In a move that made national news, 11 local families committed $13.5 million toward a $50 million collaborative effort in support of Jewish day school education. The goal of the MetroWest Day School Campaign, launched in April, is to make day schools more affordable and offer a standard of academic excellence equal to any private school in the area, organizers said.

Coordinated by the Jewish Community Foundation of MetroWest, the planned giving and endowment arm for United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ, it will be a partnership of three local day schools: the Orthodox Joseph Kushner Hebrew Academy/Rae Kushner Yeshiva High School in Livingston; the Conservative Solomon Schechter Day School of Essex and Union, with campuses in West Orange and Cranford; and the nondenominational Nathan Bohrer-Abraham Kaufman Hebrew Academy of Morris County in Randolph.

All three schools underwent transitions and new initiatives this past year. SSDS broke ground June 19 on a $4.5 million renovation, funded largely by Eric F. Ross, a resident of South Orange and Boca Raton, Fla. And earlier in the year Joyce Raynor, principal of the upper school for 16 years, was appointed head of school.

The Kushner High School scored a coup in hiring Rabbi Eliezer Rubin as its new principal. Former dean of the upper school of Manhattan's prestigious Ramaz day school, Rubin was the search committee's "unanimous first choice" to lead the Orthodox day school into the future.

Meanwhile, in May, 55 students were inducted into the school's Rabbi Abraham Wahrhaftig Chesed Society, a program honoring the life and memory of the man who served as principal of the school from 2004 to 2005. He died at the age of 60 in 2005.

The Bohrer-Kaufman Hebrew Academy was chosen as a 2006 Blue Ribbon School under the national No Child Left Behind program. Later it shifted its affiliation from the Conservative movement's Solomon Schechter Day School Association to Ravsak, an umbrella organization for nondenominational community day schools.

Two items dominated the local Jewish activist agenda in 5767: the crisis in Darfur and the continued captivity of three Israeli soldiers. A June 16 rally at the United Nations' Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, which drew participants from around the state, was among the largest of many demonstrations of efforts to secure the release — or at least gain information about — the three Israeli soldiers kidnapped a year ago and another five Israelis missing in action. NJ state Sen. Tom Kean (R-Dist. 21) introduced a resolution in January calling on the UN to seek the release of the three kidnapped Israelis: Ehud Goldwasser, 31, Eldad Regev, 26, and Gilad Shalit, 20.

The genocide in Darfur, where the predominately Arab Sudanese government continued to sponsor the slaughter and exile of black Sudanese, inspired "Do the Write Thing" on Jan. 12. Led by state and national Jewish organizations, including the Community Relations Committee of United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ, the all-day event trained high school kids in advocacy focusing on the plight of those languishing in refugee camps in southern Sudan and neighboring Chad. In March, Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) called for a ban on U.S. dollar transactions with those who do business with Sudan and travel to the country. In June, UJC MetroWest and its Jewish Community Foundation passed separate resolutions calling for the divestment of all direct investments in companies that conduct non-humanitarian business in Sudan or Iran.

Jewish activists also mobilized to counter a call by a British academic union to boycott Israeli scholars. The heads of Drew, Princeton, Rutgers, and Seton Hall universities were among the 11 academic leaders in New Jersey to sign a full-page ad in The New York Times opposing the boycott.

UJC MetroWest NJ joined a national effort to aid Sderot, the Israeli town reeling under the bombardment of Kassam rockets hurled by Palestinian militants in nearby Gaza.

National United Jewish Communities, the umbrella organization that includes UJC MetroWest, and Jewish organizations worldwide have provided more than $220 million in funding through the Israel Emergency Campaign to aid Israelis affected by the Second Lebanon War. The funds helped send children evacuated from their homes to summer camps and move the elderly and disabled for respite outside the affected areas.

