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These days, organizations everywhere are experiencing the struggles and complications that are tied to living in a recession. Two local Jewish organizations have decided to join forces to better serve their constituents.

For about a quarter-century, Jewish Family Services of Somerset, Hunterdon, and Warren counties has been serving the communities around them and consistently working to create better programs and services for those communities. Similarly, Ohr Tikvah Jewish Healing Center, also of the tri-county area, has been striving independently for six years and serving the Jewish community through providing spiritual support to those who are going through difficult periods of their lives.

Recently, Ohr Tikvah had been looking to merge with another organization to foster a wider outreach and to help expand their ability to better serve the Jewish community. After reviewing several organizations, it seemed clear that JFS was a perfect fit.

"I'd say that, as organizations, we both try to reach out to Jews in need in the tri-county area," said Lisa Nierenberg, who is the current president of Ohr Tikvah, an original member of the organization, and a family physician. "A huge proportion of Jews in the tri-county area are unaffiliated, or they live alone, or they are living in a residential care facility that does not have Jewish members or a Jewish community. We are there to give them the support they need."

In the past winter, Ohr Tikvah has welcomed onto their staff a community rabbi, Robin Nafshi, who has been serving Ohr Tikvah through creating programs to serve the communities' needs, speaking at synagogues, and helping to reach out to Jews unaffiliated with specific congregations. Nierenberg said each organization will help the other to thrive, particularly considering that Ohr Tikvah's community rabbi can assist JFS in running more spiritual community activities.

Jerry Starr, director of JFS in the tri-county area, said, "Right now we're running together, using their community rabbi. We're trying to find the positive sides to when you have a loss of jobs. It was great to pair together our social worker with the community rabbi."

Starr also commented that Ohr Tikvah seemed to be a "natural extension" for JFS. "It will be easier to collaborate on our programs," he explained. "We have a monthly caregivers group... it will be more efficient now to have the rabbi there to present on some spiritual areas with the caregivers. That group is run by a social worker, but periodically it will be nice to have someone address those spiritual issues."

In the same spirit, Nierenberg said of the decision to merge, "By going forth with the merger, many of Ohr Tikvah's programs will have broader reach. For example, Ohr Tikvah ran a program on eating disorders, which is a growing issue for the Jewish community. This program evolved into a support for family and sufferers of eating disorders, which JFS was able to better facilitate with OT because of the therapy resources JFS supplies."

The merger committee was made up of Ohr Tikvah's board and Starr. Though, through this merger, Ohr Tikvah will no longer stand as an independent organization, the benefits to both sides are clear. Already, collaboration between the organizations is flourishing. One internal move for the organizations was for JFS to invite Ohr Tikvah board members Ronnie Weyl and Annette Radick to join JFS's board.

"We're very excited about having two of their board members with us," Starr said. "I think they'll help enrich our board. They're both interested in getting involved with other aspects of our agency as well as the Ohr Tikvah healing program."

Starr added that other internal changes included establishing a program committee for the Ohr Tikvah Healing support programs, noting that this committee would include several Ohr Tikvah board members as well as board members from JFS. He added, "Whenever you bring new members onto a board, it helps enrich the outcome."

In addition to programs for job seekers and those suffering from eating disorders, the two organizations have been teaming up to support children with special needs and their families, and in the future, they hope to come together on projects including the Senior's Mentoring Program -- currently run by Ruth Adelman, a social worker at JFS -- and a bereavement program.

"We have a lot of programming ideas, and JFS has a lot of therapy ideas," said Nierenberg. "By combining the awareness we can achieve through programming with therapy, we are able to better serve our community."

Likewise, Starr praised the merge as a move for the benefit of the community the two organizations share, saying, "It says a lot about the community in general that the boards were able to come together and decide what was in the community's best interest to provide what will be hopefully more efficient in better meeting the community's needs."