JCC
What a Yom Ha’azmaut! Today we celebrated the Israeli independence day! We started our day at Community Day School (CDS) singing and dancing with Israeli songs outside. Following the dancing, all of the school went inside to see the amazing Carnival that we’ve made for this special day! There was Israeli dancing, Israeli trivia, Israeli games […]
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A group of staff from the Federation and the JCC met this week to discuss our PJ Library program. PJ Library is funded by the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh and the Harold Grinspoon Foundation. The JCC, through Federation funding, carries out high quality programs to connect PJ Library families. Before I continue, let’s make […]
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We are in the middle of a period in the Jewish calendar called the Omer when we count the days from the second day of Passover until the beginning of Shavuot. Yesterday was Lag Ba’Omer, the 33rd day of the Omer. Traditionally during the Omer we refrain from certain activities like listening to live music […]
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I asked Rob Goodman, who has served as the founding Director of South Hills Jewish Pittsburgh, a program of the Jewish Federation, to write this week’s message: As Jews, our lives are tied to the calendar – our festivals, holy days, and Shabbat all are reflective of a combination of the lunar and solar cycles. This […]
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Last week’s Jewish Chronicle covered a Jewish Telegraphic Association (JTA) story about the powerful impact of the PJ Library program. Our Federation has been funding this incredible program in partnership with the Harold Grinspoon Foundation for many years. With over 1,300 current subscribers locally, the impact has been profound. While this article shares nationally aggregated data, we […]
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I attended the Yom Ha’atzmaut celebration that was coordinated by our Federation initiative, South Hills Jewish Pittsburgh, at the South Hills JCC. It was fantastic seeing so many young families having fun and celebrating Israel. Every South Hills congregational Rabbi was in attendance. This sense of collaboration in the South Hills is helping the community reach […]
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What is collaboration? The dictionary defines it as: “the action of working with someone to produce or create something”. That seems pretty simple to define, yet difficult to pull off successfully. Collaboration like any relationship takes real work. It means sometimes thinking about the other(s) with whom you are collaborating and what their needs may […]
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I haven’t written in several weeks and during that period our Federation has had a ton of activity. Our Annual Campaign crossed $7 Million, making this one of the quickest paced campaigns in my 18 years here. December resulted in millions of dollars in contributions to our Foundation. The cash donations we have been working […]
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In just a few weeks, several members of Knesset will be traveling to Pittsburgh as part of a delegation of the Jewish Agency for Israel and the Jewish Federations of North America. They will visit Toronto and Detroit, in addition to Pittsburgh. The goal of this journey is to educate Knesset members about our Jewish […]
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Sunday night, the Jewish world will begin the holiday of Chanukah. Our agencies have been and will be “getting their Chanukah on.” I know that the Chanukiah(some refer to it as a menorah) will be lit in the Jewish Association on Aging and Riverview Towers Facilities for the hundreds of our seniors who make their homes there. […]
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It’s hard to pick just one memorable moment from this frenetic week to highlight. There was the opening of the new Holocaust Center space on Sunday with a huge crowd in attendance including, most importantly, our local Holocaust survivors. The first session of this year’s Wechsler Young Leadership program began with an overview of the […]
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On Wednesday we fast for Yom Kippur. On Thursday at our Annual Meeting, our Federation will celebrate accomplishments for the past year and look towards the challenges we hope to conquer in the coming year. And the only comparison I’ll draw between the two is that, in a sense, Yom Kippur is the Annual meeting […]
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Brian Schreiber of our JCC and I were truly blessed to take part in a retreat sponsored by the Harold Grinspoon Foundation during the last week. Approximately 40 professionals, mostly from Federations and a few JCC’s, all of whom lead organizations involved with PJ Library, participated. The purpose was to brainstorm ways that each of […]
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This week’s Parsah, Bamidbar, has a description of the twelve tribes and how their camps were structured. While each tribe had its own location where it’s members lived, they all shared in something important, being members of the Jewish people. Saturday night begins the holiday of Shavuot, one of the three pilgrimage holidays in the Jewish calendar. […]
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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 […]
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On Sunday, Shalom Pittsburgh will hold its Fourth Annual Apples & Honey Festival, in Schenley Park. Literally hundreds show up every year for this great program. If you have a young family or grandchildren in town, you don’t want to miss this. If you know of a young Jewish family that would like a Jewish program that […]
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A fabulous JCC with state-of-the-art exercise equipment, seniors playing mahj, a preschool with adorable children, and a memorial to the Holocaust. A day school with Hebrew words and Judaica covering the walls. A gorgeous facility for seniors, with shared kitchen facilities in every unit. I could be describing our Pittsburgh Jewish community’s renowned institutions. In […]
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