What We Do

The European Union for Progressive Judaism is a UK registered charity (# 253000). From its office in London, the EUPJ actively promotes and supports community development across Europe in the following ways:

• Through its Rabbinic Training Fund it sponsors and supports students at our European rabbinic seminaries; Leo Baeck College and Abraham Geiger Kolleg.
• It provides support to small communities to employ Rabbis
• It provides support for potential community leaders to attend the Beutel Leadership Training Seminars run by the Anita Saltz International Educational Centre based in Jerusalem. These courses are run both in Israel and Europe.
• Together with leaders of the World Union for Progressive Judaism it helps fight for recognition of Progressive communities within the general community of their country and increasingly with the European Union in Brussels.
• It supports new and developing communities with advice and rabbinic visits, synagogue activities and the publication of Progressive prayer books in national languages.
• It publishes a monthly on-line newsletter to advertise activities and achievements of our communities across Europe.
• It provides the services of the European Bet Din to countries with insufficient rabbis to form a national Bet Din.
• It is embarking on a programme of advocacy to the European Union in Brussels and with other potential grant making bodies to seek funds to further the aims of our region and individual congregations.
• It arranges twinning of congregations for mutual support.
• It maintains close contact with the WUPJ offices in New York and Jerusalem. The Vice-President for International Development (Rabbi Joel Oseran) makes regular supportive visits to European communities.
• It supports national youth movements and Europe-wide activities for youth and young adults.
• The EUPJ sponsors a biennial conference. These conference sponsored by one of our communities enable all our members and leaders across Europe to meet, study and gain new skills, to make and renew friendships. The last successful conference was held in Paris in March 2010.

Above all, the EUPJ seeks to foster and stimulate the growth of Progressive Judaism throughout Europe because we believe that Progressive Judaism, with its combination of the respect for Jewish tradition with the openess to modernity, provides the blueprint for Jewish continuity in the twenty-first century.