In May, the research, strategy and leadership think tank Reut USA set a goal: enhancing the political influence of small Jewish communities. The inspiration: American Jewry has long concentrated its political power in Washington, while BDS and anti-Israel activists centered their politics hyper-locally, Gidi Grinstein, the founder and president of Reut USA, told eJewishPhilanthropy. If the Jewish community wants to hold political sway, he said, “you have to do it smarter.”

On Thursday, Reut USA released its recommendations for how the Jewish federation system can revise and remap itself to empower small communities with disproportionate power to influence local politics. Suggestions include remodeling 15 federations into regional hubs covering larger swaths of territory; investing in smaller and under-resourced federations; establishing a national community relations cabinet alongside national organizations; and — perhaps most complicatedly — shifting funding from the five largest federations to smaller federations, with the belief that antisemitism in smaller communities impacts the safety of all Jews.

The policy paper, titled “A Strategic Framework for the Community Relations of American Jewry in the Coming Decade,” comes two weeks after the Jewish Federations of North America announced its $35 million Frontline initiative to combat antisemitism, placing 100 new employees in local federations to advocate against antisemitism and cultivate community relations.

A JFNA spokesperson refrained from commenting on the policy paper’s suggestions and said that Reut USA has not discussed its recommendations with JFNA leadership. The spokesperson added: “We thank them for thinking about us and appreciate their advice.” JFNA is aware of the challenges facing small Jewish communities, having released a survey earlier this year showing that they are facing an increased burden on community leaders and security infrastructures because of antisemitism. This was, in part, a reason why JFNA rolled out its Frontline initiative, which is particularly geared toward smaller, under-resourced communities. 

The recommendations are part of “a draft for discussion,” Grinstein said. “When you’re talking about political influence, you can do a lot with very little if you’re well-organized.”

As part of its AJ2054 initiative, which aims to revitalize the American Jewish community by 2054 — 400 years after the first Jews from Brazil set foot in New Amsterdam — Reut USA is focused on the security of Jews in America, but asking a different question entirely: “Do we need 141 federations [doing community relations]?” Grinstein said. “From the perspective of community relations, we don’t. And not only that, some of these federations are just a burden from the perspective of community relations. Meanwhile, there are other federations [which] are extraordinarily important.”

Instead, Grinstein said, the larger federation system should either invest in the federations that are deemed a “burden,” or have larger regional hubs shoulder their community relations.

Sourcing data from the American Jewish Year Book, Anti-Defamation League statistics, FBI resources and federations themselves, a working group formed by Grinstein created an online atlas, which went live on Monday, meant to offer donors a clear view of the strengths and weaknesses of small federations peppering North America. The interactive map ranks communities by their “vulnerability,” a statistic measured primarily by the size of the Jewish population compared to the non-Jewish population, irregardless of the political and social realities in those communities. This offers some curious comparisons: Is the Jewish community in Salt Lake City, Utah, (one of the lowest ranked communities) really more “vulnerable” than that of New York City (one of the highest ranked communities)? 

The atlas also maps the agencies supporting communities besides federations, including 149 JCCs and camps, 1,336 Chabad centers and 559 Hillel centers. In addition, it includes a community calendar for nearly every federation listed.

The committee, made up of representatives from Reut USA, local federations and other organizations including the Jewish Community Center of the North Shore in Marblehead, Mass., and the Jewish Endowment Foundation of South Carolina, found that 89% of 7 million Jewish Americans and their family members live near 47 hub federations, while the remaining 11% are supported by nearly 100 smaller federations. The atlas shows that 18 state capitals have no federations and 10 states have no federation at all, including ones with significant Jewish populations, such as Vermont, New Mexico, Hawaii, Alaska and Idaho.

To ensure all communities are supported and have a strong community relations impact, the committee recommended strengthening 15 federations so they can serve as regional hubs, ensuring all capitals and states are covered. Hubs would center in: Boston, San Francisco, New York City, Philadelphia, Miami, Cleveland, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, Denver, Dallas-Houston and Seattle, with priority in that order.

In addition, 40 federations were assessed to be small and fragile, and therefore unable by themselves to carry out robust community relations. Therefore, investment was needed to make them capable, or the federations’ community relations needed to be covered by the larger hubs. 

The assessment was based on six criteria: federations with revenues of less than $500,000; those with an inflation-adjusted decline above 3% a year over a decade; those with reserves for less than six months; those with no full-time staff; and those being geographically remote with a hub within 100 miles. 

Five federations met those four criteria: Jewish Federation of Greater Rockford (Ill.), Jewish Federation of Greater New Bedford (Mass.), Jewish Federation of Greater Baton Rouge (La.), Jewish Federation of Sioux City (Iowa) and the Greater Lansing (Mich.) Jewish Federation.

“The federation system was mostly designed in the last decades around the challenge of community building,” Grinstein said. “But if you are now designing the federation system around the challenge of community relations, you need a different alignment.”

The working group suggests a $125 million budget for the initiative, which would see 120 new positions offered in federations: 40 in regional hubs and 80 in local federations for community relations professionals. In addition, a national community relations cabinet would be formed with federations, funders, the American Jewish Committee, ADL, Hillel and Chabad.

