November 12, 2012
Index measures Jewish communal groups’ LGBT sensitivity
Follow JewishJournal.com on 
Photo by Ludovic Bertron
A new survey of Jewish communal organizations found that 50 percent of them have taken significant steps to welcome gays and lesbians and their families.
The Jewish Organization Equality Index provides benchmarks for gauging and improving policies regarding gay, lesbian bisexual and transgendered persons at North American Jewish communal organizations. The index was released Sunday by the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBT civil rights organization.
Some 204 Jewish communal organizations, or about 10 percent of the organizations invited to take part, participated in the survey.
The index found that 98 percent of participating membership-based organizations offer same-sex couples family memberships; 90 percent use inclusive terms in their publicity materials; and 73 percent have a written non-discrimination policy.
The index also found that 75 percent of participating organizations have not specifically recruited LGBT individuals to their lay leadership board in the past three years, and that 79 percent have not targeted the LGBT community in workplace recruitment efforts.
“We applaud the organizations that participated and are taking important steps to foster LGBT inclusion, but we still have a long way to go until LGBT Jews -- indeed, all Jews -- are embraced as full and vital members of the Jewish family in every aspect of communal life," said Lynn Schusterman, a major Jewish philanthropist and one of the index's funders. "We have an opportunity to use these findings to truly commit ourselves to the vital but challenging work of forging a culture in which inclusivity, diversity and equality are paramount. The question is: will we?”
Other funders include the Morningstar Foundation, Stuart Kurlander and an anonymous donor.
