Nothing has been immune from the pandemic, not the private sector, not the military, not governments at the local state or federal level.

Everything is being transformed by the outbreak and the spread of the coronavirus.

And that includes, of course, Jewish institutions.

Now, as of this broadcast in late May 2020, some synagogues in America are just starting to

convene Minyanim, but most are not. And indeed, most Jews have not set foot in a synagogue in months.

Now that the academic school year winds down and parents and children

throughout the U.S. look towards summer, we've heard a collective crestfallen sigh as Jewish summer

camps have been canceled. Donations are down. Dues are down. Enrollments are down. There are big

umbrella organizations like the Jewish federations in various cities,

that are heroically trying to move money around and disperse emergency funds

so that the whole variegated ecology of Jewish institutional life does not shrivel up.

But for some, the black and white numbers are just not amenable to even emergency infusions

of cash.

The problems are systematic, and what we're seeing is not the out-of-nowhere shock caused

by the pandemic, but the rapid acceleration of long trend lines.

Much of the Jewish institutional world was not exactly healthy before the crisis, and where

will all be when it's over is kind of hard to say.

That's true everywhere, but it's especially acute in some of the largest and most ubiquitous

Jewish institutions in the United States.

Recently, the Union for Reform Judaism, U.R.J., president, Rabbi Rick Jacobs, announced that

the long-term viability of the U.R.J is at risk, and so, with a heavy heart, he had to let

go 20% of the people who work there. Now, some have suggested, as a strategy to keep alive

...