In the fall of 2012, Congregation Beit Simchat Torah (CBST) in New York City, hired CreagerCole Communications to help raise visibility for the 20th Anniversary of CBST’s inspiring, transformational and beloved Senior Rabbi, Sharon Kleinbaum. Kleinbaum is a leading progressive faith voice, who has spent her entire career working tirelessly for LGBT equality and numerous other social justice causes.
CBST asked CreagerCole to pitch
and place stories about this milestone moment for the Rabbi at the world’s largest LGBT synagogue, while also drawing attention to the congregation’s capital campaign.The capital campaign will eventually move the congregation from its current cramped space on Bethune Street in Manhattan’s West Village, to a much larger and permanent home on 30th Street in Midtown.
To date we have placed 10 articles about CBST, in outlets ranging from the Washington Blade to Edge Media Network, and we continue to look for opportune moments to insert Rabbi Kleinbaum’s influential voice into the national dialogue; we placed this timely post Hurricane Sandy Gay City News op-ed by Kleinbaum, about LGBT homeless youth. GLAAD then helped our efforts greatly by posting this blog about Kleinbaum’s anniversary, including a link to a short, compelling AOL video about her decades of equality work, and tweeting it to its 130K plus twitter followers.
In addition to the stories about Kleinbaum’s 20th Anniversary and CBST’s capital campaign, we also placed an in-depth Q&A with Kleinbaum in Tablet Magazine during her trip to the Democratic National Convention (DNC), in which she talked about the role LGBT rights played at this year’s DNC… and we placed this Tablet Magazine story, detailing CBST’s ties to Edith Windsor and her landmark case challenging the so-called “Defense of Marriage Act,” or DOMA, which is slated for review by the United States Supreme Court this spring.
We recently capped of over three months of media relations work, placing this new Edge Media Network piece and this Daily Beast article,about a very special December 9th 20th Anniversary event for Rabbi Kleinbaum, featuring actress Cynthia Nixon and New York Magazine writer-at-large, Frank Rich.
CreagerCole Communications considers it a complete honor to work with Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum and CBST and looks forward to furthering this collaboration, as CBST continues efforts to complete its capital campaign.