In a recent issue of “Congregation News,” Temple Beth Solomon of the Deaf (TBS) president Joe Slotnick explains that “The TBS Board has recently engaged in conversations with the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ), regarding our membership in that organization. This organization, originally called, The Union of American Hebrew Congregations (UAHC) was very important to TBS in our early history and played an instrumental role in TBS’ founding and we do owe our existence to their helping us. We have been a member of the URJ since the early 1960’s when the regional director, Rabbi Solomon Kleinman, (TBS is named for him) helped Rose Zucker establish TBS. Later, Rabbi, Alan Henkin, who was our Rabbi from 1980 to 1990, became the Director of this organization and was also very helpful to TBS.
“TBS has always kept our membership dues very low, allowing the Deaf community to participate more easily, and up until now, our membership dues to the URJ have also been low and reasonable. But this year, “due to a reorganization and re-orientation of objectives,” within their organization, they determined a new structure for membership fees. We assume after looking over our records, they considered $4531.00 per year “reasonable” but to us it was a shocking increase of 14 times more than we have been paying. After discussions for something more workable, they seemed to keep “passing the buck” within their organization and nothing was resolved. Our Board decided we could not justify this kind of expense and resigned our membership in the URJ and are no longer under their umbrella.”
Source: Congregation News
