Chemistry as the Catalyst: The JDC Jewish Service Corps Marks Its Chai Year

It was a coincidence that made all the difference in the JDC world.

In 1986, a French-speaking, North American Jew based in Morocco approached JDC looking to volunteer with the elderly, just as JDC was searching for a French speaker to develop recreational programs for residents of Casablanca's Jewish community old age home. JDC seized the opportunity, making the match that would launch the JDC Jewish Service Corps (JSC).

Now in its 18th or chai year, the JSC has since expanded well beyond Morocco, placing more than 100 Jewish volunteers – primarily North Americans -- in 15 Jewish communities around the globe. During their time in the field, they have gone on to play a role in JDC's response to key moments in Jewish history, such as assisting in the creation of a Jewish community center for Soviet Jewish émigrés in Ladispoli, Italy in the late 1980s.

From Bulgaria's capital in the early years after the fall of the Iron Curtain to Poland's outlying towns at the dawn of the country's entry into the European Union, volunteers have also had meaningful impact in reaching out to large and small communities that have been long isolated from the Jewish world, either by history or geography. Or, in the words of a recent volunteer to Turkey, they help Jewish communities "reconnect with their past."

Today, the JSC's longevity is a tribute to both its unbending commitment on this side of the ocean and its operational flexibility overseas. It has honed the art of creating a successful shidduch, making a placement only when the chemistry between a volunteer and a community is right. And, while volunteers begin with a broad JDC charge of bringing communities steps closer to self-sufficiency, they soon set their individual creativity in motion, launching dynamic, new initiatives such as "Jewish Education in the Mail," a long-distance learning program in Romania.

On a grassroots level, JSC volunteers serve as agents for change during their one-year term overseas. They create projects -- including a youth drama group in Ethiopia that conveys vital public health messages and a seminar to teach families in Belarus how to celebrate Shabbat at home -- that have important day-to-day impact.

But their individual experiences as volunteers are also very much a part of a bigger picture, reaching a growing audience through more sophisticated programming with each passing year of the JSC's presence in a community. After more than fifteen years in India, where volunteers have launched activities ranging from the Jewish newspaper to the Jewish Cricket League, one community activist commented, "We can't remember when the programs created by some of our first volunteers didn't exist."

For the volunteers themselves, who are generally placed either solo or in pairs, the JSC's effort to foster a sense of community among those in the field during a given year greatly contributes to their success and provides a supportive network for the exchange of ideas and best practices. In fact, these connections with one another, and those formed with their host communities and JDC, are often so strong that they do not end when the year is over.

With their intensive understanding of the local culture and their enthusiasm for JDC's global work, alumni play an important role in recruiting and orienting new talent. Many go on to become rabbis, Jewish educators, and lay leaders, and JDC taps their expertise for special overseas projects, such as organizing women's learning retreats in Romania.

Since its early days in Morocco eighteen years ago, the Jewish Service Corps has taken its place in JDC's proud, 90-year-old legacy of enabling world Jewry to steer the course of its own future. Today, it continues to be a catalyst for new possibilities in Jewish communities from Minsk to Mumbai, while giving a generation of young Jewish activists the exposure that enables their Jewish spirit to soar around the globe.