Budget shortfalls put the pinch on a number of local agencies. The Partnership for Jewish Life and Learning, UJC MetroWest's central entity for Jewish education, reached a "painful" decision to discontinue its programs for special needs children and adults. The Partnership said it would seek to transfer some of those services to other agencies, while the future of others is still being discussed.

UJC MetroWest also announced that, in the eventual hope of raising the profile of its 25,000-volume Waldor Memorial Library in Whippany, it would temporarily close the facility while undertaking an effort to involve area agencies in the library's operation and programming.

It was the best of times and the worst of times for JCC MetroWest. The agency neared completion of an expansion and renovation of the Leon & Toby Cooperman JCC, Ross Family Campus, in West Orange, including new construction at its Early Childhood Center, the opening of the 9,000-square-foot Allen Bildner and Bildner Family Foundation Fitness Center, and a new atrium with a kosher cafe and reception area.

In May, meanwhile, JCC MetroWest informed members of a "financial crisis" and said its options include vacating the athletic facility at the Lautenberg Family JCC on the Aidekman campus in Whippany as a JCC operation and allowing it to be run by an outside fitness provider. The agency announced plans to seek an alternative venue for its day-care facility currently based on the campus, after the 2007-08 school year. JCC MetroWest officials said they had done all they could to carry on operations at the Whippany site and pledged to continue to work with Morris County Jews to ensure a continuation of services.

In May, members of Congregation Beth Hatikvah moved into their first permanent home in a warehouse district off a busy thoroughfare in Summit, just in time for Shabbat services. The Reconstructionist synagogue had been meeting at Saint Paul's Episcopal Church in Chatham.

After years of seeking to relocate and rebuild, Rutgers Hillel announced that it had purchased a prominent site at the gateway to Rutgers University's College Avenue campus in New Brunswick. Hillel closed on the new property in May and expected to put a shovel into the ground a year later.

As the Daughters of Israel in West Orange celebrated its 100th anniversary, executive vice president Lawrence Gelfand announced he would retire after 32 years at the nursing home.

After serving as Gov. Jon Corzine's chief counsel, then the state's attorney general, Stuart Rabner of Caldwell was appointed in June as chief justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court. Kenneth Zimmerman, executive director of the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, was named chief counsel for Corzine.

In April, June Walker of Rockaway, former national president of Hadassah, became the chair of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, which coordinates pro-Israel White House and foreign policy lobbying for the leaders of 50 Jewish organizations.

Steven Goldstein, the Teaneck rabbinical student who has led lobbying efforts to legalize gay and lesbian marriage in New Jersey, was named by Corzine as a member of the state's Civil Union Review Commission. The 13-member body will monitor the state law, enacted this year, that allows civil unions as an alternative to marriage for same-sex couples.

New Jersey had 244 anti-Semitic incidents in 2006, down from 266 in 2005. The Anti-Defamation League annual audit, released in March, reported 1,554 incidents against Jewish individuals or community institutions in the United States, a 12 percent drop from the 1,757 reported in 2005.

In one of the more bizarre incidents, vandals arranged 17 volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica to form a swastika in the parking lot of Bnai Keshet, the Reconstructionist synagogue in Montclair. Local clergy later gathered in solidarity.

An unprecedented daylong conference, New Jersey Unites Against Hate, took place at the State House Annex in Trenton under the auspices of the Office of the Attorney General.

Two giants in local Jewish service were among those mourned in 5767. In May, Alan V. Lowenstein, a prominent attorney and leading philanthropist who served as president of a forerunner of United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ, died at the age of 93 after a long illness. The founder of Lowenstein Sandler presided over the Jewish Community Council of Essex County between 1950 and 1952 and was instrumental in establishing the foundations of what is today UJC MetroWest NJ. The Maplewood resident was also central to the founding of the Metropolitan New Jersey chapter of the American Jewish Committee, among a range of community activities.

Ronald Coun, executive director of Jewish Vocational Service of MetroWest, who served the agency for 31 years, died at his Livingston home at the age of 68, after an 11-year battle with cancer.