September 20, 2004

The Program Begins Today in NEW YORK, Then Goes NATIONAL:
OU and FEGS Join Forces to Create Synagogue-Based Project Parnossahworks, to Use Technology to Confront Unemployment in the Jewish Community

Responding to a demonstrated need in the Jewish community, and in particular among Orthodox Jews, the Orthodox Union has entered into a partnership with the FEGS Heath and Human Services System to create Project Parnossahworks, in which OU synagogues will be on the front lines in putting job seekers in their congregations in touch with employers, through use of state-of-the art computer and website technology created by FEGS.

Parnossah means “earning a living” in both Hebrew and Yiddish.

Four OU synagogues on Manhattan’s West Side -- Congregation Ohab Zedek, Congregation Shearith Israel (The Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue), Lincoln Square Synagogue, and The Jewish Center -- are participating in a pilot program for Project Parnossahworks and its website, Parnossahworks.org. The pilot, set officially to begin with its website activated today -- in the days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur -- is expected to last up to two months. Following the pilot, the OU and FEGS plan to extend the program throughout New York and then to OU synagogues nationally.

The FEGS Health and Human Services System is one of the largest health related and human services organizations in the United States, with a record of seven decades of serving the Jewish community and access to 36,000 employers. Given its organizational priority of strengthening the Jewish family, the OU sought to partner with FEGS because of the special nature of Jewish unemployment and unemployment in the Orthodox community.

“The Jewish community suffers from a new kind of unemployment,” declared OU Executive Vice President Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb. “In the past it was those who had no training who went without jobs. Today, it is the highly trained who may be unemployed. Our partnership with FEGS is meant to address this systemic unemployment by utilizing the services of an agency that has had great success over the years in training people for the job market and placing them in appropriate positions, and which moreover has special knowledge of the Jewish community and sensitivity to its needs.”

That partnership began last December when the OU, together with FEGS and the Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services, presented three free employment workshops for job seekers, which attracted large crowds to OU headquarters. The workshop sessions dealt with “The Complete Job Search,” “The Power of Positive Thinking,” and “Winning Interview Techniques.” At the conclusion of the workshops, Rabbi Weinreb declared that “a major priority for the OU will be to help people in search of proper employment.”

The Parnossah Project is the response to that commitment.

With the well-educated Jewish community as a whole beset by unemployment, the Orthodox segment of that community faces special stresses, declared Eliezer Edelman, OU Executive Director of Operations and Management. “With the demands of yeshiva tuition, tzedakah (charitable giving), Shabbat and holiday observance, there is a special need to deal with unemployment in the Orthodox community and its effects on a family. The costs of an Orthodox lifestyle are high, deepening the impact of unemployment,” he said.

FEGS Chief Executive Officer Alfred P. Miller noted the particular impact that 9/11 and the dotcom bust have had on the Jewish community, resulting in unemployment as well as in underemployment, in which people are forced to take jobs beneath their skills and experience and often must hold two or three jobs in order to make ends meet. Project Parnossahworks will address both situations.

According to Project Parnassahworks Chairman Dr. Steven Katz of Teaneck, NJ, a businessman and professor at the Bernard Baruch Graduate School of Business of the City University of New York, the program is a response to a structural change in employment, with the outsourcing not only of lower level jobs, but those of higher economic status as well. “We intend to help people who are behind the economic curve to get ahead of that curve,” he said.

The synagogues are the key, both Mr. Miller and Dr. Katz explained. The rabbis at the four participating synagogues will notify their congregants – during their Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur sermons – about the existence of the program, calling on the unemployed or underemployed to utilize it, and moreover, urging employers in their congregation or those who know of vacancies to post them on the website. “There will be an entry through the synagogue to jobs that might be available,” Mr. Miller said.

The program will also serve to screen applicants, Dr. Katz said, avoiding frustration on the part of applicants – who otherwise might apply for jobs for which they are not qualified – and of employers, who otherwise would be inundated with resumes. There is no cost to the companies involved, emphasized Dr. Katz.

For job applicants, according to Mr. Miller of FEGS, the task is simple. A candidate goes to the website and types in what he or she is looking for. A list of jobs will come up, the applicant clicks on the choices, and within 24 hours a FEGS expert gets in contact with the candidate. As part of its response, FEGS will provide career and job search skills counseling to the candidates, as it did at its joint workshop with the OU last December. FEGS will also provide psychological counseling where necessary, to deal with problems such as alcoholism caused by unemployment. All of this will be done with special attention to Orthodox sensitivities.

Confidentially will be maintained by the use of passwords. The leadership of the participating synagogues will know how many of their congregants are using the program, but will not know who they are.

“Confidentiality is an important part of the program,” Mr. Miller explained. He emphasized that it is technology-driven but “user friendly.” The pilot program will last “a month or two” he said, with the aim of “tweaking it, like with any program.” After that, and with feedback from participants, the OU and FEGS will expand the program.

Looking ahead to a national launch of Project Parnossahworks, its Chairman, Dr. Katz said, “I’d like to see every synagogue with an active committee to identify jobs and refer people who need help to the website. Brothers must help brothers,” he declared. “I see Project Parnossahworks as a model for the Jewish community at large, not just the Orthodox community. We must energize our community to identify the jobs and to find candidates for them. The entire process goes back to the synagogues.”

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The Orthodox Union, now in its second century of service to the Jewish community of North America and beyond, is a world leader in community and synagogue services, adult education, youth work through NCSY, political action through the IPA, and advocacy for persons with disabilities through Yachad and Our Way. Its kosher supervision label, the , is the world’s most recognized kosher symbol and can be found on over 275,000 products manufactured in 68 countries around the globe.

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