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A former parent organization of Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life as well as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), B'nai B'rith International is trying to reinvent itself by catering to a younger audience with a more subject-oriented focus.

In Union County, Springfield-based B'nai B'rith Lodge No. 2093 has incorporated B'nai B'rith units in Westfield, Clark, Hillside, and Union all within the last decade. Membership, down to 400, "is aging and the younger people are not joining," Joe Tenenbaum, lodge president, explained at the at the lodge's 54th Annual Dinner Dance on June 16 at Temple Beth Ahm Yisrael in Springfield.

Therefore, Lodge No. 2093 is planning to extend free membership to anyone in their 40s or younger, Tenenbaum said. Dues for other members are $85 per year. In New York, B'nai B'rith now runs a "global roundtable" discussion group of Jews in their 30s, and in Washington D.C., a similar routable visits the embassies of various countries, said Stu Cooper of Livingston, a member of the B'nai B'rith board of governors and national executive board.

Cooper said the objective is to feed off young people's interests in three of B'nai B'rith's areas of expertise: community service, anti-discrimination, and Israel advocacy.

"You have to look at what people are interested in today, you have to move with the times," Cooper said, calling B'nai B'rith's new local programming focus "subject-oriented" rather than just social, as it was in the past.

Lodge No. 2093 honored two of its activists at the dinner, Marc Hilton of Somerset and Dr. Marvin Bram of Union, with the Citizenship and Civic Affairs Award. Hilton, a past co-president, vice president, and board member of the B'nai B'rith Tri State Region, has organized the Jewish Fair and Expo at the Union YM & YWHA for nine years. Bram, who was the president of the Union Lodge and currently is on the B'nai B'rith board of governors, helped Hilton launch the fair and expo.

Hilton, 63, said that for B'nai B'rith to attract a younger audience, the organization needs a "go-to organizer to be the anchor and focal person for that group." When young people participate in groups like Hillel as college students, the question of "What happens when you are through there?" comes up after they graduate, he said.

The answer, Hilton said, is that recent college graduates might join a synagogue, and those who have young children will get involved in a school or youth program for their kids, but usually there isn't much time to be active in a Jewish non-profit like B'nai B'rith. There is time once your kids are college-age, he said, but by then you are already in the over-40 contingent and not in the younger demographic B'nai B'rith is seeking.

Bram, 82, said that "in order for B'nai B'rith to continue to survive after 167 years, it has to have young people coming into it." The goal should be to convince recent college graduates to join because Hillel, where they were active as students, used to be part of B'nai B'rith.

The incentive to join B'nai B'rith should also come from the fact that the organization cares about "humanity in general," helping non-Jews after Hurricane Katrina, the South Asian tsunami, and this year's earthquake in Haiti, Bram said. With units in 52 countries, B'nai B'rith is "truly an international organization," he said.

Cooper is the vice chairman of B'nai B'rith's Cuban Jewish Relief Project, which sends religious items like tefillin and siddurim, as well as food and medicine, to about 1,500 Jews in Cuba. B'nai B'rith has provided $8 million in aid for Cuban Jews and non-Jews over the past 10 years, Cooper said.

"We've been told by the Cubans that we bring more [aid] than anybody else," Cooper said.

"We try to help people, that's what it comes down to," he added.

Cooper compared B'nai B'rith's history as a parent organization for other Jewish groups to the life of a real parent.

"It's sort of like having children," Cooper said. "As they grew to maturity, they went out on their own."

Sol and Bea Walter of Springfield have been the top fundraisers from Lodge No. 2093 over the last 13 years, raising over $200,000 for B'nai B'rith during that span. Sol said the couple is active in B'nai B'rith largely because of its international focus, with "all the good that it does throughout the world."

Bram, who grew up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan within walking distance of B'nai B'rith's original offices, told the crowd before accepting his award that "Probably through osmosis, I became a B'nai B'rith person."

Hilton focused on the Jewish fair and expo in Union, recalling that there were longtime Irish, Italian, and Afro-American fairs in the area, prompting him to ask township officials "Why can't we have a Jewish fair?"

The Union Lodge was reticent to sponsor the fair and expo because of the cost, Hilton said, but when he spoke to Bram "the idea started to hatch." Launched with seed money from the B'nai B'rith Tri State Region, the fair and expo lost $66 its first year but has made money for both B'nai B'rith and the Union YM & YWHA each year thereafter, Hilton said.

With Judaica shopping, jewelry vendors, professional services, talks on topics like the Jews of Newark and Jews in sports, kosher wine tasting, music, and film screenings, "we've done just about everything" at the fair and expo, Hilton said. The event is a comprehensive display of Jewish ethnicity, heritage, and culture, he said, and is unique because two organizations, B'nai B'rith and the Union Y, are able to work harmoniously to put it together.

"It's a time to re-connect," Hilton said.