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As the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism stresses that its recent restructuring will help the organization deliver more value to member congregations, a group of Conservative lay leaders claim those changes are insufficient as synagogues are "shriveling on the vine."

That's how Robert Rubin, an organizer for Bonim: "Builders of value for synagogue lay leaders," chose to describe the desperate situation congregations are facing. Last month, Bonim formed an exploratory committee to assess the viability of starting a new synagogue-focused organization, responding to the USCJ's solution of merging its 15 regional offices into six districts.

Rubin, a board member of Adas Israel Congregation in Washington, D.C., told The Jewish State that despite the positive energy coming from Rabbi Steven Wernick, the USCJ's new executive vice president and CEO since July 1, asking Wernick to improve the umbrella organization's relationship with constituents and simultaneously set the direction for the Conservative movement is a tall order. A group like Bonim can deal with congregational needs and leave big-picture issues to the USCJ, he said.

And if the point of restructuring was to alleviate the USCJ's budget crisis, Rubin said, then restructuring missed that point because all it did was reallocate the organization's staff while minimally changing the staff's size. The organization also wasn't transparent about the cost-benefit analysis behind the changes, he said.

"They don't have a very good record on the 'trust me' factor," Rubin said of USCJ. "They've been operating in a declining environment for the last 10 years."

Bonim has raised more than $50,000 to consider such an alternative entity to USCJ and will use the next few months to gauge interest from synagogues across the country, according to the group's Sept. 15 statement in response to the USCJ's New York City board meetings and decision to restructure. If formed, the new entity would be launched by Jan. 1, 2010, Bonim said.

David Sacks, a Bonim organizer and president of Congregation Har Tzeon-Agudath Achim in Silver Spring, Md., told The Jewish State that he disagrees with the USCJ's restructuring because "The way things are handled in Ohio are different from how they are handled in Washington, D.C.," in terms of demographics and the mindset of congregants, making consolidating regional offices counterproductive.

Additionally, while the USCJ said they plan to cut their staff, they haven't spoken about cutting dues for member synagogues that amount to $75 per family unit, Sacks said. If formed, he said, Bonim's synagogue-focused organization would charge 10-25 percent of those dues.

With those reduced dues, it would be feasible for a Conservative congregation to be part of both Bonim's group and the USCJ, using Bonim's resources for direct programming and leadership development while remaining a USCJ member to have access to United Synagogue Youth (USY) programming and the Rabbinical Assembly union of Conservative rabbis, Sacks said.

As opposed to USCJ, which derives most of its revenue from dues, Sacks said Bonim would be one-third dues-based and two-thirds fundraising-based.

"We are not looking to compete with USCJ, it's just a different mindset," Sacks said.

The USCJ responded to similar demands by the HaYom Coalition, a group of 25 Conservative synagogues who joined forces last winter, by establishing a strategic planning commission that will have HaYom's input. Much like HaYom, Bonim never wanted to be a separate group from the USCJ, but the umbrella organization has not expressed interest in Bonim's requests, Sacks and Rubin said.

HaYom contains rabbis from 25 of the largest synagogues in North America, but no rabbis from small-to medium-sized congregations who are in need of the most help, Rubin said.

USCJ has a wealth of information to offer synagogues, but that information often needs to be pulled out of them, Rubin said. For example, he said, USCJ will send out a mass email and say "call us if you need something" rather than contacting individual synagogues and asking, "What can we help you with?"

About a year ago, Rubin started broaching the idea of Bonim at regional conventions and talked to more than 100 congregations to see if they got value from USCJ, he said. Large synagogues said they thought they were helping medium synagogues by being part of USCJ, Rubin said, while medium ones said they thought they were helping small ones and most small ones said they didn't get enough value.

"There is nothing motivational -- there is nothing that they do to help synagogues build up their leadership," Sacks said of USCJ.

Sacks estimated that 20 synagogues in the Washington metropolitan area, where Bonim's efforts have been concentrated thus far, would be interested in joining Bonim's alternative to USCJ.

In an interview at Rutgers, Wernick told The Jewish State that the HaYom Coalition "have been true partners, and I'm very excited in the work that we're engaged in."

While Wernick said Bonim has been "a little more difficult" to work with, he explained that, "their criticisms are not criticisms that I'm not hearing from other places."

"I believe that United Synagogue has responded to those criticisms," Wernick said. "We've been very transparent since I've been at the helm in terms of our actions and our budgetary concerns. We are working to create the type of infrastructure to support the areas that are of most concern to our congregations and communities."

"I'm a little bit bewildered by the timing and public announcements that Bonim sometimes makes," he added, "but at the end of the day I'm going to continue to operate with the best derech eretz (conduct) and decision-making process that I know how to make, and I think we all share the same goal, and that is a United Synagogue that is of value to congregations, to new and emergent and different kinds of Conservative communities such as college students and 20- and 30-somethings, and is of value also to all of North American Jewry."