on becoming more familiar with the East Bay community. The Israeli-born mother recently moved with her husband and year-old son from San Francisco to Berkeley.

"I think it helps that I live here now. This is my community. So I have a vested interest," Rubinson said.

She added that the size and diversity of the East Bay "is a great challenge. "There's Berkeley and Oakland. But there's also Danville and Livermore and the far reaches of Alameda and Contra Costa County," Rubinson said, contrasting the diverse ethnic mix in the urban areas with the largely white suburban areas, where Jews are more isolated. "The very nature of the community tells me its needs will be different."

For example, Christmas trees don't show up at public schools in Berkeley. "But they still do in some of the outlying areas of the region," she said.

"I need to research and reach out to the different populations and different ethnic communities of the East Bay."

Kahn agreed.

"The East Bay is a laboratory for community relations issues. Many are similar to what we address in San Francisco. But some are different," Kahn said. "Black-Jewish relations are of great interest on both sides of the bay, but they will resonate differently and be expressed differently in each community.

"In terms of the issues that surface, Contra Costa County is very different than Alameda County."

Nonetheless, the goals of the organization on both sides of the bay remain the same. Centralized efforts guarantee work won't be duplicated.

Funding for the East Bay office will come entirely from the East Bay federation. However, staff resources and programming ideas will be shared with the regional effort.

"We were looking to provide the most value for our dollar," said Ami Nashon, executive vice president of the Jewish Federation of the Greater East Bay. "Financial pressure brought this question to a head. But if we had been thinking sharply 10 years ago, we would have combined our efforts."

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