Gonna do it. Gonna make it happen.
It is one thing to cast a lovely vision for the future; it is quite something else to present the evidence that it’s actually coming true. The annual meeting of JEWISHcolorado last week was the most impressive we have attended in many years, precisely because it was a meeting of record, of achievements, of goals being realized, not just a meeting of dreams.
Honoree David Farahi, winner of the Ruth & Warren Toltz Young Leadership Award, made a telling statement: “JEWISHcolorado listens.” An organization that bills itself as transitioned from a 20th-century organization into one positioned for the 21st century, needs to be responsive. It listened. The result is an impressive new activist, David Farahi, and no doubt he is not the only one.
Honoree Melanie Siegel, winner of the Volunteer of the Year Award, thanked Vicki Trachten Schwartz for “seeing something in me” 10 years ago — and asked the attendees to reach out and show their own friends and neighbors that they too have leadership potential.
Elizabeth Naidu, who moved to Denver in 2006, testified about the deep value of the weekly community nutrition maintenance program for seniors. Mitch Krayton testified as to how powerfully helpful the community chaplaincy program has been since the passing of his wife after 44 years of marriage. The chaplaincy enabled him, he said, to be vulnerable — another telling comment.
Whitney Chotin Wolz, winner of the Charlotte B. Tucker Young Leadership Award, evinced the individuality and enthusiasm that a 21st-century organization needs. No less important is the willingness of this generation to be mentored, and of the senior generation to do the mentoring — both in evidence in Wolz’s decision to make the trip to Israel that changed her life at the urging of her mother Robin Chotin.
An organization is not likely to nurture a successful future without anchorage in its past. The references to Moe Katz and Adolph Kiesler — pillars of the Allied Jewish Federation — were welcome and appropriate.
Hard numbers backed up these critical, yet somewhat intangible, growth signs. Fundraising is up significantly and perhaps even more telling is newfound credibility of JEWISHcolorado that brought it a $5 million legacy gift from the late and much missed Joyce Zeff.
This gift also lends strong initial support to JEWISHcolorado’s innovative structure of “strategic alliances” (in this case the alliance between JEWISHcolorado and CAJE), under which JEWISHcolorado assumes all financial responsibilities for a communal agency so that it can concentrate on programming.
The one discordant note to our ears was the repeated reference to Israel not as a unifying force in the local Jewish community, as it once was, but as a divisive issue. Divisiveness of this nature cannot be accepted as a permanent state of affairs, to be “tolerated” or “managed” under the rubric of “pluralism” or “respectful dialogue.”
Rather, a split attitude toward Israel is a challenge that JEWISHcolorado will have to overcome because, simply put, if there were no State of Israel, and no firm American support of Israel in the face of implacable enemies, there would likely be no more American Jewry and no JEWISHcolorado, either. Just check out the profound, internal insecurity of American Jewry and the significant level of anti-Semitism in America before Israel was created in 1948. The self-confidence of American Jewry stems from the independence of Israel. To think otherwise is to live in a dream world. We know that the generation of Internet and Instantaneous has little patience for the study of history; in this case, it is vital. Israel, warts and all, is the lifeline of Jews around the world.
That said, JEWISHcolorado is clearly on a roll. The beneficiaries are a reenergized local Jewish philanthropic community, not to mention the specific recipients of its largess.
Copyright © 2015 by the Intermountain Jewish News
