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In their efforts to resurrect the Coalition for the Advancement of Jewish Education (CAJE), a professional development organization that hosted large national conferences for Jewish teachers, former CAJE leaders are banking on the contributions of volunteers who have felt a serious void since CAJE went bankrupt in March.

The formation of New Coalition for Alternatives in Jewish Education, or NewCAJE, was announced Dec. 1. Rabbi Cherie Koller-Fox, one of CAJE's founders in 1976 and a facilitator for the new organization, sent out a letter to more than 8,000 former CAJE members inviting them to become charter members of NewCAJE, whose first program will be a series of Webinars starting in January called Lehrhaus Online featuring rabbis, teachers, and activists.

The dialogue about the identity of NewCAJE began in August at the MANAJE (Mid-Atlantic New Alternatives in Jewish Education) Conference, held outside Baltimore for 150 Jewish educators. Koller-Fox sent out a message to CAJEnet, a network for former CAJE members, to suggest the regional conference, which she said proved "that there was a void left by CAJE that shouldn't be there."

Koller-Fox said she hopes NewCAJE can host its first conference this summer, but that it can only happen if teachers receive enough subsidies so that they can afford to come. For now, NewCAJE is planning to raise money from within its membership and garner a large corps of volunteers to organize its conferences and mentor younger educators to eventually take on leadership roles themselves, Koller-Fox said.

"Let people come and learn, and let us support ourselves that way," Koller-Fox told The Jewish State.

Dr. Eliot Spack of Edison, who served as CAJE's executive director for 26 years starting in 1981, said that economic times dictate the approach of depending on volunteers, and that when CAJE was founded in the 1970s, it began exactly that way. For NewCAJE to be successful, he said, local communities need to become partners in the efforts.

"If CAJE is going to offer, as they did for 30-plus years, an annual conference, that can only happen if local Jewish communities underwrite the attendance of those teachers," Spack said.

CAJE became "overly professional" with a paid staff as large as 14 employees at one point, Koller-Fox said, something the new organization wouldn't be able to afford anyway. Almost no younger teachers were leaders of CAJE, she said, and the goal if for the "philosophy of a new generation" to dominate NewCAJE. Exactly what that philosophy is, Koller-Fox said, depends on who joins.

"That's what CAJE always will be," Koller-Fox said. "It'll be what its members need."

The MANAJE conference was just one of the programs which tried to fill the void left by CAJE since its bankruptcy. In Central Jersey specifically, Nancy Schechter, director of education at Temple Beth Shalom in Manalapan, organized the Leadership Education Values (LEV) conference in Princeton in September for 55 teachers. Staff members of the Los Angeles-based educational Judaica publisher Torah Aura Productions volunteered their time to run sessions at the conference and didn't sell any of their books, Schechter said, as all LEV did for them was pay their airfare.

Schechter said she plans to volunteer for NewCAJE because "I feel it's an opportunity to give back to the organization that helped me grow." CAJE conferences had 200-300 sessions and as many as 2,800 attendees, were open to all kinds of Jewish studies and texts, always included a learning resource center to help teachers make their classroom come alive, and even had programs for arts and crafts and music, Schechter said.

"There were so many different options and you found your own niche," Schechter said. "Whatever I needed magically seemed to be there."

While it started as a regional conference in the planning stages, MANAJE drew teachers from several different parts of the country and ended up with 90 sessions in its daytime program, co-chaired by Dina Maiben, director of religious education at Temple Shaari Emeth in Manalapan.

"It ended up kind of being a national conference," Maiben said.

MANAJE had no paid staff, Maiben said, as the only expenses were for the retreat center where it was held and food preparation. The conference also had no publicity budget, showing the possibility that an "if you build it they will come" grassroots approach can work for NewCAJE.

"That will be a measure, to a large degree, of how much people really want this to happen," Maiben said of the volunteer response to NewCAJE.

Having motivated and dedicated volunteers is a large part of the equation for success at NewCAJE, but the organization must also be grounded in financial realities to survive, said Dr. Mark Rosen, of the Hornstein Jewish Professional Leadership Program at Brandeis University, whose research has examined the impact of leadership strategies, lay-professional relations, and organizational and governance structures on the effectiveness of Jewish organizations.

"They just need to make sure that somebody competent and experienced in running a non-profit is involved, so that the finances are not dealt with in a cursory way," Rosen said.

CAJE was "a really beloved organization among Jewish educators" and had strong brand name, Rosen said, making it a wise decision to give the new organization a similar name. Most people weren't traumatized enough by CAJE's bankruptcy that the name has a negative connotation, and don't necessarily know the precise details of the bankruptcy either.

"If you want to get the message out that CAJE is back, then that is going to do it better than anything else," Rosen said of the new name.

NewCAJE's immediate financial hurdle will be raising $15,000 to buy the assets of CAJE, which include intellectual property such as the name, mailing list, and software, as well an additional $10,000 in legal fees. Koller-Fox acknowledged that "people who care are going to have to do more than volunteer their time; they are going to have to put their hands in their pockets."

One fundraising method for CAJE that can be applied to the new organization is the establishment of one-day "mini-CAJE" conferences, in which teachers from a specific Jewish federation's region paid registration fees to attend the local program, with the proceeds going toward creating a scholarship fund for teachers to attend national CAJE conferences, said Sharon Frant Brooks of Flemington. Frant Brooks, who coordinates special-needs services and alternative learning at Adath Israel Congregation in Lawrenceville, is organizing precisely that kind of conference next August at the Flemington Jewish Community Center, a program she is calling "Day of NewCAJE -- Jewish Education for a New Age."

"The whole idea is that most schools have limits right now on their budgets for professional development, so a lot of educators are getting nothing, or very little," Frant Brooks said.

Spack said that Jewish education "will become somewhat static" without proper teacher development. CAJE challenged teachers to think of alternatives they would have never dreamed about, he said.

"It gave teachers the chance to stretch," Spack said.

In the 1980s, CAJE helped the North American Jewish community put education at "high-level priority status," Spack said, but the community's priorities are clearly different during these tough economic times, as education is one of several areas taking a hit while local Jewish federations cut back on spending.

The Jewish community has the tendency not to support the best and brightest educators, but rather to "take what we can," Koller-Fox said. That is a mistake NewCAJE will try to remedy, she said.

"This is the Jewish community -- what can be more important than the education of the next generation?" Koller-Fox said.