Did You Hear?

Honoring Holocaust Victims, Fallen Soldiers, Israeli Independence, and So Much More

Passover ends and immediately the activity in the Jewish community starts to move at a frantic pace.  The number of events, programs and meetings is beyond belief and is a testament to the kind of engaged and interested community we have. I would only mention one such event from this past week, the Yom Hashoah […]

We Do So Much, So Well

A quick story about something that happened to me this week… My daughter is participating in a teen trip to Israel this summer.  I called the office of the organization running the trip to let them know that our Federation subsidizes every teen going on a teen trip to Israel (when you have attended a […]

Young Leadership and the Future of Community

Wednesday was a great day.  It started with a meeting and ended with an event. The morning meeting, a two hour gathering of a great group of committed lay leadership, engaged the group in serious discussion about our community and how to best address one of our communal priority areas in order to get the […]

The Plight of Jews in Ukraine

I take much of the language in this week’s Shabbat message from a correspondence I received from our national system, the Jewish Federations of North America.  I know that for many of us our “Jewish attention” has been focused on our local Jewish community, on the Israeli elections and on growing anti-Semitism across Europe.  I […]

Esther Did Not Sit Idly By

The buzz this past week has been about Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech in Congress.  Admittedly, there is a divide both within and from outside the Jewish community as to whether the Prime Minister should have given the speech at all.  There is debate about the right way to eliminate the Iranian nuclear threat.  One thing […]

Donating for All the Right Reasons

In last week’s New York Times Magazine, “The Ethicist” had a question posed to him.  The question raised was, “During a pledge drive for a public-radio station, an on-air personality made an accusation I’d never heard:  that regular listeners who never contributed were behaving unethically.”  Is it unethical? The Ethicist responded that it was not […]

Building Relationships, and Being a Mensch in Hollywood

Debbie Winn Horvitz, the CEO of the Jewish Association on Aging, spoke at a meeting of the Federation Beneficiary Agency Executives.  Debbie mentioned that at a recent session of the Wechsler Leadership Development Institute (Federation’s Young Adult leadership development program), one of the attendees was very taken by an aspect of the work of the […]

The Foundation of our Foundation

A tremendous Fundfest took place this past week. Despite some tough weather, hundreds came to the Federation offices to get on the phones to reach out and connect with other fellow community members to ask for their support of our 2015 Campaign.  Fundfest has propelled our campaign to $6 Million and added many new donors to our […]

Funding Great Things

The Centennial Fund for a Jewish Future, our Federation’s initiative to secure permanent endowment dollars to fund Jewish identity building programming, has had exceptional progress since its inception just five years ago.  To date, approximately $24 Million in commitments have been secured and with much of those commitments already being paid by generous donors, we […]

Je Suis Juif

I had intended to write today about a visit during my family’s December vacation in Atlanta at the Ebenezer Baptist Church.  I wanted to tie that into this Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend when we recall King’s struggle for civil rights in this country.  However, recent events have unfortunately redirected my message. Nearly three years […]

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