Community Action Programs
Family Promise
Family Promise is a program that provides homeless families in Hunterdon County with a safe and comfortable place to stay. Each week of the year, a different religious congregation hosts several families. Twice annually, the FJCC hosts the guests from Family Promise. Compassionate volunteers, like you, create a homelike environment for the families while they are at our synagogue. Due to COVID-19, we are unable to host families at this time. When the crisis is over, we will resume our hosting and ask for volunteers. Everyone is busy, but please take some time out of your hectic schedule and help out! Contact Alisa Grossman or Josy Kestenbaum for more information.
The Giving Garden
The FJCC Giving Garden, provides food for local needy families. The garden was created as a Boy Scout Eagle Award project by Jake Nemeth. He enlisted the assistance of various community leaders, solicited donations, built the garden, organized the planting and tending, and dispersed delicious, fresh produce to community members. The garden lives on year after year with the assistance of many dedicated volunteers! Thank you to all!
The Jewish Relief Agency
At least once a year, a large group of Hebrew School children and their families help pack food at the Jewish Relief Agency in Philadelphia. According to their website, “JRA Philadelphia is the largest provider of food assistance to Jewish families in need in the Greater Philadelphia region and is the third largest direct-service food pantry in our area. Our monthly food distributions, which began in 2000, now assist over 3,000 households each month. What’s more, JRA has one of the largest corps of volunteers in the region – over 14,500 to date with an average of more than 850 people of all ages and backgrounds that volunteer each month. For many recipients, the work of JRA means the difference between eating regularly and going without.”
JRA Philadelphia is the largest provider of food assistance to Jewish families in need in the Greater Philadelphia region and is the third largest direct-service food pantry in the area. The monthly food distributions, which began in 2000, now assist over 3,000 low income households each month. Here is the Food Distribution Schedule
Box Making/Produce Packing: 8:30 – 10:00 AM
Tiny Tots (6 and Under): 8:30 – 9:30 AM
All ages: 10:00 – 11:30 AM
Food Delivery: 8:30 AM – 3:00 PM
Blood Drive
A few times a year, the FJCC sponsors a blood drive. Our members and people from the greater Flemington community volunteer to give blood or platelets. As the saying goes … donate blood, save a life! Although the drive is organized by FJCC volunteers, the entire blood retrieval process is handled by trained professionals from a local blood bank. Donating blood is a safe process. Each donor’s blood is collected through a new, sterile needle that is used once and then discarded. Although most people feel fine after donating blood, a small number of people may feel dizzy, have an upset stomach or experience a bruise where the needle was inserted. The blood is delivered to a blood component laboratory where it is processed into several components (e.g., red blood cells, plasma, platelets and/or cryoprecipitate). A single blood donation may help up to three different people.
Community Organizations
Jewish Relief Agency
Jewish Family Service in Somerville is a not-for-profit, non-sectarian social service agency whose purpose is to preserve and strengthen the quality of individual, family and community life based on Jewish values. We can help you address your problems, explore alternatives, develop new insights, and find solutions.
The Federation of Jewish Men’s Clubs
The Federation of Jewish Men’s Club’s mission is to involve Jewish Men in Jewish Life by building and strengthening Men’s Clubs in the Conservative/Masorti Movement.
They accomplish this mission by:
- Leadership-mentoring leaders at the club, region and international level,
- Innovation-developing programming that better connects people of all ages to the Jewish community,
- Community-forming meaningful long-lasting relationships based on camaraderie, common interests, and core values.
FJMC, a partnership of over 250 affiliated clubs with more than 20,000 members across North America and around the world, brings value and adds meaning to the lives of men and their families. Through the programming and the broad dissemination of the creative programming developed by clubs, they touch hundreds of thousands of people each year.
FJMC Keruv Program
The FJMC Keruv initiative is based on a lay/professional partnership that began in 2001. Since then, FJMC has brought together groups of rabbis to learn and to think about the issues that are occurring in their communities and within their member families. With the help of academics who study the dynamics of intermarriage, rabbis are challenged to examine how they respond to synagogue members and their children when intermarriages occur.
Open R.O.A.D. (Religious Organizations Accepting Disabilities)
In 1999, an occupational therapist, Robert Leith, and Rabbi Evan Jaffe from the FJCC founded Open R.O.A.D. At the time, both were involved in the disability community and were frustrated by what they saw as the slow pace of community integration for those with disabilities, particularly when it came to attendance at religious services. The mission was simple: bring people with disabilities of all kinds to houses of worship of their choice for religious services and social activities on a regular basis.
Open R.O.A.D. is an interfaith organization and works to serve those residing in institutions, group homes, assisted living facilities, elderly who are homebound, clients who are both ambulatory and non-ambulatory. They are engaged in an ongoing effort to identify clients in New Jersey who wish to go to religious services. The most successful mode of communication has been word of mouth and contacts with service providers.