The recession means many Jewish organizations havebeen cutting staff in recent months, but there’s one D.C-based Jewish group that’s growing, reports the Forward:
The J Street Project, the new liberal Israel advocacy organization in Washington, is looking to double its size by the end of the year, and it is currently considering candidates for four new positions. …
J Street was founded just last year and had only begun to tap the reservoir of like-minded donors when the economic downturn hit. It also came into its own just as President Obama came to office, bringing a new foreign policy team that seems to be in tune with J Street’s dovish message.
The story, which also also notes that while national Jewish organizations may be cutting staff overall, the D.C. offices have been stable:
While many national organizations have been cutting staff in their offices across the country, most of the lobbying operations in Washington have escaped relatively unharmed. At the Anti-Defamation League, for instance, where 10% of the organization’s employees were cut last year, the Washington staff was left untouched; the same was true at the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. Perhaps the biggest name in Washington, the American Israel Political Affairs Committee, has cut neither its budget nor its staff — and it has no plans to do so.
Rabbi David Saperstein, who runs the Washington-based Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, said that Obama’s administration has inculcated a sense that politics and government are growth industries.
“At a time when there are such sweeping policy changes, the sense of importance in these Washington offices is clearer than ever,” Saperstein said. “It’s led to less cuts down here than has been the case in headquarters.”
UPDATE: The Washington Jewish Week reports that the RAC will be cutting staff this week:
Mark Pelavin, the RAC’s associate director, however, said that by the end of the week, his organization’s 20-person staff would be "significantly smaller."
The staff cuts, though, "won’t undermine our core work," Pelavin said. "This week, there’s no escaping the human cost — we’re going to let go some good people — [but] we’ve known for a while that the world has changed around our structure."
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