Over 30 years ago when I came to New Brunswick, I met members of the Jewish community who were engaged in the sacred task of building a Jewish home for the aged so that our elderly would be able to live out the last years of their life in dignity and with integrity. During those years I watched as dedicated members of the community worked together to develop a home of excellence, where elderly loved ones, the poor and the needy, would be able to live in an institution that carried out the highest Jewish values and the finest in our faith and tradition.

There were years when the home was supported by three Jewish federations, by dedicated and generous members of the Jewish community, and by those who worked tirelessly on behalf of those in need. Regardless of the financial success of the home (or lack of it), we worked tirelessly for the elderly and needy. A beautiful home was established, volunteers were engaged, and the staff provided excellent care. We should be grateful to those who built the Central New Jersey Jewish Home for the Aged.

In recent years I have heard about increasing deficits, changing staff leadership, and a decrease in the number of full-paying residents. I have also heard about people of means who found ways to reduce the assets of loved ones so that they could enter the home as Medicaid patients rather than paying the full cost of care, thereby ensuring an inheritance for their children and grandchildren but endangering the financial stability of the home. All of this has led to the decision recently made by the Jewish Home's board to turn over the management to a private organization.

I read about that decision with a great sense of disappointment. I believe that the leaders of the home may have made a decision based on finances, not necessarily based on the best interest of the Jewish community nor based on the highest Jewish values. It was a decision made without consultation with the rabbinic or lay leadership of our community. It was a decision made without transparency. The home's leadership chose not to invite community leaders to learn about the issues nor to seek endorsement for the decision made.

As I learned about the home, I could not help consider the irony that in our Jewish community we were engaged in weekly Torah readings from the Book of Leviticus, which is intended to be a manual for the priesthood (at least the first 18 chapters). This manual for the priesthood is available and studied not just by kohanim, but by everyone in the Jewish community. It is a powerful statement in our religious tradition that our faith is open and available to all. We don't have secret societies within Judaism; every part of Jewish life is and should be transparent.

Leviticus is also about the sacred care of the community and its institutions. The Mishkan, the Tabernacle, followed by the Temple in Jerusalem, were sacred institutions for the community. The kohanim were responsible for the care and functioning of these institutions. But knowledge of the care and functioning was available to every Jew. I suppose that was partly intended to ensure that the kohanim would carry out their responsibilities and privileges.

Here is the real irony: The Central New Jersey Home for the Aged is, in my opinion, not simply a not-for-profit organization or business. The home is a sacred institution of our community. It certainly should operate with sound business practices but its primary method of operation should be the care and well-being of the elderly and needy in our community. While the public announcement that appeared first as a newspaper advertisement spelled out who would now operate the home, these letters did not share with the community how the needy and elderly in our community would be cared for, what would be done with the profit, nor how the home would continue to operate as a sacred trust of the Jewish community.

Here are some questions that I believe need to be answered (and were not addressed in the public statements):

• What obligations do the new management and the board of the home have to the truly needy in our community? There will certainly be those in our community whose financial resources will be spent quickly if they require residence in a for-profit nursing home. How will need be assessed and will the leadership of the home be committed to caring for the poor? And, assuming that the home will become fully operational, how will the new managers determine residency acceptance? Will it be based on need, on finances, on the extent of one's financial resources?

• Now that the home is being operated by a for-profit organization, what obligations to the elderly and needy will our Jewish federations take on and how will such obligations be carried out?

• What responsibility does the board of the home have to the many contributors to UJA-federation campaigns who over the years helped to provide financial support to the home?

• Our tradition teaches us that laborers should be paid fair and proper wages. In the case of the Jewish Home, those who labor there serve as our hands and eyes in fulfilling the religious obligation of honoring our mothers and fathers. How will we be certain that employees will be treated fairly, will earn a living wage, and will have work conditions that are worthy of a Jewish institution in our community?

• What will happen now with the assets of the home and with its long term future? What will be the responsibility of the foundation – which the home created – to care for the growing elderly population in our community?

I am sorry that the leadership of the Jewish Home chose to make its decision without reaching out to the larger Jewish community. Such a decision may appear, to the board of the home, to be fiscally responsible. But without clear answers to the questions above, it may also represent a breach of faith with the larger Jewish community and with those from the past who gave of themselves to provide a home of excellence for the Jewish needy, the elderly, the indigent, and the working poor.

I certainly hope that under its new managers the home will be a fine Jewish institution that will meet these commitments.

Still, I am saddened that the leaders of the home did not share the urgency of the situation with our community. Perhaps, together we would have found a way for our sacred institution to remain in our community's hands. After all, the home was built with the love, devotion, and dollars of members of this community since the early 1970s.

Now is the time for transparency, just as in Leviticus. I hope the leaders of the home will be forthcoming about the rationale behind its decisions, explaining to the community why it did what it did and how that is truly in the best interest of the Jewish community, not just in the profit-loss columns of the home or of a private for-profit institution. I hope that the leadership of the foundation and the home will engage with us both in conversation and in deed as they plan out the future. We all have a responsibility to keep faith with those who created this fine and sacred institution for us.