JCP in the News! PJ Library launches

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January 6th, 2010

BEDTIME STORIES IN MANHATTAN
by Tamar Snyder, Jewish Week Staff Writer
The Jewish Week, December 29, 2009, pp 10-11

For the past year and a half, the beginning of each month has been a highlight for Rabbi Darren Levine’s two young children.

“My wife or I will say, ‘Emmett, your PJ Library book is here. He’ll immediately want to sit on the couch and we’ll proceed to read that book six to 10 times over the next week or so,” he says. Adrian, 2, will often join his older brother on the couch, though he prefers eating the corners of the books to reading.

Emmett, 5, especially loves “Something From Nothing” by Phoebe Gilman, a story about a grandfather who is a tailor and transforms his grandson’s tattered blanket into a jacket, then a vest, then a tie, and eventually a button, as the grandson grows taller. At the bottom of the pages, a simultaneous story line evolves in which mice use the scraps from the grandson’s old clothes to create a home for themselves.

“I really like the renewable resources aspect,” says Rabbi Levine, the executive director of the Jewish Community Project Downtown, which, along with the JCC in Manhattan, is helping to bring the PJ Library (PJ stands for pajamas) program to Manhattan.

Thanks to a $3 million challenge grant from The Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life, along with an investment from each institution, close to 1,000 Jewish families living below 14th Street and 1,400 families on the Upper West Side will soon begin receiving a free, age-appropriate Jewish book each month from the PJ Library.

Each book comes with a parent guide that offers a concise overview of the holiday or mitzvah discussed in the book. The guide lists several discussion prompts meant to spark conversation with young children, as well as suggestions on various ways a family might customize a ritual to mark a Jewish holiday.

“[PJ Library] is another smart and welcoming way to reach Jewish families literally where they live, to nurture a love of reading among children and a connection to their roots for them and their parents,” says philanthropist and former hedge fund manager Michael Steinhardt. “That’s the definition of a win-win in my book.”
PJ Library has opened a satellite office in New York and is working on establishing partnerships with communities on Long Island, in Westchester and in other parts of the five boroughs.

“Being that we are the people of the book, it seems to be a very natural way to rejuvenate a very young population who is looking for a sense of tradition,” says Rabbi Levine. JCP is planning “Going Beyond the Books” programs in which neighborhood kids will come in their pajamas with their parents to book readings and signings, toting their favorite PJ Library books. In the first few weeks since a mailing went out describing the program, more than 200 families signed up, Rabbi Levine says

PJ Library isn’t a household name in New York – yet. The program, which offers free Jewish children’s books and CDs to children between the ages of six months and 8 years, began in 2005 as a local project of the philanthropist Harold Grinspoon, serving just 200 families in Western Massachusetts. In the past four years, however, PJ Library has morphed into an international phenomenon, providing Jewish books to 58,000 children each month in more than 125 communities in the United States, Canada, and Israel.

While the Upper West Side’s Society for the Advancement of Judaism launched a small PJ Library branch in 2008, only now is the program being offered on a large scale in New York, home to the largest concentration of Jewish children in North America.

“New York is tricky; it’s so large,” says Marcie Greenfield Simons, the director of The PJ Library. “The greatest challenge of New York is its scale and the diversity of its neighborhoods. When we go into Detroit or Seattle, we bring the local federation and Jewish community centers and synagogue leadership together. But in New York, Tribeca isn’t the same as the Upper West Side. And Westchester won’t necessarily match up with the North Shore of Long Island or Staten Island.”

And then there’s the sheer cost of providing books to a sizable portion of the Jewish families in New York.

By increasing its subscription numbers, PJ Library has cut down the cost per family of producing the books. Still, to keep the free-book-a-month club sustainable, PJ Library partners with local JCCs, synagogues and other Jewish nonprofits, which purchase subscriptions for local Jewish families at a cost of $40 per family. PJ Library typically underwrites the remaining expense of $60 per family (which primarily helps cover the salaries of its 16 full-time staffers). Anyone living in one of the sponsored communities can sign up for a free subscription to PJ Library by logging onto www.pjlibrary.org. Each monthly book comes with a note that it is a gift of the sponsoring organization(s), many of which hope to attract new members through this effort.

Despite the tough economic times, the Harold Grinspoon Foundation has increased PJ Library’s budget from approximately $3 million for its fiscal year ending Aug. 30, 2009 to $4.3 million for 2010. (The budget does not include donations, such as the challenge grant, or book payments from the communities).

In the book-themed restaurant at the Loews Regency Hotel on the Upper East Side last week, 80-year-old Harold Grinspoon shared with the Jewish Week his passion for PJ Library. The program provides “the best yield for the dollar,” said the real estate entrepreneur, who modeled PJ Library on Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library literacy program. While on a plane several years ago, Grinspoon was struck by the sight of a child screaming, only to be calmed down when the parent began reading a book aloud. Providing Jewish books allow families with young children to “explore their Jewish identity within the sanctity of their own home, where they are most comfortable,” he said.

Many Jewish families don’t have access to high-quality Jewish books, a message that was brought home to Grinspoon last year when he visited a Barnes and Noble on the Upper West Side with Greenfield Simons. “We went up and down every aisle. There was a huge kids section, but besides for two books about Noah’s ark, there was only one book of Jewish content for kids,” she says.

The goal of PJ Library is twofold: the program aims to grow stronger, deeper Jewish identities within Jewish families, as well as encourage a stronger commitment to Jewish community. The program aims to reach the 80 percent of Jewish kids who don’t go to Jewish day schools. According to a January 2009 survey of 4,000 families enrolled in PJ Library for six months or more, 49 percent of participants do not send their children to Jewish preschool, 32 percent are in households with only one Jewish parent, and 34 percent do not belong to a synagogue.

Grinspoon often receives letters from families who say that PJ Library has changed their attitude toward Judaism. A non-Jewish woman in Providence, R.I., who is married to a Jew, wrote that the PJ Library books encouraged her to enroll her daughter in Jewish day school. Others write of baking challah with their children every Friday or donating to their local federation for the first time. In 2010, PJ Library will commission a national impact study.

Still, Rabbi Levine at JCP says that he doesn’t think that a Jewish book is all it takes to inspire someone to buy more Jewish books or join a local synagogue or JCC. “These are the old measurements that communal organizations would utilize to gauge the success of the program,” he says. “That’s not how young Jewish families live their lives. What it can do is make a difference in inspiring a more Jewish identity, however that may be expressed.”

JCP Downtown: Jewish Community Project

JCP in the News! PJ Library launches

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