Next Thursday at 5:00 p.m. the Jewish Federation will hold its very first online Annual Meeting. We will honor our outgoing Board Chair, Meryl Ainsman, with the Emanuel Spector Award and Jewish Family and Community Services CEO, Jordan Golin, with the Doris and Leonard H. Rudolph Jewish Communal Professional Award. Both have especially demonstrated their leadership during these last few years as our community has experienced crisis after crisis. We will elect a new slate of officers including our new Board Chair, David Sufrin. And we will hear from Michael Masters, CEO of the Secure Community Network (SCN). SCN is the national apparatus of the Jewish Federations of North America to coordinate security needs across the continent. Michael has his finger on the pulse of antisemitic incidents and security overall, especially in our COVID environment.

If you have not yet registered, you can register for the Annual Meeting online. The program will run less than an hour as we know that all of us are experiencing “Zoom fatigue”.

Speaking about security, over the last few weeks, our Jewish Community Security operation has distributed tons of PPE to all Jewish organizations and synagogues that requested it. Just as our typical work in security is about keeping members of our community safe when it comes to our physical spaces, it is also about keeping people safe in response to the pandemic. We did all of this at no cost to the individual institutions. The number of thank you notes we have received from congregations all over the region has been heartwarming and appreciated.

I hope to see you virtually Thursday! Stay safe. Shabbat Shalom. Wear your mask!