To fund the initiative, Grinstein recommends that endowments from larger federations  — Boston, San Francisco, New York, Chicago and Los Angeles — would be pooled into the hubs and smaller community federations, with the understanding that antisemitism in small towns spurs violence and hate crimes nationally. (He acknowledged that there may be legal hurdles to doing this.)

“Small communities are a challenge because the demographic concentration of American Jewry is not aligned with the continental spread of the United States,” Grinstein said. According to the Pew Research Center, one-third of non-Jewish Americans do not know a Jew. Meanwhile, studies show that contact between groups reduces prejudice. “Jews are basically twice as likely to be concentrated in big cities and along the coasts compared to average Americans, which actually means that there is a massive challenge across the continent.”

Last year’s JFNA “Survey of Jewish Life since October 7th” showed that small-town Jews believe that their neighbors minimize antisemitism and feel they lack the security infrastructure and local programming to feel safe and supported like Jews in metropolitan hubs.

But smaller Jewish communities have great potential to create cross-cultural connections, Enrico Ravenna, a former executive director of the Jewish Federation of Arkansas who serves as vice president of operations of Reut USA, told eJP. In many of these communities, Jewish community leaders may be the only Jews people meet, including law enforcement staff and government officials.

“We [did] not have the privileges that larger communities have, so we [had] to address it head-on,” Ravenna said. During his time serving as executive director, if an antisemitic incident happened locally or nationally, he was on the phone immediately with the FBI, police, politicians and regional Secure Community Network and ADL representatives.

Ravenna left the federation system in July. His federation could not accept Frontline grants, he said. “One of the requirements is that you have to commit to [one] more year [of funding]… after the grant ends. That’s just not something that we had the financial capacity to do.” Many federations are “either a one-person operation or one and a half,” he said. Funding an additional employee is not possible.

“The Frontline grant is incredible,” Ravenna said. “It’s really important that JFNA is doing it, and I’m really happy about the initiative… This is not at all meant to go against what [JFNA is] saying or saying that they’re wrong. We’re basically saying, ‘Yes and.’”

In Arkansas, Ravenna’s federation received a $250,000 security grant from the state attorney general, after a push from local leaders, Ravenna said. “It [was] our first priority to make sure that all of our congregations in the state of Arkansas [were] safe.”

Based on the belief that American Jewry has recently left a “golden era” of security and prosperity moved into a period of surging antisemitism and violence, with hatred coming from both political poles, the Reut USA committee believes that local federations and affiliated Jewish Community Relations Councils should take, what Grinstein called, a “hugging” approach, leaving the “hitting” strategies of calling out bigotry to national organizations such as the ADL or other legal advocacy groups.

Federations would work to cultivate relationships with elected and appointed officials in the heartland of America, those who traditionally have steered clear of divisive politics when it comes to Israel and Jews, Grinstein said. “The role of [federations and] the JCRCs is not to pick a fight. There [are] enough groups out there fighting antisemitism, and fighting antisemitism on the one hand and community engagement on the other hand is effectively different organizational DNA. So the community relations operation should actually be focused on engagement, what we call hugging strategies.”

Many smaller communities are growing, Jessie Dowsakul, CEO of the Columbia (S.C.) Jewish Federation and a member of the AJ2054 small-community working group, told eJP. “There’s a lot of feeling of being safer here, and we’re going to say that’s a feeling, because I don’t necessarily think that that’s grounded in reality.”

According to the 2024/2025 census, South Carolina is the fastest-growing state in the nation, with the population increasing 1.5% between July 2024 and July 2025, growing by nearly 80,000 residents. 

Statistically, Columbia is seeing a new Jewish person moving into the city every other day, Dowsakul said. “So we are seeing a complete influx of people moving here, and a lot of those are people in their 20s and 30s.”

Arkansas is also seeing a surge in population, growing by 0.6% in 2025, according to the census. Families are moving to the state for jobs at Walmart, Tyson Chicken and J.B. Hunt Transport Services. The growth is faster than the federation can handle, Ravenna said. “They’re mainly moving for job opportunities and also the cost of living. It’s cheaper to live in our state.”

Small Jewish communities “are the connective tissue of what really keeps Jewish life in North America alive and flourishing and thriving coast to coast,” Ravenna said. “I truly believe our people’s future will be written as much in Helena [Mont.], Shreveport [La.] and Sioux City [Iowa] as in New York and Los Angeles.”

Many small communities have no federation at all nearby and lack the security needed for Jews to feel safe to attend events; as a result, Ravenna said, attendance suffers. Other federations that have the ability to help “should take responsibility and say, if there is a Jewish community in our proximity and we are the federation that’s closest to it, we should adopt them as well. We should redraw maps and say, ‘If there is a Jewish community in Wichita, Kan., it needs to be included in the federation’s territory, and why isn’t it? Are they not a part of our community? Do they not deserve our services?… Wherever there is a possibility, there is the responsibility. So Wichita, Kan., deserves our services, and we should come up with a way to serve them.”