Interested in the prophets but can’t find a class at your own synagogue? Twenty-eight local rabbis (and five agencies) think you should look around town and across counties at other synagogues — even synagogues of other denominations — and see what they’re offering.

In fact, they’re putting together a catalogue of classes open to everyone across Morris and Essex counties beginning 2007-08.

This independent collaborative community-wide effort, known as Rimon, is the first local attempt to break the “silo” mold, in which Jewish institutions tend to work independently of one another, according to organizers.

They also call it an attempt to raise adult Jewish literacy and create a community of learners in the MetroWest area by offering a seamless array of classes across denominational lines. The name is Hebrew for “pomegranate,” whose numerous seeds are seen as a symbol of unity and variety.

Spearheaded and funded by Ed and Barbara Zinbarg of Short Hills, Rimon formally launches May 20 with a kickoff “Taste of Rimon” program featuring the innovative theater group Storahtelling and simultaneous breakout study sessions. Planning has been in the works for more than a year.

In the first year of operation, participating synagogues and agencies are expected to open one or more planned adult education courses to the entire community, including some not affiliated with any synagogue or agency. Costs are the same for all who attend.

All offerings will be listed in the Rimon course catalogue. Participants will receive Rimon “passports,” or membership cards, and will receive certificates for completing various levels of education.

Over time, Rimon director Rabbi Robin Nafshi said, she will review the offerings to ensure they don’t overlap and will create classes that fill in gaps.

“We want to be able to offer a more structured program and guidance for the equivalent of a Jewish GED — what an educated Jewish adult should know,” she said. She should know — a lawyer-turned-rabbi, she is herself a product of successful adult education.

Although Nafshi directs Rimon from her office at the Leon & Toby Cooperman JCC, Ross Family Campus, West Orange — where she has the use of marketing and public relations resources — the project is independent of any agency affiliation.

Independence is critical for Rimon if it will succeed in overcoming the inherent tension among competing agencies and organizations for members, according to Ed Zinbarg (see sidebar).

Synagogue-based community adult education is not a new model, according to Danyelle Neuman, assistant director of Jewish Renaissance and Renewal at United Jewish Communities. What is new, she said, is Rimon’s independent status. “I am interested to follow the progress of this unique model.”

Zinbarg said that snagging Joyce Goldstein of Essex Fells to serve as Rimon program chair was their first achievement. A key player in local Jewish education, Goldstein served as president of the Solomon Schechter Day School of Essex and Union, the Jewish Education Association of MetroWest, and JCC MetroWest.

Zinbarg said he believes this effort will succeed where others have failed at least in part because it is a grassroots effort. If it works, he said, it will need about $2 million in funding to cover yearly costs of about $100,000. He and his wife are footing the $125,000 bill for the first two years, ending with the close of calendar year 2007.

“We should know by then,” he said. “We will have shipped out the catalogues; classes will have begun. We’ll start to see whether people are showing up at other synagogues.”

Several years ago, a listing of all synagogue education classes was printed in a special supplement in New Jersey Jewish News, but no synagogues experienced a resulting spike in attendance, according to Zinbarg.

There are challenges ahead. For one thing, while the participating synagogues represent the Conservative, Reform, and Reconstructionist movements, no Orthodox synagogue has yet signed on. Administrators say they are in talks with two Orthodox synagogues.

For another, synagogues have to plan their classes earlier than they might otherwise have done in order to meet the Rimon timetable.

Key to the success of the program, everyone acknowledged, will be rabbis’ urging members to take advantage of classes offered at other synagogues. With competition for members fierce among neighboring congregations and tensions often running high, administrators admitted the difficulty in imagining a rabbi urging congregants to go to “that other synagogue” for a class.

Rabbi Mark Cooper of the Conservative Oheb Shalom Congregation in South Orange recognizes the challenge. He serves as program committee chair of Rimon together with cochair Rabbi Donald Rossoff of the Reform B’nai Or across county lines in Morristown.

“We have nearly 30 partners, and the rabbis are under no illusion” about what is expected of them, Cooper said. He added that if he sees many members of his congregation going elsewhere to study, “we will reevaluate what we are offering.”

Still, he said, “yes, I will stand up in front of my congregation and say, ‘I encourage you to go.’ This is the most exciting opportunity for adult learners of our community to avail themselves of a wide range of opportunities, to learn in great depth, and Rimon provides the structure and incentive to do that.

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